天下制覇

Stay tuned for other hard hitting social remarks.

Three out of nine shows for the day down, but this is where I start falling behind as multiple things start airing simultaneously and fatigue kicks in. 

Impressions:

There's something almost insulting about the way that the main character emotes so hard for blips on a screen even while she unabashedly luxuriates in a life of comfort and luxury while unwilling to do anything to buck the system that she grieves so hard for the people she willingly exploits and sacrifices. It would make a lot more narrative sense if she was ignorant or uncaring. Or if she was reluctant to take on the work instead of champing at the bit even when told she doesn't need to do it. But look at the emotion in her voice as she gives hard orders. She feeeeeeeels for her exploited slaves she's murdering as she sits in her padded chair after enjoying tea. She doesn't enact bold, crazy strategies to save their lives. She doesn't sacrifice her own station for them. She follows her orders, but feels sort of bad about it. And we're supposed to sympathize with her for that.

And since it's a very uneventful episode, there's not a whole lot else to it except that. Melodramatic girl bums around for 15 minutes, occasionally being troubled by being a cog in a racist military industrial machine on steroids, but her life is comfortable, so it's only occasional pangs of conscience. Meanwhile, here's the battlefield. Blood and death. Stoic soldier boy executes a dying man. Yes, yes. Very societal. So much commentary. How about some characters with life, emotion, or actual engagement in the world to drive a story? Characters attempting to exert agency, to drive the story, to make it their own, to grow, to change, to change the world around them. Or are we just wallowing in borrowed misery while nibbling our biscuits, thinking that it'd be nice if things were different, but meh, not gonna be us to do that? There's certainly social commentary here, but it's not entirely what the show thinks it is.