天下制覇

What a laugh riot of an episode.

Impressions:

I feel like large parts of this is probably some kind of reference to some Japanese drama that I simply don't have the cultural knowledge to recognize, but that may be assuming that it's meant to be some kind of parody or satire, and I'm not sure this wasn't meant to be just a very, very, very melodramatic, maudlin, devoid of all humor episode. Particularly with the post-credits knife twist at the end where the hitman decided to back out of it at the last second so actually it was super traaaaaagic. Which isn't really fitting given the show so far. I was more expecting at the start a twist that Ranko wasn't the target at all, but even by the halfway point, had it shifted to finishing the job with the panda, it still would have been all melodrama, zero humor.

Well, that the panda's entire thing is just a flashback spat out of nowhere didn't help matters, nor did it going all incestual soap opera-y with every single character all having secret pasts together either. I'm not even really sure why the panda didn't kill the hitman right from the start, or at the very least, warn people that "Yo, this guy is an assassin who cozies up to his targets before killing them." Nor why all the other killing, including a contract killing in the first episode lest we forget that, doesn't bother Ranko, but now she wouldn't want to disappoint her dead mentor. Eh, whatever. Let's just make it to the end of this awful season.