Apparently sponsored by Carl’s Jr.
(This review contains
spoilers!)
Exposition is a necessary evil for all
forms of storytelling in media. The audience needs to know the history and lore
of the world and characters to better understand them as a whole. But in turn
the writers need to figure out a way to pace it out in a way that it doesn’t become
exhausting for the audience to have to listen to. This episode was a clear
example of exposition done poorly.
Literally all twenty-two minutes this
week was spent talking and explaining and setting up for what’s hopefully going
to become a compelling story sooner rather than later. While the first episode
did a great job introducing the title leads and world, and the second episode
was passable at introducing the side characters and more of what Sana’s powers
have the potential to do, this episode spends most of its time setting up the
villain while the main cast just kind of chit-chats over burgers (which
hilariously have Carl’s Jr. sponsorships all over them) while they wait for the
next plot point to happen.
The villain is…not very interesting.
Unless I’m wrong she’s the same character we saw at the beginning of the first
episode trying to stop Sana from escaping the lab. She has the magic power of
summoning giant hairy disembodied arms to assist her in whatever she wants.
No, you read that right.
The show explains that the arms
represent her dead husband…somehow, but they honestly just look really really
silly and break immersion a bit. I mean, I’m happy they weren’t rendered in
awful CGI like the cars, but they just look so darn goofy. Having them be
creepy shadow arms or something instead of realistic arms would’ve looked far
better, because now whenever they’re onscreen I’m finding myself wondering
where the rest of the giant hairy body is.
Anyways, as I was saying about the
villain, she has an interesting subplot about her relationship with Sana,
wanting to use her imagination powers to bring back her dead husband, but her character
falls really flat. Nothing about her character feels that inspired or original.
The dead husband stuff was pretty cool, but they blazed through her origin
story so quickly that I didn’t really find myself caring by the end of it. To
me she just seems like a villain the heroes need to stop, without much that
makes her stand out.
The episode does have a fun twist
towards the end where the villain uses her arms of doom to capture Sana, tie
her up and steal her away. But this frustratingly just leads to even more
talking, only this time it’s a flashback! We see the villain’s first encounter
with Sana in the research facility where she learns about her imagination
powers. This leads to the writers literally spelling out for us why she’s
captured Sana.
Look, I don’t mind setting aside an
episode for a bit of exposition. It’s when you waste a lot of time on unnecessary
exposition that I start getting upset. You could’ve conveyed that she wants
Sana to bring back her husband with her saying “I need you” or something like
that, and then a shot of the arms. Considering we just spent an entire episode
talking about both the husband and Sana’s imagination magic that should make it
obvious what she wants, and we can use those precious extra few minutes to see
Zorokou’s reaction to all this.
Speaking of Zorokou, despite being a
title character he’s kicked to the sidelines again. All he really does this
episode is yell at Sana for no real reason. I said at the end of the first
episode that the two had already established a strong bond, but I’m seeing no
trace of it here. You can’t build chemistry between characters if they rarely
spend time together, and when they do they’re fighting. It just doesn’t work
like that.
Sad to say I’m very quickly losing
interest in Alice to Zorokou. Nothing’s
impressed me since the first episode, and even then it was little more than a
passing “yeah, this looks okay”. Between the wasted time through unnecessary
exposition, boring characters, still lackluster animation, the lack of chemistry between the title leads and the ridiculous hairy arm magic,
this anime is finding itself falling rapidly down the rabbit hole.
FINAL SCORE
3/10
Bad
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