天下制覇

  

I think the ‘wacky idiot’ character here passed some kind of idiocy event horizon.

Impressions:

This made me think a lot of things like Dragon Quest or Ys or any of a billion Japanese RPGs with a silent protagonist where all the other characters dance around it really really awkwardly; giving exposition to, assigning chores to, and making friendships with, becoming fiercely protective of, etc, something that stands there impassively without ever so much as changing expression, let alone joining the conversation to the point of getting everybody they know killed for this random lump that has less personality than a guinea pig. She wasn’t even completely silent though, so I’m not sure what they were going for.

Otherwise, the only interaction she has with other characters in the show is putting knives at their throats. You can seriously make a drinking game out of just her putting knives at people’s throats. There’s very little actual fighting or the like, she just always appears next to or behind them with a knife at their throat. Even the ‘climax’ of the episode was a silly dust cloud explosion where the guy fell over afterward with a knife in the throat. And that’s being apparently slashed across the eyes.

From that you might assume that the production was not particularly impressive, and you’d be absolutely right, but the direction is where the episode suffers the most. It’s mainly in the aforementioned character interactions (or lack thereof) which come to a head with the singularly bizarre hair cutting scene at the end, but even the action that bookended the episode wasn’t very exciting. There’s also a metallic clash every single time she moves her sword at all, even if it’s just to hold it up in the air that was distracting at best. It’s Gonzo and they’ve got to make sure to stick CGI in somewhere, but it is thankfully mostly limited to things like terrain, flags, and doors.

It’s certainly trying to be serious and all killy and melodramatic about it (“high fantasy” is I believe the term you’d use to sound smart or like a wanker), but it’s anchored around empty space and characters acting ridiculously to make the empty space seem like it’s important. It can work in games somewhat (although I hate it there too) because the player is taking that role, but not so much in a purely passive form of entertainment. Maybe it’ll improve now that it killed off all but one of the ones that had more than 5 lines, but since I’m pretty sure that the Dutch wife with a knife-at-throat issue is the star, I don’t see it.

Next Episode:

Fewer knives at throats.