天下制覇

 

Not one of them has a monocle.

Impressions:

Here’s a timeline.
30 seconds in: Bishie A strokes Bishie B’s face
40 seconds in: Bishie A leans in and breathes on Bishie B’s face
50 seconds in: Bishie A embraces Bishie B in a swirl of pink cherry blossoms

Although kind of strangely, if not for that, the OP/ED, and the entire show being a sausage fest, it might have almost passed for not homoerotic at all. Just almost though because there is a sequence where Bishie B catches Main Bishie and shouts out “He belongs to me!” resulting in Main Bishie blushing furiously and clinging to that strong, muscular chest for a moment before remembering proper Victorian decorum. Then again, he was clinging to his arm fearfully later too.

Back to the start though. The first thing they did after the OP was a 15 second still while the protagonist mentally introduced himself to the audience. If they wanted to play to their strengths, they should have just had him suggestively eat a banana. It can’t be that much more expensive to animate. And yes, the thing dressed in purple is very firmly male too. The protagonist is of the obnoxious variety that is either morosely lecturing the audience, overreacting as a substitute for a punchline, or complaining that all these supernatural things couldn’t possibly be happening, so I want to drop a safe on him already. The others could be more interesting, but I mainly say that because most of them had a tendency to be on fire or be a goat.

Basically it’s trying to do too much though and is kind of all over the place. Weirdly, the thing it was probably best at was the action. They actually bothered to toss some budget its way, something that the first 15 minutes of the episode lacked. Not enough to be worth watching for just that, but it was perhaps the only part that wasn’t phoned in. The humor’s weak and entirely just “reaction face plus splash screen = joke,” and it’s not even really trying to appeal to the likers of the man on man crowd. I very much suspect that they blew the budget in this episode though and the rest is going to be that mostly bad humor and barely restrained lust for each other.

Next Episode:

Gasp!