天下制覇

I don’t even know where to begin.

Impressions:

I’m not sure that I’ve laughed at an episode so much this entire season. It’s a shame that it wasn’t a comedy because this episode was bloody hilarious. Well, not the first half. That was mostly Ryuuji moping around until Marga physically twisted his neck and asked who he believed more, her or Onyx. The sad part is that he had to think before he answered. Also, Rose had amnesia for approximately 15 seconds of screen time. Not really sure what was up with that, but since Deen only committed enough for her to say that she didn’t remember Sapphie before spending the rest of the episode catatonic until Ryuuji appeared, we’ll probably never know.

So, the second half of the episode. Bloody hilarious. I think simply summarizing it is the best way to go.

It begins with Society’s all-out raid on the plane. Marga freezes the runaway, so all the SWAT vans rush out. The captain LEAPS out of his van to race along the ice. His van crashes into the plane’s wheels and they ram a copter into the plane’s cockpit. The guy then somehow climbs up the nose of the plane, where Onyx attacks him, only for Eye to save him, realize that he’s not Ryuuji, and drop him on his ass, at which point his role in this affair was over. Then, using the van wedged under the wheel of the plane as a ramp, Eriko drives her car into the air and drops it on top of Onyx, apparently ‘killing’ him again, because it then cuts to the entire cast inside with Rose where she comes out of it and her magical disease is all gone. BUT THEN! Onyx reappears in dragon form and picks up the plane. Ryuuji’s parents suddenly appear and distract Onyx by hitting him on the snout with a boomerang sword from a mile off, giving Rose and Ryuuji enough time to kiss. Their kiss explodes into a giant purple heart that kills Onyx, letting the plane safely drop to the ground somehow. We then cut to the epilogue where Ryuuji’s entire harem is now in his class, including Eriko dressed as a student and Onyx’s secretary is their new teacher.

Words… they do not suffice. I mean, great. I laughed until I cried. It was all that I had hoped for and more. But good lord, it was like the exact opposite of Zombie’s issues. It was ostensibly serious, but there was no way anybody could watch that with a straight face. A giant exploding purple heart? Really, Deen? Really?

Final thoughts at the bottom.

Final Thoughts:

Utterly and completely forgettable. I’ll admit that the setting and premise are kind of interesting and some of the characters could be cute, but that’s about it. The show didn’t leverage its strengths and instead focused on Ryuuji being a mewling spineless sponge. To make matters worse, while ostensibly an action show, it never really seriously developed any antagonist and all of the ones that it did introduce were beaten by the same bit of stock footage. Somewhat below average production hurt there too, as did truly baffling direction in many of the action scenes where characters acted completely ridiculous. The way all the ‘special’ forces act in this show makes one wonder what definition of ‘special’ we’re working with.

The best I can say is that other than Ryuuji being a pantywaist (hardly unusual for anime), it was rarely embarrassingly bad, which kept it mostly watchable. The music was fine, most of the magical side of the cast were upbeat and competent, and didn’t look anywhere near as bad in its off moments as certain other shows. It was still exceedingly unambitious all around. There was basically no development for the characters or even the plot, and I’m not even sure that you can call that an ending. Deen didn’t try to make it much, and in the end, it didn’t amount to much either.

You could watch worse things, but by the same token, there are many many better things you could watch too. There’s not a whole ton here to recommend because it never does anything well enough to stand out. If you’ve got hours to burn and need something to just veg out too, I guess it’ll suffice, but I wouldn’t recommend it beyond that.