天下制覇

That's how you can tell they're evil.

Impressions:

Boy, this took a turn. A welcome one, since the first half of the episode was shaping up to be another snoozer, and I genuinely wondered if the random raid on Mt Doom was even going to happen at all. But then they divebomb some arbitrary volcano full of evil and I guess they realized that the source gacha game had a buttload of COBRA commandos wearing way too much eye shadow that it needed to work in, because half the good guys get matched up with baddies to spar with, who… uh… beat them and then power up somewhat more from the power of evil? Which is also almost entirely a summary of the story elements of the episode, which is a bit of an issue, particularly considering that we don't finish any of the fights, and a lot of the action was, even for this show, pretty gimpy on the production front. Certainly not awful, and better than none at all… Looking at you, Vivy, but even for the show, it's far from the best moments. 

Mostly, the show continues to frustrate me by almost-but-not-quite having solid bits while the overall story is moving in the direction that it should be by both elevating and personalizing the conflict. Nemo's attempt at an inspiring speech against Team Evil, and him protecting I-Cannot-Even-Begin-To-Remember-Half-These-Names-Let-Alone-The-New-Evil-Girl from her buddy's indifference to axe-ing her while going after Nemo were almost pretty good moments, and if he were a character more in the mold of Sword from Vanishing Line or similar, he could absolutely have carried that scene and done a better job planting the seeds for being an inspiring leader. But it's only last week that he was struggling with the concept of people having affection for one another. He's hardly even human by most metrics. 

Next Episode:

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