天下制覇

Now shoot him out of a cannon! Do it!

Impressions:

Oh Gonzo… what on earth are you doing? I don’t think this show managed to go 30 seconds at a time without a panty shot. I feel bad for making fun of H2O’s BGM woes already since Rosario could write a book on how not to do it. It got better closer to the end, but somebody needs to kill whoever was playing the synth and trumpet for this one. Hell, they kicked in an insert song when generic male lead #429 felt up generic bubbly female lead #231.

An insert song.

For groping.

And then he smelled her.

I think you can see which road this is going down. The usual Gonzo hamhanded direction is pretty evident. It really stood out going into the commercial break with a still that just sat there on the screen for about 5 seconds while the groping insert song played again. The hanging stills showed up a few other times as well too. It’s like they had an extra 20 seconds at the end and just lengthened the stills to fill it up. Let’s not even talk about the CG stair scene either. What on earth was the point of that? I could forgive it if the action scenes were decent, but then again, I can forgive anything for quality action (see Majin; Tokyo, or Master; Air), but even that was pretty mediocre with excessive CG thrown in just because they could. CG bats made things funny too, especially when they were peeling themselves off of Moka.

It wasn’t all awful. Many of the backgrounds were curiously well drawn and it really did look like Gonzo was trying to be a bit more stylish than usual. Being stylish only helps when you have someone who knows what they’re doing leading the way. Still, it’s good to see them at least trying to be creative. It’d help if it wasn’t sandwiched between swelling bosoms and panty shots, but such is life. I don’t expect much from Gonzo and they try their hardest to not disappoint me.

At least it entertained me enough that I could laugh about it. "Oh crap! An S-class vampire!" I realize that the source material isn’t exactly Proust, but the bar for Thursdays is also set pretty low with Shana only maybe finally getting its first real breath of life. Knowing Gonzo though, this is only the start of a long and winding road downhill. I can’t imagine sticking around to see this particular train burst into flames and consume everything around it, but I wish it luck and hope that the families of those caught in this tragedy are amply compensated.

The OP played during the credits at the end, though it looked like a montage. Maybe next episode… unless the montage is the OP… oi.