天下制覇

This one time, in vampire band camp…

Impressions:

I continue to be very frustrated with this series. If it had a little bit stronger of a protagonist who was able to elevate himself and the others around him instead of being a barely animate sack of prosaic platitudes, these character of the week stories could really have some real drama and weight. If the animation was a little better, the action sequences would go from servicable to actual eye candy. If the direction was just a little stronger, it might not advertise its villain twist some five minutes before getting to them, robbing them of impact. It's happy to straight up murder a classmate with a beam cannon through the gut. Couldn't we have done the reveal at least a little better than a goofy operatic declaration of vampire supremacy? The goofy band uniform costume was also not helping matters.

Anyway, more specifically to this episode, it was absolutely a bounce back after last week's horrendous outing (although next week appears to be back to horrible). All the pieces are there. A problem, a reveal, a twist on the reveal, a fight featuring people being repeatedly slammed into the architecture, dismemberment, and ending with murdering a fangirl and getting a hickey for it. It's the baseline of the checkboxes that an action show should be trying to hit (although dismemberment wouldn't be out of place in most dramas either), but it's still just so very rote. Which is also, I'm aware, kind of an odd way to describe good vampire versus megalomaniac cackling lunatic vampire, but it's not like there's any shortage of the damn things running around. It doesn't annoy, scream, have weird-ass rocket ships, or incomprehensible twists, but there is frustratingly nothing all that noteworthy about these episodes either. 

Next Episode:

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