天下制覇

HEY, KIDS. WANT TO PLAY VOLLEYBALL.

Impressions:

Red's mom is really the breakout character of this show. Maybe it's because she's being used sparingly so far, but her random interruptions and dragging people off to do mundane things with the supreme confidence that only a 50 year old Asian housewife has are some of the few jokes that actually land. I'm sure the whole Japanese cultural feeding thing is a large part. It's such a weird, dumb thing that seems more obnoxious, or at best, a weird-ass throwback to the 1950s and sharing a phosphate with your best gal down at the Johnny's Slurp and Straw. Or maybe I'm just a heathen raised in sin by the gruesome food and drink sharing traditions of… *checks personal history* being in marching band.

Rolling backwards to the first half, it was mainly fanservice, and montage fanservice at that, which is something we'll be returning to next week with the beach episode. Just an excuse to put all the (evil) girls in various exercise clothes for a few cheesecake shots and then crank the melodramatic music up to maximum and milk the absolute hell out of saying "be yourself." It's the right idea, I guess, but you started out crying, did one fanservice montage, and went back to crying. It's not a developed or satisfying epiphany that we've reached. More time was spent trying to milk the ending than there was establishing that there was any kind of actual hurdle to overcome.

Next Episode:

Obligatory beach episode.