Weren’t there killer robots tearing villages apart looking for him?
I did flip through the mermaid monster thing, and it finally revealed that the annoying girl is also a monster… in the first three minutes of the episode, and then decided to just sit and stall on that for the entire rest of the episode, including revealing it to the protagonist who had the same reaction as she does to everything: “I don’t get it. What does this mean?” It then got sucked into a very bizarre flashback to re-double explain how annoying fox girl has been hanging around her and also grooming her, but with magic instead of… nothing, as if anything whatsoever was necessary. Any hope for an actual confrontation or anybody doing anything more than declaring they too will not give up is completely dashed against the rocks as the episode ends the same way it began, both of them glaring at each other yet not doing anything.
Impressions:
That said, this episode was also terrible, and for many of the same reasons. The most disappointing part was actually the post-credits next episode preview, both for showing that he’s perfectly fine after being shot, and that it’s going to be a fanservice hot springs episode. We could’ve ‘killed’ him and done another reboot or something, especially if we’re not going to be having any kind of fight whatsoever. But anyway, the core issue here is as always, nobody is doing jack squat. They go on a date so everybody can mince around about what “LC” means, listen to exposition about these two throwaway nitwits, and Akira can whine “Somebody should do something.” Not him, obviously. He’s accomplished all that he’s able to, which solely amounts to whimpering.
None of the exposition is the slightest bit interesting either, especially when, again, nobody is actually doing anything. He’s a ‘good guy.’ She’s… existing. It ain’t Romeo and Juliet in here, even with the incest angle. But it still takes the protagonist to go “Hey, somebody should do something,” for them to gasp and consider maybe doing it before mean ol’ daddy shows up and obviates the entirety of the last 18 minutes. And even then, they just stand there, gaping and gasping like beached fish until Henchman #14 pulls the trigger on his gun, probably accidentally, being the only character this entire damn episode to exhibit any agency or move the story forward in any way.
