天下制覇

Once more, with feeling

Impressions:

…I honestly don't really even know what more there is to say. The one part of the episode that kind of had a little bit of effort put into it was the sparring match, but when you break that down, it's just a quick once over of every named character showing and/or explaining their power once again. As soon as they've hit every member of the cast for a minimum of 5 seconds, but no more than 10, it abruptly ends and it's off to go fight… mostly a cave-in. Yeah, inanimate fallen rocks. Okay, so there are monsters too. They're dispatched with a couple stills before we need to grunt and power up to defeat the mighty power of a wall and sacrifice ourself to some off-screen assassin. Unless she's not dead, just monsterified? It's hard to tell. Bullet wounds don't normally cause people to erupt in a swarm of crystals, so it's totally possible, perhaps even probable, that she's totally fine, although my money would be on fine, but now harboring THE EVIL as a dedicated Sufferer™.

But… yeah. Unlike Horizon, the cast isn't colorful or engaging, nor does it have slick action sequences that let them shine. Even Seven Knights last season did a better job narrowing things down and focusing on one or two of the exploited war orphans at a time instead of taking a slapdash approach that ends up elevating nobody, least of all the babbling nonsense that is its overall setting, which it also can't shut up about. Meanwhile, they're just wandering around to the local shrne to goof off, just to… goof off. Not in purpose of some character story that drives the episode or provides a narrative thread. Hard to even call it a death flag since you don't explode in crystals if that's the last we're going to be seeing of you.