天下制覇

Could you have made a more tedious episode if you tried?

Impressions:

Yeah, this is much closer to the godawful pacing I expect from the Baccano/DRRRRRRRRR dude. Three minutes of pointless backstory narrated into another three minutes of yet more backstory about how the psycho girl is psycho, followed by about five straight minutes of people standing six feet apart explaining things like "I can use magic" and "Magic does not exist" to each other. Then a very brief break to save some kids from a burning building before it's right back to finish things out with a few more minutes of conversation. 

None of this added anything. Hell, almost none of it was even animated. The best I can say is that with so goddamned little going on through the entire episode, the random 'quirky' moments didn't stick out like a sore thumb anywhere near as badly as the first episode. Any time a character spends twenty straight minutes with their feet rooted in place, that should be a warning sign that your conversation/scene has gone on approximately 19 minutes too long. At least spice the conversation up with some walking around or dramatic gesturing. Even high school plays know better than for scenes to be constructed like this. Wouldn't salvage the godawful writing, but at least the director and animators would be doing something.