天下制覇

Shut up and be stabbed.

Impressions:

On one hand, the plot certainly got accelerated as hell this episode. On the other hand, more than once, that manifested as skipping past things that really seemed like they could've/should've been major events while introducing absolutely random stuff at the same time. Apparently there's a peasant uprising going on against the war? And Sakuna has been out there assassinating and re-assassinating random enemy generals. Meanwhile, they're skipping past fights with the baddie for the arc to beat everybody offscreen, and the clumsy maid is actually a secret enemy assassin. But then people 'killed' just come right back, so why'd they even 'die' offscreen to start with? They also just ditch that one shrine maiden girl quite literally in a ditch, and I could not tell you if she's meant to be some kind of Chekhov's gun, or this is just the discarding of a pointless joke character.

Well, too much too fast, and especially too many stabbings, is still better than the opposite, but virtually all of that happened in the first half of the episode. The second half was mostly just speeches about how the current logistics situation, and how various girls were doing their best, and doing their best is a good thing. There's a full six minutes in between Pink and Komari being stabbed and them having a heart to heart while the baddies are pissing about in the background ten feet away. Talking really is a free action. Would have really rather watched some of the other stabbings we skipped over instead, especially if it's just going to be the same vapid platitudes in every show about Doing Your Bestest.

Next Episode:

…