天下制覇

It’s not a good sign when I hate almost every character in a show already.

Impressions:

Eh, if not for Kazuya, it could have been okay. However, since like IS, the camera never once leaves the male lead for even a second, that’s a bit of a problem. A bit of a major problem. He is whiny, spineless, irritating, and any number of unkind adjectives I could throw in. I cannot think of a single redeeming quality for him. Heck, his first reaction upon seeing Victorique is to scream his bloody head off and run away. The rabid dogs and screaming cultists in the nonsensical hook at the start have more appealing personalities than him. Victorique herself was cute at times, but you may as well just look at a couple animated gifs of her rolling around on the floor or putting her pipe into her mouth instead of subjecting yourself to Kazuya’s piercing nasally whine for the better part of twenty minutes. A minute or two of one character being cute does not make up for the all-out assault on one’s sensibilities that is Kujo Kazuya. Even drillhair jerkoff at least has drillhair… and is meant to be portrayed as a jerk.

Nothing special on the production front at all. This season’s been lousy for that anyway, so I guess that puts this in the upper echelon by comparison, but all it really excels at are backgrounds. The plot is as flimsy as wet cardboard as well. Kazuya stumbles across her and oops, now he’s her spineless lackey that does everything at her whim from carry her furniture to dance for her because he’s little more than a noisy doormat. Japan’s bad at mysteries anyway, but I still expected a little better from their introduction episode than a single paragraph of setup followed by a fairly inane solution. This is the first mystery, try to make it good at least. I fear for what that means for the inevitable middle time filler mysteries.

Overall, meh. This episode had little in the way of mystery or intrigue at all, and instead tried to be a grand olde character introduction, which doesn’t work because most of the characters are insufferable. Kazuya is a gigantic lead anchor that is keeping this show from being… probably average at best. Unsurprisingly, it tries to sell Victorique’s cuteness as a big factor and it sort of works, but again, a few seconds of that doesn’t make up for all of the irritation of the rest. I cannot see watching it just for her to be anything more than a masochistic endevor.

Preview:

Murder on the high seas.