What They Say:
No episode information provided.
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
As Ixion Saga DT brought out some of the reveals in the previous episode, and created a minor detente between Kon and his group and Erec and his group, there’s now a basic understanding about how they’ve all been had on different levels. That’s given them a bit more impetus to now shift gears and do what’s right in order to save the lands, so to speak, and hit the final arc of episodes in a big way. Which is pretty much the only potential saving grace for the series that has been hugely uneven at best from the start and has had me banging my head against the desk on more than one occasion with some of the things it wanted to do. Which includes good chunks of this episode as it does a bunch of seventies style parodies, some that work better than others.
This episode does a bit of a crime theme to it as it has a few of those working under Erec doing an investigation in one particular city where crime seems to be pretty rampant in order to find clues for the larger mission. With massive crime spikes in recent years, it gives hint that there may be a connection to what they’re dealing with. With all of them done up as yakuza types and more, there’s a lot of suits, jackets and other comical effects that definitely highlight this particular time in anime and manga storytelling with what it’s doing, right down to the oversized sunglasses and jean jackets. There’s laughs to be had in the satire of it all with the music, the camera shots used and the general look of it all. But the story itself is pretty much empty.
In Summary:
When the pendulum swings in the uneven direction, it often does so in a really big way, which is what this episode represented. The whole 70’s angle thing in terms of style, design and plotting and pacing is certainly appreciated and it’s not something that the show hasn’t done before in other ways, but the end result is something that is just plain horribly uninteresting. Like, seriously uninteresting, particularly because it’s focused more on Erec and his group than anything else, making it duller than dishwater. Some of the nods are nice and I can appreciate it from a technical perspective, but hopes of getting meaty story material or something significant with story progression was essentially kicked out from under me here.
Grade: D
Streamed By: Crunchyroll
Review Equipment:
Sony KDS-R70XBR2 70″ LCoS 1080P HDTV, Dell 10.1 Netbook via HDMI set to 1080p, Onkyo TX-SR605 Receiver and Panasonic SB-TP20S Multi-Channel Speaker System With 100-Watt Subwoofer.
