天下制覇

Yeah, I haven’t heard this before.

Impressions:

I can’t be the only person who believes that Shinbo has gotten incredibly lazy over the past couple years. Since apparently he needs to take a break from SZS every now and then, we get this… which is essentially the same kind of jokes repeated ad nauseam. An unusual character says or does something strange and then Hiroshi Kamiya shouts, does a double take, or launches into a monologue. Wash, rinse, repeat for 20 minutes and then move onto the next episode. This time more of the focus was on independence than depression, but it still feels like the exact same bloody character. I guess that’s a good sign if you can’t get enough of Hiroshi Kamiya shouting. Not so good otherwise.

It looks about as good as Shaft shows typically do, although they’re certainly not being particularly ambitious with the animation. There were a few moments where the grass clipped back and forth through people’s legs, but for the most part, it looked fine. The music was also pretty nice, but Shaft’s always had a deft hand there. I really hated the whole chapter thing. About every three minutes (I assume at the chapter breaks in the source), they’d pop up a chapter marker with a new title. Oftentimes, they’d use this as an excuse to spend about 5 seconds recapping what just happened 10 seconds before. That served absolutely no purpose whatsoever except to break up the flow and annoy me.

I guess it’s okay if you can’t get enough of Shaft, but these characters are nowhere near as charming as SZS’s cast and I was sick of hearing Hiroshi Kamiya shout as the primary humor device months and months ago. This does absolutely nothing to change that formula at all, so… meh. I’ll probably look in on it next week just to see the OP and ED, but unless I’m really bored, I doubt I’ll look at this any more beyond that.