天下制覇

I’m taking you to the flip side!

Impressions:

So, Druaga had two different versions today. We had Gil’s dream sequences which was the ‘normal’ version that aired on television stations and ended up streamed… and we had this version which got streamed through the lonely GyaO for reasons which nobody seems to understand. One might almost think it was a mistake and they aired the second episode or something… but… it was marked as episode 1… god only knows. It takes place alongside the dream episode… Gil is shown multiple times asleep and spouting lines from the other episode. I think if I ever get to the point where I can understand Gonzo’s inner machinations, I’ll shoot myself.

And yes, I am going to keep calling Gilgamesh Gil. Not Jil. How did Gonzo even turn Gilgamesh into Jiru anyway? I’m fighting the good fight for mythology everywhere! Don’t let them corrupt our heathen gods!

Anyway, this is much closer to what you’d normally expect from them. It was still clearly pretty light hearted, but there really weren’t any parodies to speak of and it ended up trying to be much more action/adventure oriented. As usual, Gonzo’s hamhanded direction and excessive CG use got in the way of things. As the heroes are running from swarms of monsters… SUDDENLY PINK HEARTS! Or my favorite… CG dice followed by a stack of CG money. Actually… that’s a lie… the waddling CG soldiers were my favorite use of terrible CG. To be fair to the art and animation, the video quality and sound was awful. The tinny feedback made my teeth ring. This was stolen off of NND so… yeah… the screenshots are uuggggggggggggly and tiny.

Basically then, this episode was nowhere near as entertaining and far far more generic. It certainly wasn’t overly serious, but I’m honestly not certain what they’re going for here… especially given the other first episode. Instead of parody, the humor was of the "ha ha, this priest casts spells like he’s golfing" variety… or the knight terrorized poor Horie Yui with scary stories about stuffed animals while they sat trapped in a pit surrounded by minotaurs. It’ll probably get much worse too. Hell, it ended on the wonderful overdramatic exchange:

"Huh? Where are we?"
"How could you forget?"
"Druaga… NO TOU!"
–zoom out and dramatic music–

Which is distinctly different when prefaced by drama instead of slapstick.

So yeah… basically… I have no idea what is going on… which show is the ‘real’ show. I imagine this one since it actually had the full cast in some form or another. I’ll stick around another episode or two… assuming there isn’t a (-2) episode next week too… to at least find out what the hell this show is doing, but if next week is similar to this one… I probably won’t cover it… or pay too much further attention.