天下制覇

And then, CGI.

Impressions:

This had a big hole to crawl out of after that first… two thirds. It's clear where the budget for the episode went, and almost ten straight minutes of puppet theater is… a lot to sit through. Especially rambling incoherent existential angsty puppet theater. To then be followed by a few minutes of reintroductions and CGI dancing. Really awkward CGI dancing at that, in multiple different styles and blending of CGI. All of it with the denpa-style fast cuts and flashing lights that just make me feel old and cranky.

It's 15 minutes in, and we've gotten 10 minutes of puppet monologues and 5 minutes of CGI concerts, and abruptly, it changes entirely to a magical girl battle. Or maybe more accurately, a montage of magical girl style references. I'm not sure how much that actually works. Like last week, it's so over the top and comical while most of the character focus has been realism. Which is also why the fight and even the dance battle don't work for me. They're completely divorced from not just actual streaming, a similar issue To Be Hero had in relation to social media and parasocial behavior, but from how these things have been presented for the entire show to this point. If you wanted magical girl battles to be a stand-in for streaming/popularity, the groundwork really should've been laid, otherwise, it feels like spectacle for the sake of spectacle, devoid of meaning so that people can look at the spectacle and claim it must mean something. And even if you wanted to do that, there are so many better and more believable ways for that to go that make more sense than "I beat you up, therefore all your fans become mine," especially when, again, the rest of the show has been far more grounded. Stylized, but grounded. Also, shouldn't the rest of the group been involved like… at all?

Next Episode:

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