天下制覇

 

All those flashbacks and still not saving enough money to animate the action well.

Impressions:

You know, one of the dangers of stretching crap out for six months is that the weight of previously (sort of) important things is vastly diluted, and no number of flashbacks, recaps, or awful insert song montages are going to reset the clock on that. The entire first half did a pretty good job of getting my bile churning, although my guts start rumbling anyway any time I hear “awakening” in Japanese. Well, that, flashbacks, exposition, and CGI, three other things this episode certainly didn’t lack for either.

I guess it could have been an okay episode if not for mediocre at best execution, particularly the pacing. Stopping to remind and reiterate probably did more to kill any tension or excitement than just ignoring it could have done to damage things in other ways. It was pretty rushed regardless, with all the feeeelings stuff flowing into the CGI Mecha Crowsuit like a pickup might flow into the backseat of a volkswagen beetle. Well, and the budget ran out too, which went hilariously awful for Ogreboy. At least the main characters were actually involved in events again in some capacity besides “cheerleader” or “designated gasper from the sidelines.” Luckily, Natsume had a long… long time to think about things to make sure everyone knew exactly how the traditional “tongue down the throat” cure-all was going to go. There’s literally just a minute straight of her doing nothing but explaining her feelings. In the middle of getting shot at. Bad anime! Bad!