天下制覇

Really? The big glowing rock? You sure?

Impressions:

The eyes, they have trouble rolling far enough back in the head to adequately capture most of this episode. Sure, we had our qualifications to get into the school, but what about second qualifications? And just the existence at all of new students is national news! Yet, nobody has any idea what's going on at the Harvard of monster hunting. So let's meet our new students, here's four others who also have unique designs and get voice lines, and all the rest are the most painfully generic NPCs imaginable, all browns and grays, wielding sticks and knives while everybody with a unique design stands out like a poisonous toad and gets transforming cyber gun sword hammer grappling hook buster cannons. It's all so transparent and silly even while characters solemnly declare "This is a deadly serious test for serious people. You might die! Now, get onto the catapult so we can launch you into a forest filled with monsters having not trained or taught you anything."

On the upside, it did have at least a little more of a narrative and character focus, though since it was primarily the white one being a pissy jackass, I don't know that I'd count that as a win. The B Team seems a lot more fun than either of the two angsty protagonist jerks. The animation was also largely still strong. Not nearly as good as the first episode though, despite these monsters supposedly being a threat. The way they did that was by making them flat out immune to all damage until for no real reason they suddenly weren't, so it was largely just hopping around and going pew pew. The scorpion was especially bad. "The weak point is the one giant glowing bit!" The proclaimation of which made the main body now vulnerable… somehow. And now, forty seven thousand frames spent on the cast standing triumphantly in the wind. For some reason.