天下制覇

How nice that they're similarly melodramatic.

Impressions:

I think I'm okay with putting this on the bubble pending a particularly strong episode next week. It didn't do anything particularly good or bad this week, but it didn't particularly do anything really either. It seems pretty content to coast with "melancholic teens being a touch overdramatic, and then one screams about friendship." Shows like FLCL, original version, remembered to have some kind of smaller story in each episode that focused and drove it, or even better, stuff like Garou that told entire encapsulated stories, although those were also frequently about the monsters. Evol is probably the best comparison. Each episode focused narrowly on a member of the team whose development was instrumental in defeating the gimmick of the week. In this one, they, uh, want to train, but one doesn't? But nobody's seriously bothered by it nor does that stymie them in any way, so it's not some conflict or clash between people that leads to any growth or development. It's just white noise of teen angst until a monster finally shows up to stomp around. Not quite so much jumping into the pool of character and story as dipping a toe in and remarking on how deep it looks. Sure, Evol may have been as deep as splashing in the kiddie pool, but it was at least in the damn water.

Which leads us to the monster of the week. It could teleport, which they couldn't defeat by being combined and working together, so they split up… and worked together… and then recombined. Mostly, it was about shouting "I will protect the things I care about." What those things were, not something the show is all that interested in exploring. Why they care about them, see previous. They're sad teenagers versus a cadre of less-sad-but-actually-probably-sadder teenagers. It's not like Uncle Ben died, or they were scared of fighting, or they were having some spat that they overcame, or learned anything about each other aside from the spewed out "My sister died." It's just a random declaration of "Oh, I changed my mind, and I guess I'll try now." Honestly, the most interesting thing at the moment is how blasé the world is taking an invasion of giant monsters, but given the setting, we already know it's because this is all a fake world on the eyelid of the Wind Fish or some rot.