天下制覇

Such puppet mastering.

Impressions:

Even if the flashback and explanation of it hadn't been complete nonsense, this still would have been an incredibly boring episode. The only redeeming moment was the post-credits final bit of a bunch of magical girls, phantom thieves, and general clowns declaring that this will be their ascendence. That doesn't follow from anything at all, but sure. I'd much rather be watching that. It at least has a few traces of anarchist clowns, even if these idiots are apparently actually from the games and so are probably just bad cliches instead of clownpants insanity. Certainly beats tea time with Rean and buddies.

But sure, let's discuss the flashback. Old Dude A was shot, Old Dude B accused Old Dude C of masterminding a plot to assassinate him using a random child soldier on the battlefield and everybody went along with it despite knowing it was nonsense, which is what is pissing off antagonist Old Dude D, but Old Dude B and Old Dude C were actually secretly in on it together because the city needs a villain to unify them! Everything here, from the supposed convoluted assassination plot to how they framed the guy, was so ridiculously flimsy and half-assed. Even Dr. Robotnik comes up with more coherent plans. But this is the plan that we're hanging the entire episode, and three different people all having simultaneous flashbacks on, so who needs to come up with anything sensical?