My biggest problem with this episode is that it kinda falls flat after “Sasaki’s plan” has been sort of hyped up. The negotiations are supposed to be the climax of all of Sasaki’s preparations to free up Marc–which it is. However, it wasn’t so much a payoff when a lot of the steps Sasaki did was just summarized after the fact. This approach could have worked if we were given a better idea of what it’s all leading to (though maybe there were enough hints dropped, but I just wasn’t paying enough attention).
All this left me with the impression that it was all a bit forced to give the audience an impression that Sasaki is really good at negotiation, and that it’s his go-to strategy as opposed to just blasting away enemies with Pii-chan’s help–which has already been shown to us in the first handful of episodes.
I agree. This master plan was mostly explained after the fact and it just wasn’t foreshadowed in a way that lets the viewer feel like they could have put the pieces together themselves. Also, I agree that we have previously established that Sasaki prefers to deal with problems this way, why do we need to go through so many poorly explained hoops to keep reinforcing that fact. I got the impression that, rather than having not paid enough attention, that perhaps there was just a lot of that foreshadowing/explanation that was cut from the light novel for the sake of the anime.
I think the main purpose of this Marc arc is to show that Sasaki is masterful in his planning and negotiation skills, on a grander scale and with higher stakes. Not quite sure about the higher stakes tho, since even though Marc’s life is on the line, we weren’t really given much to care about him. I barely even noticed the character before his arc. But yeah. I think it’s a wasted opportunity. It could have given us a much better feel of Sasaki’s interpersonal skills, but ehhhhhh, this is what we’ve got.
My biggest problem with this episode is that it kinda falls flat after “Sasaki’s plan” has been sort of hyped up. The negotiations are supposed to be the climax of all of Sasaki’s preparations to free up Marc–which it is. However, it wasn’t so much a payoff when a lot of the steps Sasaki did was just summarized after the fact. This approach could have worked if we were given a better idea of what it’s all leading to (though maybe there were enough hints dropped, but I just wasn’t paying enough attention).
All this left me with the impression that it was all a bit forced to give the audience an impression that Sasaki is really good at negotiation, and that it’s his go-to strategy as opposed to just blasting away enemies with Pii-chan’s help–which has already been shown to us in the first handful of episodes.
I agree. This master plan was mostly explained after the fact and it just wasn’t foreshadowed in a way that lets the viewer feel like they could have put the pieces together themselves. Also, I agree that we have previously established that Sasaki prefers to deal with problems this way, why do we need to go through so many poorly explained hoops to keep reinforcing that fact. I got the impression that, rather than having not paid enough attention, that perhaps there was just a lot of that foreshadowing/explanation that was cut from the light novel for the sake of the anime.
I think the main purpose of this Marc arc is to show that Sasaki is masterful in his planning and negotiation skills, on a grander scale and with higher stakes. Not quite sure about the higher stakes tho, since even though Marc’s life is on the line, we weren’t really given much to care about him. I barely even noticed the character before his arc. But yeah. I think it’s a wasted opportunity. It could have given us a much better feel of Sasaki’s interpersonal skills, but ehhhhhh, this is what we’ve got.