天下制覇

"Oh crap, we still have ten minutes… throw in some random plot device and then reset it!"

Impressions:

I hope you weren’t expecting them to actually resolve much of anything. Kei and Zakuro kiss, but that’s about it. All those half-demons that were released and are now roaming the countryside? The monstrous male half-demons? Zakuro’s nightmares? Why she even needed a seal on her power to begin with? Pfft. Small potatoes. Let’s invent some canned drama in the last 10 minutes about all the soldiers having a real job so we can throw together a bunch of teary good byes. Psyche! Nothing’s changed. Status quo restored. QED.

I was really hoping they’d handle the inevitable mutual love confession scene better too, particularly with Kei finally actually understanding Zakuro’s transparent yelling at him instead of continuing to be a spineless twit. What ever happened to those bishie sparklies from the first episode anyway? I was also disappointed with just about every part of the resolution to the main plot, if you can even call it that. Zakuro snaps out of her trance because she ‘heard their feelings,’ breaks the seal and one-shots the Widow before leaving Hanadate and Used-To-Be-Coughing-Up-Blood-But-That-Was-Getting-In-The-Way-Of-The-Plot to die in a fire when they were afflicted with severe moping. Because antagonists left in burning buildings always die, right? I don’t even know what showing them in the epilogue wandering around the city was even supposed to mean. Why did he want Zakuro to bear his rape-incest baby again? Screw the plot! There’s blood/pomegranites falling from the moon.

Final thoughts at the bottom.

FYI, I’m out of town a little later today until New Year’s day. I’ll still be around in the evenings to post on Comiket stuff, the season preview and the like, but no new shows/episode of shows I’m watching air between now and a week from tomorrow anyway. It’ll be a slow week since I don’t believe in yearly rankings or other crap. My list from 2008 still holds anyway. Maybe I’ll post some random writeups of fun old eroge that have gone ignored by the English world… or just laze around. I haven’t decided yet.

Final Thoughts:

This was never exactly an ambitious show, but it fit into its little niche well and made do with decent characters going on wacky adventures in their rainbow and lollipops world of happiness of understanding. The two main characters ended up being the weakest of the lot, falling into predictable roles and having a formulaic relationship that spent the entire show on a treadmill until the predesignated ending kicked in. Still, it did a good job fleshing out its fairly extensive cast while only occasionally resorting to sob stories made-up on the spot for development. 

At least, that’s how it was for awhile. When it finally decided to get down to having a plot, most of that was torpedoed out of the water in an all-out blitz of increasingly inane machinations and plot twists until the whole thing was a jumbled mess. It was fun to write about, mind you, but that doesn’t change that it was very poorly thought out and executed. The show’s relatively poor production didn’t help its occasional overtures of being some kind of action drama series either.

All in all, it’s a very average show. It doesn’t do much, but it does it competently. It’s easily watchable, but hardly remarkable. It’s not a bad watch if you like low-key romances, but by the same token, I expect it to be completely forgotten within a month and never mentioned by anybody ever again.