天下制覇

Pudding animation, still okay.

Again, I’m tired of waiting for a real raw and am supposed to be going out to see Quantum of Solace with friends in about half an hour, so… whatever.

Impressions:

I rewound that scene in the cafeteria about three times before I came to the conclusion that the magic in this episode doesn’t make a lick of sense and just stopped caring. That may or may not have affected my opinion of the rest of the episode, but I’m willing to err on the side of "no." Lots and lots of talking and explaining stuff this episode too, and it didn’t help that Aureleous (or however you spell this guy’s name) used his abilities in a very animation budget friendly manner to just disappear and reappear whenever Chuckles tried to punch him. I did get a chuckle out of Deep Blood Himegami’s ‘magical stick,’ actually a cattle prod… and from Touma uppercutting Stiyl to cancel the brain crush. That was just outright cruel.

The animation this episode though… something else. That brief little sequence of Touma and Stiyl running through the hallways was absolutely terrifying. I’m crossing my fingers that it means that they saved up the budget for the big boss fight next episode and/or the upcoming Clone Wars, but… ew… Seriously… just… ew. I expect that kind of look from Team Rocket, and stiyl is nowhere near as hot a redhead as Jessie.

Alright, this is going in a bizarre direction, so I should probably wrap things up before I’m making comparisons between Index and a squirtle. It was a better episode than the last couple, but the running animation was horrible and while the magic/science exposition was never really totally sensical in this show, it went up another level in abject insensibility this episode. I gave up trying to even follow it, let alone understand it partway through.

Seriously though… that running animation… what the hell was up with that? 

Preview:

Touma’s only weakness, 17th century pistols.