So, I watched the third episode.
Oh boy. What a mess.
Graphics and animation were good as usual, voice acting on par with other productions for TV, nothing to whinge about really.
The story? Still feels rushed.
So we had two fight scenes (the continuation of the one from the previous episode and a second one at the end), and squeezed between them more Ange whining about herself (Really girl, you're stating at the fresh graves of your comrades and all you can talk about how you feel? Fuck you. No, seriously - just fuck you.) and some more characterisation of various characters and flashback scenes and suddenly a whole empire fell apart when nobody was looking (in what, weeks?) ... oh my.
And clearly they had to fire the Chekov's gun in this episode already. Why? The little macguffin could as well sit there until the end of the series and be just pulled out in the last episode - as a proof that Ange is the heir to the old Empire of Everybodyalreadyforgotitsname. It likely will serve in that role anyway. And that's before the annoyance of doing essentially a magic trick to get out of the tight spot when everybody else has to deal with being real-life humans with real-life limitations. Yes, yes, we know - Ange is special. The anime hammered that home quick bluntly last episode already. It didn't need to add another superpower on top of it, really.
The "ecchi" parts felt a bit out of place at times (the low angle view at Ange's bandaged crotch and underboobs was a bit much though, even for me), but at least didn't feel forced enough to distract from the story. On the other hand, fans of ... well, fanservice will likely feel underwhelmed since the scenes both go by blazingly fast (again, the whole thing feels rushed) and have so much else going on in them that you just have to pay attention to everything else.
6.2/10.0 so far from me (if the plot goes bonkers, will go lower), the anime will likely go for a 13-episode series and could seriously need double that.
