天下制覇

Not so much observational humor as observational attempts at humor.

Impressions:

Weirdly, this is also apparently in the genre of "middle aged men in an inappropriate relationship with a high school girl." Mondays this season have such an unfortunate theme. This one is by far the least offensive of the lot though. The girl doesn't even appear on screen and her disappearance is just referenced repeatedly as the mystery, revealed about halfway to be hiding in Mr. Walrus's closet or something. It's hardly the focus, but there's also not actually any kind of real focus or even a connecting thread that things like Baccano use to string things together. But even Baccano also had mountains of style, action, and panache that was probably far more important than having a billion characters all with their own lives. God only knows why they're all animals too. Essentially never comes up, and never for anything. No Zootopia-like parables to society here.

That's where I think this really struggles. Ironically too, because it begins with this whole bit of listening to failing comedians on the radio getting dragged for faffing around and not getting to the point. So then they go right into a pop song and montage, and most of the episode is spent on trying to do banter, but everybody is dry and monotone. It also only amounts to things like "Hey, you know Bruce Springsteen. I listen to Bruce Springsteen." "You sure seem to like saying Bruce Springsteen." "Bruce Spingsteen is fun to say." "Okay, then say Bruce Springsteen again." The kind of conversation that you might have with a three year old as you contemplate tearing your ears off. There are plenty of hints and teases that virtually every character is hiding some kind of dark secret, but that's as far as any of it goes. A mountain of sniffing the cork, but never pouring a glass, and no good indication that it will be doing so in the near future either, let alone what kind of story it's shooting for.

Next Episode:

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