天下制覇

Tis only a fleshwound.

Impressions:

Well, it’s mostly a flashback episode, and you know how I love those. At least they had the common decency to knock out Kazuya in the first 30 seconds or so and he spent the entire episode unconscious. It was a long time coming for Bridg to explain her trauma anyway, so of course they have to toss it in now that she’s pretty much over it. Of course, what does that have to do with current events? Pretty much nothing except her mother’s dying words to be strong and never lose. I was a little surprised that they shied away from showing any real contact between her and her brother besides him riding her like a horse and whipping her. Given this show’s laissez faire attitude towards T&A and gore, they could have certainly pushed the envelope there a lot more and made those scenes more appropriately disturbing. It didn’t even necessarily need to be sexual either. I appreciate subtlety more than most, but here it just feels like they really should have pushed him torturing her a lot more instead of wussing out halfway.

The fight itself was decent enough and they managed to work in their quota of random new moves as well with Bridg going up to a Triple Accel. There has to be an upper cap on these eventually. Or at least some other technique aside from "moves really fast in different ways." I was expecting Arnett to be using the reflection in her scythe or just the fact that it’s a scythe to be attacking from unexpected angles, especially given the blinding glow that obscured most of the action this episode. Unfortunately, it was just another variation of "moves here, then moves there, but really fast." De Arimasu’s side was a lot less interesting since she got one-shot almost immediately, then after flashback time, got up and one-shot Creo by using basically the same technique that was just used against her. I’ve seen much worse though, not that I’m thinking about certain other shows from today. Of course, they did pretty clearly take some of the budget that went into it from… uh… other places. 

But seriously, these eyecatches. I think they may be a high point of my Fridays.

Preview:

Apparently a beauty contest now.