天下制覇

That was totally unneeded.

Impressions:

I like how they replaced the OP with the last minute of the previous episode. Only had 30 seconds of extra material to show, Diomedea? I also liked the GIANT EVIL EYE, which I’m pretty sure they have on loan from the Kirby series. Everything went pretty much as expected though. Phoron starting playing his music, everybody started singing, and then Phoron got naked to give Corti the ‘power-up’ she needed to win. I really could have done without the naked parts. Although, I suppose it is worth mentioning that Phoron has absolutely no ass to speak of. Not even any muscles. It’s just flat. Dude needs to put on some weight. I suggest stairclimbing. He apparently needs the practice.

Anyway, when they started droning on about how the Legion of Doom wasn’t really evil, just lonely, I tried to shut them out and just listen to the music. It was rather nice music too. Zero surprises there. I kind of wish Phoron had been stabbed just so Corti would have turned the Infinite Pianist into a charred stain on his organ before using plot magic to heal Phoron. Oh well. Compared to last week, all the action was back to "shoot magical lightning, look smug" variety anyway. I also particularly enjoyed how they didn’t even bother to make sure the eyecatches had the logo placed right for this aspect ratio this week either. Oops.

Er… I’m not sure what else to say. I could have probably written all of this last week and nobody would have been the wiser. Who knows… maybe I did.

Final thoughts at the bottom.

(Oh, and Regios will probably be a little delayed. I’m just waiting for a better raw for caps, but I’ve already watched it. It was… ridiculous. I just have dinner plans, and I doubt I’ll be able to process everything before I go out.)

Final Thoughts:

You know… I have to confess that somewhere in the back of my mind through this whole thing, I always felt like this show was some kind of karmic thing for me. Which is to say, I felt that if I didn’t cover it, then nobody would… which seems to have been born out by the rest of the anime’o’sphere. I think that in the right hands, it really could attract a lot of attention and be a really strong series, but now that it’s been through two runs, both produced by… shall we say… less than optimal teams, I don’t think it’s ever really going to reach its full potential. The pieces are there. Giant were-racoons that shoot lightning, little girls that are better classified as WMDs, a ferret some loser guy, the only thing keeping it back is execution, and that’s really where both series fell short.

Still, I’ve never really felt any particular hate or excitement for the show. It’s been a remarkably average (often somewhat below) run throughout, without too many lows or highs to speak of. I can’t deny that it was certainly a more interesting run than the first version, which managed to knock me unconscious about 2 episodes in. The weakest link in the chain has always been the liberal pantywaist socialist mook, Phoron, and the music the strongest point. They could really stand to sit Haruka Tomatsu down and give her some pointers on expressing emotion, as she was very noticeably poor a number of times.

I’m not sure if that actually made sense to anybody outside of myself, but that’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
Final Score: 13 Infinite Pianos out of 9 Crimson Annihilators. Anybody who says otherwise is itchin’ for a fight.