天下制覇

Not going to win a Father of the Year award, that’s for sure.

After five shows, I need a breather to feed and recover. Happy Bread and AO aren’t up anyway (although have finished airing awhile ago), but I’m going to go do Aroduc things for a little bit before I get to them.

Impressions:

Like the first episode was almost entirely Chihiro’s train of thoughts, this one was focused on Rea. Mostly around her really really creepy father that takes naked pictures of her. It was bad enough with… you know… just the naked pictures, but all the shots of his gloves, taking them off, and then chuckling as he does it… We’re pushing dangerously close to where dramatic turns to ridiculous, if not already over the line. It did have a whole lot more substance than Chihiro’s "I’m a generic loner" schtick so didn’t feel nearly as much like wasted time. The direction wasn’t quite as Shafty this week either, but the directing and artistic composition is still well above average.

Unfortunately though, that does mean that it’s yet another background episode full of flashbacks. It’s infinitely better to have them at the start of the story instead of crammed randomly into the middle, but as with 99% of the time Japan trots out the ol’ flashback-mobile, there’s no reason it couldn’t have been primarily handled in the present instead of the past. In fact, if they had done all these argument things with her friend and parents in the present, then it would have connected a lot better to her decision to try to kill herself because… you know… immediate actions connecting cause and effect. The slap was nowhere near enough to go right to suicide. Make the emotionally charged events proximal to actions taken. Don’t split them by years and force a flashback to them to suddenly provide emotional context to a new present event like the character has just utterly forgotten about them until this point in time. The day Japan figures that out, I’ll throw them a goddamned ticker tape parade around my neighborhood.

Preview:

Death and rebirth.