天下制覇

Does anybody really care?

Impressions:

So… this was unexpected. This episode was all over the place. The opening scene is actually from chapter 9 (I believe, could be 10, whenever they’re camped out in the badlands after the dance at any rate) after… well… everything has gone to hell in their little world and Hyaweh has clearly chosen Priecia. Then Sister Hell busts in to break up their kiss with her soldiers.

After that, things jump to the prologue of Prism Ark/summary of Prism Heart. Yes, Prism Heart. Not Prism Ark, the prequel. Most of the flashback scenes aren’t even from a game I’ve played… or even in Prism Ark for that matter. This sort of confuses and annoys me.

Then back to the Chapter 9 fight… then back to Prism Heart. If you’re getting seasick from all the bouncing around, you’re not the only one. Then we head back to Chapter 9 once more for Fel, Kagura and Karin to save the lovebirds’ asses. You know, I could be wrong, but I’m pretty sure Sister Hell was still level bazillion and basically invulnerable in this battle. Especially since the real boss of the stage was an Angel, which she does eventually summon.

Anyway, enough quasi-summarizing. This was very much not what I had expected. I had ripped most of the first chapter CG too and was all ready to use it and got… nothing. A lot of the fight between Theresa and the School was of the “yell out the name of your attack and giant energy spews forth” variety, so that was a little underimpressive in the choreography department, but it was all pretty well animated. Still, everybody knows to have Kagura start off every single battle using Iron Wall, and Critical Break for Hyaweh? Pfft. He should be spamming his AoE spells against that many ninja. That’s just common sense. It also looks like they’re in this one for the long haul if they’re going to blow half an episode on Prism Heart of all things. If not, then… damn… they’re going to be rushing through stuff like you wouldn’t believe.

In the end, this seems to fall dangerously close to that line in my mind where Prism Ark stops being fun and starts taking itself entirely too seriously. It wasn’t a bad episode by any stretch, but it was rather different from what I thought. In all my possible scenarios for what they’d do with it, Prism Heart didn’t once figure into any of them. Next week should be back to what I do know and anticipate though. I’m just… well… surprised mostly. A lot of that has to do with Priecia, good little miss tsundere, already well out of her tsun phase and into the dere. This kind of backwards action is freaky.

No ED this week… the OP was played instead of the ED and credits just ran over the scenes during the normal OP time.

No summaries for the first episodes. I write as I watch, and I don’t know if I’ll care about a show until after the first episode.

Prism Ark OP