Somehow still compelling even though there was no real suspense this week. It's actually rather neatly tied up in a bow at the end by the three remaining friends showing Naho their letters from the future.
I hate it so much when a mechanical failure (not resulting from damage dealt by an opponent) decides a fight.
There was something missing this week. This episode didn't have the same spark as the first several. Can't put my finger on it…
Nice Alienware clone, there, Akane-chan.
Isn't this show going a bit heavy on the boob jokes?
This episode in five words: Kanan actually gets screen time?!
This episode in more words: So we resolve Kanan's resistance to being an idol again, and get all the third-years to join at once, with basically no ceremony at all, all in 20 minutes. Good to see my fears about pacing were well founded. Up to now, the show's been kind of slow. Now this episode felt rushed.
I was all set to give this episode an 8 and then…oof, that flat-footed ending. Not even trying. Point off for lazy writing.
Completely ridiculous premise that doesn't fit in at all with the rest of the series. What the hell.
Silliness? Silliness. But there's plot development happening. What keeps this from being a great episode is the fact that they're trying to squeeze too much in and leaving subplots kind of half-finished to fit it all. But the ending is good!
There's a lot of implied drama, but the screen time is spent mostly on obnoxious guy from other school calling Harada "princess" constantly. Meh. Put us inside Gou's head, ffs!
I dunno why I found Shizuru's behavior believable and Lucia's so unrealistic, but here we are. Good story, poor characterization, I think.
This was a refreshing improvement over the last few episodes, which were based on ridiculous premises right from the start. A grounded plot had me actually enjoying this one…until something absurd happened as a plot contrivance. I'm docking 3 rating points for ruining what would have been a solid—even great—episode with physics fuckery.
This week on Qualidea Code: "Fuck you and your need for continuity between shots. Screw getting on the train as quickly as possible (at the end of the platform, not in the middle). Physics can kiss my ass…and what do you mean 'stop reusing footage'?!"
Aside from the technical issues (some caused by laziness, some by budgetary constraints), this is a decent character-building episode for Maihime. It's just too bad it has so many issues.
This episode is pretty predictable until it tries to give us another hint at the overarching mystery…and then it just falls apart. Not very well written. The writers overused the "muted dialogue" trope for one episode. And let's not forget that it started out by recapping roughly a full minute of footage from the previous week.
If you're gonna have someone the audience thinks is trustworthy turn out to be evil, it helps to…establish that they're supposed to be trustworthy. Which means, give them screen time to earn the audience's (and other characters') trust. Bad writing again.
It's about damn time the plot made some real progress instead of jumping around with no particular direction.
Don't even try to convince me that a drone from half a century in the future would do that. They'll have so many sensors and failsafes built in, tricking a drone into slicing a man's face open would be impossible.
Aaaaand back to not much happening; just character gags that aren't even funny. This episode spends a considerable amount of time explaining from the humans' perspective what we've just learned about the Unknown over the last 2 episodes, so it's kind of a recap.
That damned elevator door disappears between the wide shot of it opening and the tight shot of Maihime and Rindou walking out. Continuity is damned hard when you have no budget for animation.
Despite being the penultimate episode, there is almost no sense of urgency or climax this week. More bad writing, yay!
First scene after the OP is the Lip Sync Desert, in which characters frequently talk without moving their mouths (or while chewing food). Budget animation is budget.
Then they have a composer and arranger make a new song…before writing the lyrics. That's not how songwriting works, because it's much more difficult to fit new lyrics to existing music than it is to write new music to fit existing lyrics.
And yet, there's more. They finish the lyrics just a few days before the concert but act like there's no choreography to create and learn in time to perform—not that it matters, because of the record label change bombshell. If there is still no explanation next week how the other idol group stole B-Pro's new song… The writing in this series is truly, irredeemably, bad.
I love how Arthur's and Agatha's face makeup disappears in between takes at Wally's. Continuity is SO HARD.
Very powerful choice to have Andromeda speak her first and only line right before she dies. That's some savvy writing right there.
Kind of feeling @megaframe on the lens flares. They really have gotten quite heavy toward the end of the season.
Nicely tied up in a loose bow that could be easily untied if the show got renewed (but it didn't).
By strict average of my episode ratings, I should give this show a 7. But there were too many things that bothered me about the production quality, the writing, and directorial decisions to give it quite that high a score. 6 will do.
At least by the end, they stopped flashing us Meagan Good's cleavage at every opportunity.
So…when does season 3 start airing? lol
"My zipper got stuck" — said the guy wearing a button-up jumpsuit.
Bit soon to use the "country you think about so little, you haven't realized that's not" gag again, isn't it? They used that one the previous week.
This is the episode where I realized that I really don't like Sugimoto. What does he even add to the cast besides being the most obnoxious person on the team?
My rating average for the season comes out to 6.61, which is good enough to round up to 7, I guess.
I still think this season was poorly paced, and too often written (and produced) to pander as much as possible to µ's fans. For details, see my comments on the individual episodes.
It's tragic that Chomp was so top-heavy. If she wasn't so prone to toppling over every single time that hammer fired, I bet she could have gotten to the finals. That LIDAR targeting system was probably the best non-weapon system in the whole field this season, but it was betrayed by the unstable design of the bot chassis and seemingly flimsy (wobbly) hammer.
What a shame that Bronco didn't have its wheel guards on. I think they might have made a big difference in that fight against Minotaur, especially since Alex's driving style switched back to leading with the flipper and the rear wedge got practically zero use in this round.
Team Yeti left a roll of electrical tape inside their bot?! WOW lol. Super impressive driving on their part so far, but that's hilarious.
Wrecks was totally still able to move when they counted him out in the rumble. WTF, producers?
I've had such a mixed bag of feelings about Ray Billings and Tombstone since getting (back) into BattleBots last summer. On the one hand, he created a brilliantly simple, superlatively effective, design. And Ray is very clearly razor sharp when thinking through his strategy, using the simplicity (and flipping immunity) of his bot to methodically chew up opponents' machines. But the man is just so goddamned arrogant on camera that I can't find it in me to really respect him. Frankly, he's kind of a dick about how good his bot is. I've seen people say he's actually a nice guy in the pits, but on screen he's mostly just obnoxiously overconfident.
That said, we got to see, in this episode (and a bit of the last), a more vulnerable side of Ray. I was going to make some joke about hoping that winning the Nut won't go to his head, but I think that would be undeserved. When all was said and done he finally showed the camera his other side—the side of him that's more concerned with sharing the experience with his son than anything else. This final episode might have really changed my opinion of the man.
Too bad the semifinals, and even the rumble, were more interesting/less predictable than the final match. But that can't be avoided; the matches go how they go, you know?
I was actually kind of enjoying this one, and then the writing at the end was just so weak…
By way of averaging my episode scores, this show should get a perfect 7.0, but I can't quite give it that. There's a long slump in the middle where the writing kinda goes to shit and nothing really interesting happens. I can take that kind of thing from a show if the characters are interesting or likable, but that's not particularly true of this cast.
