天下制覇

And other abuses of the English language.

Impressions:

Well, this episode did a good job of killing my enthusaism after the first episode. It started off nicely enough, with some witty little gags while the three ‘convicts’ got their mugshots taken… but of the first five minutes of the show, at least 75% was flashback and I began losing interest. I did perk up a bit when all three of them easily busted out of jail without even trying (Rahzel magicked her cuffs, ‘Heat picked them and Alzeido just broke them apart) followed by them literally just walking out of the cell while a prison guard stood there like a catatonic drunkard.

Unfortunately, it was almost nothing but downhill from there. If a show is going to have action sequences, it needs to show action. 20 seconds showcasing 6 stills is not an appropriate substitute. Between them running through traps and then fighting guards, I think about 20 frames of animation were used. That’s just… awful. The animation in general for this episode seemed to be far worse than the previous one. I could have also done without the OP remixed as the background music for the (in)action scenes. That just smacks to me of cheap. Did their budget for new music really run out already?

I still like Rahzel, especially her interactions with Baroqueheat, but a lot of this episode was just tiresome, and the awful animation didn’t help in the slightest. At least the art stayed pretty decent. The kid that they were helping also drove me nuts. I swear, if he said "otou-chama" one more time, I was going to gut someone with a shrimp fork. The shot at the end with two stills bleeding into each other was also horrible looking and I have no idea what Deen was thinking when they threw that up. I did derive some perverse enjoyment from the random Engrish that got thrown around in parts, such as Rahzel shouting "Excuse me, mister!" while throwing tubby feudal lord around with her magic, and of course… "ZERO SUM GAME!" but I don’t think even the most perverse pleasures contained within could have made this more enjoyable. I’ll still stick with it for another couple episodes. The knife wielding clones certainly intrigue me. Maybe this was just a fluke. Or the director was drunk.

Preview: