天下制覇

Why were they fighting again?

Impressions:

Certainly better than the last couple episodes, though the whole episode is a fever trip. Obviously, Rouge's parts are a literal fever trip of weird dreams of her past, people she killed, and evil clowns, trying its hardest to be Nier. But Naomi also runs into that one shampoo model from episode 2 who pops up to escort her into the depths of clown central before wandering off again. Simultaneously, some random black mech dude with guns for a skirt shows up. Okay, so by the end of the episode, they're revealed to be one and the same, so it's not all that drawn out, but still. This dude popped up like twice for a total of maybe 90 seconds. I'm not sure they made it past random nonsense to recurring mysterious character. 

I guess the main thing it really did was reveal the true last boss, Rouge's 'brother,' some random bishie declaring that vengeance needs to be inflicted because this group killed some other unexplained dude offscreen, and is creating a whole swarm of shapeshifting Rouge clones or something? Or she is the technicolor color maybe? Other than that, it's hard to even tell what was really going on. The head goth clown wants to let her go to find her true self, but the goth lady clown wants to kill her, and they're both content to let the other have a go at it. And yet, the weirdest part of the episode may have been the ridiculous over-animation at the start of fighting the goth clown lady. All the frames. Every single strand of hair. Excessive hip swagger. The works. Not that the rest was poorly animated, but the budget clearly spiked for those 15 seconds or so for… what appears to be a random clown sidekick that literally flew off into space at the end of the episode.