天下制覇

If only every episode was like this.

Impressions:

You can tell the exact moment that this episode hit the penny on the rails and went careening out of control. Don’t get me wrong, that’s far better for this show, and I’m pretty sure that at least a good 80+% of it was intentional this week. Oh, there was some rattling on the tracks when Trader launched into a monologue about how the Magical Gimmicks didn’t destroy the world, they turned on an ancient satellite that…. destroyed the world. Or how their transforming widgets just magically healed themselves and we had the joy of having to watch the entire bloody transformation sequence for all three. Or even the way Misty Knight survived the bomb… "I just did."

But it wasn’t until the eyecatch that everything was lost into the drug-fueled minds of madmen. Misty Knight confronted a guy wearing a deer head ransacking Trader’s office and challenged him to an (off-screen, unfortunately) animal-head battle. Who was the deer? I have no bloody idea. Then Salome appears in place of the building’s automatic destruct sequence before immediately falling down a pit into Antarctica again. Finally, the game’s OP kicked in (this is JC Staff after all) while the Angels used their powers to launch themselves into space to combo attack the satellite before falling back down to the planet.

Thank you, and goodnight.

Final thoughts at the bottom.

Final Thoughts:

This may be a little complicated. I certainly don’t believe that this is anything above maybe an average show overall, but like many other things that I end up covering out of spite for the rest of the internet (Polyphonica and Koihime come to mind), I think that it’s a lot better than most people give it credit for. For starters, the production’s well-above average (likely due to getting a pass on a minute or so through the stock transformation scenes) and aside from the horrid opening theme, the music’s fine too. The biggest problem was that the characters were just not that good. They were rarely annoying, which is a positive, but even at the end of it, I feel absolutely nothing for any of them.

In fact, it was the writing overall where the show both really shined and really stunk. The show was at its best when it was quirky and weird because it got really weird, almost past simple parody and into the surreal in a few places, but unfortunately, those moments were very rare, and all but completely absent from about episodes 4-9. The vast majority were centered around Salome and Tuxedo Mask too. It’s also a little weird to say about this, but they did a very good job seguing into the drama in the end and keeping things moving while still at an appropriate level of melodrama for how the show’s been the whole time. I say it a lot, but flow and consistency are writing traits that cannot be appreciated enough and they absolutely nailed the tone for the show from start to finish and the pacing in the last third or so, something that certain other shows this season have struggled immensely with. It’s a shame that the show was just fluff though and everybody involved knew that. If they had committed more to either the dramatic angle and been more like the OVA version, or the comic angle and been more like Milky Holmes, the show would have been immensely improved.

So whatever. It’ll be quickly forgotten as probably well it should be. It was more fun to write about than it was to watch because there was usually at least one completely insane thing that it did each week to point and laugh at. That doesn’t really justify enduring the other 18 minutes of every episode if you’re looking for something to watch though. It was generic fluff, and despite some attempts otherwise (some very good attempts, mind you) and getting a number of little things right that most other show flub completely, that’s all it is in the end.