天下制覇

Bad week for subtlety.

Impressions:

Massive physical trauma loses a lot of impact if we're going to be reducing the main character to giblets at the start of every other fight, especially when he just magically gets better off screen. I guess at least the action animation returned in small part. But it was a bit easy to ignore that as it went all in on explaining that being squished together and transformed into a fusion of the two made them… squished together and a fusion of the two. And then I guess they just sort of magically stopped being that at the end. Somehow. Yes, I'm hoping for a little more cause and effect in this show about magical aliens hosting a battle royale over vending machine tokens.

They also missed the mark with indignant rage in the way that anime writing almost always does. You were literally hunting down someone to murder them, and rejoiced when it looked like it was suddenly going to be much easier to do so. Now you're screaming for the next few minutes about how wronged you are that they fought back? It might have worked at least a little bit if they had tried the pacifist approach, but getting indignant because someone did what you spent the last five minutes hyping yourself up to do (which is a problem in and of itself), it's hollow at best. Particularly when you're mad that he killed the 'innocent' girl you yourself hid inside a living weapon. Now that I think about it, it would have probably been perfectly salvagable as is if it had at least ended with him being pissed off at himself, but that's more introspection and possible character development than the show is capable of.