天下制覇

This episode is full of them.

Impressions:

This ended a bit better than I expected it to, but was still plagued with all sorts of bizarre contrivances tossed in at almost complete random along with the obligatory OP as an insert song when Kurogane and Persephone fused. Now I feel gypped that we never got to see Ingrid and Rhodonite’s fusion, especially considering that Ingrid was the only Daughter that actually played a major part in the whole Asura Cryin’ deal. The animation was about as lacking as usual; uneven frame rates and poor animation abounded, but at least the entire first half was just one long fight and Tomo didn’t break out Aki’s little necklace until after he took down Tokiya.

Ignoring all the contrivances is kind of like ignoring the elephant sitting in the corner of the room though. I don’t even know how Tokiya ended up with the Igniter. He just suddenly has it. Then the daughter/Asura Machine fusions, Kurogane manages to rip Tohru out of Hagane, the Igniter goes flying off on its own to fix all the problems, and then poof, they’re at the Burial Doll Splitter to free Misao and Himezasa. Except now they don’t need a demon’s power like everybody’s been saying this entire season because an Asura Cryin’s apparently enough. Kagakagari was apparently the wimpiest Asura Cryin’ ever. Outside of the awesome daughter at least. And then the world’s saved, life goes on, Tomo can’t choose between Misao and Takatsuki, etc etc. Nia got the raw end of the deal, with the world resetting her to how she’s "supposed" to be. Poor girl. Life’s unfair when you’re a little girl with a fat dog.

Final thoughts at the bottom.

Final Thoughts:

This show’s obvious biggest issue was its pacing. When the show got all its ducks in a line, it was great. When it stopped to have a time out to tell a filler story about people gluing their legs together, it was wretchedly painful. Unfortunately, there was quite a bit of both sides. Things would blaze forward, there’d be a ton to think about, or major developments one week, and then things would completely grind to a halt the next, and the unannounced split between the seasons certainly didn’t help the pacing in the first half either. In general, the story did move a lot better in the second half, and they got right to the meat of things immediately, but the whole first world arc was a perfect example of some really terrible pacing. The start was waaaaay too slow, and then everything was magically wrapped up in about 5 minutes.

In the anime world of perpetually immortal characters constantly coming back from the dead, it’s nice to have a show that actually kills people off for once, so it deserves quite a bit of credit for that, even if I have to also award it a number of demerits for its wildly inconsistent art and production quality in general. That’s really kind of the summary of Asura Cryin’ as a show. There’s a lot to like, but there’s also a lot to hate, or at least, make fun of, depending on how vehement you want to be. I think the good outweighs the bad personally, and I’m glad I stuck through it to the end, but 7Arcs did waste a lot of potential with this one. Not bad at all, but I certainly won’t be calling it particularly great either.