天下制覇

Why not have a teenage idiot and a magical pet?

Higurashi I guess diverged in its second episode by starting out introducing Hanyuu, but was then another really boring episode with zero murdering, so… nah. I watched the original. Whatever differences in this one, I simply don't care about, and it hasn't given me any reasons so far as to why I should.

Impressions:

Why do I get the feeling that someone wanted to make a futuristic heist show, but it got all anime'd up. It's probably all the very silly posing and ripping off of Suicide Squad's setup. Don't get me wrong. This is easily the best animated action show this season so far, but it's never enough for characters to be cool. They also have to then strike some corny pose. Being over the top is certainly at least a little bit of the point, but when it's stopping the coolness to have characters primp, especially the ones who have to primp by technobabbling, it's working against itself. And then there's the audience insert, a clumsy halfwit girl who spent most of the episode ineffectually chasing a cat. Why is she there? Apparently to fulfill the roles of "teenage girl" and "pet caretaker." If you thought those were things missing from Oceans Eleven or Leverage, then good goddamned news.

Comparing it to other intro episodes from this season, it's absolutely on the top of the heap so far, but compared to similar opening high octane heistish episodes of shows like Rage of Bahamut or Horizon, and I'm not sure it's quite at the same level, and certainly not as much fun. The muggle girl is certainly an obnoxious and pointless part of the entire affair, but it also lacks the dynamic of a chase and actually involving the whole cast being awesome dudes, particularly against the mech at the end which was their golden chance to showcase them all working together against the greater enemy rather than most of the cast just evaporating into thin air for the last five or so minutes of the episode. The awkward censorship doesn't help (even the AT-X broadcast was censored). It's not the technology wizard, as in a literal wizard, who's the worst offender either, although the magical pet revealed at the end may quickly overtake both. It's the motorcycle dude. His schtick is that he drags a magical motorcycle literally everywhere, and it just plain opens up to reveal everything from grappelling hooks to ion cannons. It's like Adam West Batman thing here, except with a dude whose sole expression is stone-faced grump. 

Next Episode:

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