天下制覇

Just in case you somehow didn’t catch that.

I’m never going to have a Thursday without flashbacks, am I?

Impressions:

Team Scooby Doo’s manliness took a bit of a hit today when they were beaten by a chandelier and a rug. Not Yukiko’s shadow after it became a chandelier, the chandelier before that. And apparently Tomoe Gozen, mighty female samurai, must struggle to overcome a carpet. I’m not even sure how covering their feet in wax made any difference. "Oh no! Now we can’t continue to stand here while our personas do things! Gasp!" I think someone forgot that the characters themselves haven’t actually been taking part in combat thus far. But hey, at least Yuu’s magical Velvet Room powers kicked in and he managed to summon… Ara Mitama. Seriously? Ara Mitama? Couldn’t we at least have sprung for Omoikane? Come on, it’s a tentacle brain. Ara Mitama is… a floating piece of rock with a face drawn on it.

Aaaaanyway, definitely weaker than previous episodes because of its flashback-laden cuts all over the place. The biggest improvement was finally turning off Teddy’s annoying squeaking footsteps. The music was quite nice this week I guess. The insert and drama over the shadow confrontation stuff is still far overdone for how little build up there is, but that’s been true since the start. They are trying at least to add things to make it better, but flashbacks should never be the answer. I really should try to figure out what Japan’s unique obsession with flashbacks as a go-to narrative device is. Maybe they’ll take a break from it for awhile now that the main cast is together. The action was fairly weak this episode too, although I did laugh at the Yukiko bird flapping fire into Pyro Jack’s lantern and then getting coldcocked as the finishing blow. Being smacked in the back of the head while distracted is a far better finishing blow than some corny still and then an explosion.

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