天下制覇

The voice of reason should never be some crazy old woman with bad teeth

Impressions:

Well, on the upside, the plot is finally starting to move a little bit. On the downside, it’s lurching like a 16 year old zombie on Spring Break after 16 tequila sunrises. We begin with a somewhat nicely directed shot of Megumi picking up the scraps of her letter, rewind, then watch it again. I said it was nicely directed, not that it was competently produced enough to warrent being shown three times in a row. Since some of the pieces are missing, Natsuno comes to the conclusion that zombies took them. I would be madder at him if he wasn’t actually right. Seriously though, some scraps of paper you threw on the ground into what is essentially the wilderness disappear, and the logical conclusion is "the undead stole them?" Where’s Detective Conan when somebody needs to be kicked in the head?

The other lurching step forward comes in literally the final seconds of the episode where the siblings are suddenly about to break into the castle because they saw one of the dead people go into it right before he died. What? Excuse me? When did we see this? When did this happen? The characters are already lagging far behind the audience in deductive skills. Now they’re suddenly advancing in a completely unforeseen manner through a pair of plucky teens who have shown little to no interest in the epidemic to date and thinly rationalizing it through a flashback manufactured on the spot. Again, I would be more annoyed with this further display of stupidity if it wasn’t a swift kick in the plot’s pants.

Otherwise, absolutely nothing happened this week. Natsuno watched zombie movies and made a little wooden cross, and the doctor remains totally oblivious and is determined to treat the symptoms instead of the cause. Another wonderful step forward for public health informaticians everywhere. Thanks for lifting up my future career, jerk.