天下制覇

I feel like I’ve seen this episode before… probably because it was made of about 25% recycled footage.

Impressions:

Give me a bloody break. They’re seriously going to drag out drama about whether or not three main characters are dead across two episodes? Plus Kentei still hasn’t been revealed and the Chekov’s Gun known as Bachou’s brother sitting around in a hospital somewhere. Give me a break, Ikkitousen. I would say that you’re better than this, but at least when you’re bad, it tends to be in a less sensical and more amusing manner. Does anybody really believe that Hakufu would be killed by rocks dropped on her by a secondary antagonist? Honestly.

This episode was frustrating beyond the hackneyed cliffhangers though. By the end of it, the whole thing had gone absolutely nowhere. Chouhi somehow got her first successful punch of four seasons off and succeeded in winning in that single hit, and Choun/Kann-u attacked each other and then spent the remaining five minutes of the episode hovering in the middle of the air. The rest of the time was filled with yet more flashbacks of people whining about their destinies and even worse, flashback montages. That’d be forgivable if they had spent the budget they spent on animating the episode, but no. Most of the fights were back to those lazy fades between stills. If you’re going to do that, at least give us something interesting to look at, like Koukin fighting a 25 foot tall penguin in a tutu.

Preview:

Oh, do we finally get to see that the person who never takes off her mask is not who she claims to be?