天下制覇

I was so not expecting this.

Impressions:

So, this started well. It opened with Horie Yui using one of her more badass voices and then exploding some slimes. Then we broke into the ska opening and about 30 seconds after it, she was rubbing her chest up against some guy vigorously while squealing. Then we had one of the old archer vs swordsmen battles, which ended when the swordsman uppercutted the archer and all his clothes exploded. The second half started out with Horie Yui getting tentacle raped… complete with erect nipples and tentacles through her… nether regions.

SO BASICALLY, I’m not sure what anybody was really expecting here, except that it’d be awful since it’s Gonzo. On the upside, it’s surprisingly weird and not that awful. Hell, towards the end, it got downright funny. The thing is… it’s built on endless blocks of fine smoked cheese and lots and lots of comedy. Hell, everybody on the goodguy team puts down their goggles when Gil charges up his super attack. I don’t think I’ve seen that joke since season two of Slayers. They also parodied NND and Gurren-Lagann towards the end.

In short, this is nowhere near a serious show and actually reminds me quite a bit of Sunabouzu, only fantasy instead of post apocalyptic, and there’s no horndog. I’m not really certain that I’d say it’s bad, but it’s really really different from what I was expecting and much of the humor is really strangely delivered. For example, when confronting the Black Knight, Gil says "WHAT DID YOU SAY!?" so the Black Knight misunderstands and thinks that Gil couldn’t hear him. It moves at a pretty quick pace from one random situation and joke to the next with very little connection in between. You’d almost think it came from 4-panel comics.

So, basically, I have no idea where I fall on this on yet. Most of the time I was watching it, I felt very very confused. It wasn’t bad, but I didn’t really find too many of the jokes funny either until closer to the end. I mostly felt vaguely stunned. This is not an action show though… the ‘action’ is terrible. The animation and whatnot is fine, but all the action is people standing around yelling "KILLING MOVE – XYZ" and then explosions. I’m not even sure it’d be a particularly good show to blog anyway since there’s really not much of a plot nor do five minutes from one portion of the show have anything to do with five minutes from the other, but still, it has my interest for at least another week and now that I know what the show is, maybe I can actually figure out how I feel about it.

Oh yeah… and a ska OP without Horie Yui singing it? BLASPHEMY!

Late edit:
Oh, hey. I hadn’t realized that Gonzo’s simultaneous ‘broadcast’ online would be subbed. Go experience the weirdness for yourself in the finest video quality youTube can’t provide.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-vgQ6WJ8zhQ

Druaga OP

Preview:

Preview nothing. I couldn’t tell what would happen 4 minutes from any given point in this show.