天下制覇

Yeah, we just uh, got tired of our premise, did we?

Impressions:

Unsatisfying end completing this hugely unsatisfying arc and a final dismantling of this show by relegating its entire train/zombie thing to nada. The zombies could've been replaced by burning trash bins for this entire arc and nothing would've changed in the slightest. They were mere pebbles to be stepped over, start to end, and all the faffing for the last few weeks about SUPER MEGA ZOMBIE mode was resolved with yelling a little bit and the power of trying really hard for your friends and thus, she snapped out of her inner-world mopiness and that was that. Fan-goddamned-tastic.

The writing was never this show's strong point, but everything from Biba's introduction onward has springboarded everything straight into the concrete. Doofus duels with Villain, does the whole FEEEEELINGS schtick apropos of goddamned nothing because these two have even less of a relationship than I do with my cheese grater, but she pops right back out and everybody who matters rides off into the sunset, hale and hearty, onward to their next adventure or whatever, but now with the power of COURAGE or DETERMINATION or FRIENDSHIP or god only even knows what. The motion was there, but the characters, development, plot, and even the animation for the most part was not.

Final Thoughts:

At least it started fairly exciting and fast-paced, even if it was a little melodramatic and nonsensical. The characters and the world certainly had room to grow, and it had a fairly strong production budget behind it for a while, even if there were frequent major lapses into random stills. Unfortunately, all the characters did was stagnate and the plot went from bearable if you don't look too hard to utter tripe. Things like the blood contract were introduced and summarily forgotten and I'm not even sure Whose-Its and the Princess interacted at all again after that point. Mumei got it the worst, being reduced to just a thing to be rescued, powerless to stop herself from being exploited by a character who half-assed a tragic backstory as an excuse for being evil for evil's sake, but all of them had dubious worth to the story, even before it became Biba's Evil Insane Plotting Hour while the entire steampunk/train/zombie thing was likewise utterly punted. It wasn't even really clear why Whose-Its suddenly cared so much about her anyway. Because he saw he trying hard that one time?

Let this season begone and never spoken of again.