天下制覇

Choke and die on the tomatoes.

Impressions:

You have to admire the ambition of this episode. Not only did it inspire to continue being the same white noise drek of every other episode, but it boldly declared its intention to make future seasons that don't even exist yet worse. Most of the episode was spent on the usual crap this entire crappy season has been; someone pulls a new form out of their ass, summons some noise, everyone oohs and aahs over its power level, tries once to kill it, fails, tries a second time two minutes later, succeeds, and then goes home for tomatoes and cake.

But then, because we wanted to make sure that both the episode and the season end on the lowest note possible, it was back to nonsense rambling about the lore. You see, it wasn't all a bunch of asspulls. It was just one singular giant asspull from back in season two, and the worst character in the whole thing, who never contributes anything but a plaintive whine in the background among a dozen other plaintive whines, is going to be promoted back to the foreground… at some point. Some time. Thanks for the warning. I'll be sure to stay away.

Final Thoughts:

What the hell was supposed to be the star of this season? It had no character arc for literally anybody. There was no plot arc. The antagonists were literally never once even a minor threat, nor did any of them have any kind of story or arc.The biggest threat and only defeat the protagonists ever suffered were to their own bridge bunnies, and they were effortlessly humiliated by them. So what was it then? The lore? Is that it? Is that everything? This was a season to talk about some of the nonsensical lore? To just pull random stuff out of their ass after the fact to explain how the last ass pull was only half an ass pull? Was it just a movie or OVA that spun out of control and somehow ended up a full season? Why did this exist? Oh right, got CDs to sell. Fantastic.

This is the weakest of all four seasons of this show by a massive margin and just says to me that they've both run out of ideas for the franchise, and that they're not willing to take any risks with what they have. If there is any future left for it, it needs to shake things up in a way that this season showed absolutely no interest in doing. The animation might've been there, but with the good guys being unassailably invincible from start to finish, the fights never mattered. Gone is any true badassery, blood, tears, or guts, and all that's left is posturing that they still exist, usually via the peanut gallery gasping about what a pinch they're in this time right before it's swiftly resolved without even a half-hearted attempt to make it seem like it mattered. The third season's character drama may have been completely godawful, but at least it was trying something. There is nothing here but a holding pattern that could have been… and indeed should be… completely passed over.