天下制覇

Whoa.

Impressions:

I… wow. I’m not entirely sure how they managed to drag this disaster out of the pit, but this was one hell of an ending. Maybe I’m just a sucker for bittersweet finales, but this was hands down the best episode of the show, and at the moment and I think it’d be hard for anything else ending this season to top it. Both Mashiro and Yuuri’s speeches during their wedding ceremony before she discorporated, or whatever you want to call her non-death were fantastic and Mashiro’s especially was a real tearjerker. I was worried for a minute that they’d immediately negate it by throwing in some deus ex machina magic to bring her back and let everybody live happily ever after, but from the post-ED segment, the town’s going to be destroyed by flooding before that comes to pass. I’ll choose to believe that that happens at least 10-20 years in the future instead of a dam bursting 10 minutes after the show ends.

I wasn’t entirely pleased with how they wrapped up the Ouryuu stuff. Ameri got to confess her feelings for Yuuri at the very least, but then she just browbeat Ouryuu into not being evil anymore, mostly not even heard by the audience. I don’t think all he needed was a stern talking to, but apparently the giant city-devouring dragon’s weakness is Super Nanny. Still, that was just the first 5 minutes or so of the episode, and I’m not sure I could have asked for anything more out of the rest. Kudos to the writers for… well… maybe not quite salvaging this mess, but ending it just about as strongly as they could have.

Final thoughts at the bottom.

Final Thoughts:

Hmm… let’s look back at what I said after watching the very first episode. 

"Assuming the budget doesn’t have too much further to fall, it looks like it could be nice little brainless show to just tune out and watch. There’s enough silliness that I’m not afraid it’ll get bogged down in dumb melodrama."

Oops.

In the show’s defense, it did start out decently enough with its best arc and I really do love the ending, but aside from that, it ranged from somewhat below average to abysmal on most fronts. It wasn’t even that good to begin with, but at least Mifuyu’s arc didn’t embarrass itself and featured ancient gods dancing around with underwear on their heads while Wakamoto made panty suggestions. After that, the humor all but evaporated in a puff of angst and terrible animation with Nue being the show’s sole saving grace most episodes. It’s almost frustrating after that ending, since they showed that they could do good drama, but instead, things just became mired in an endless morass of Ameri’s angst.

Overall though, one really (really) enjoyable episode doesn’t excuse the last 11, so I really can’t give this that much of an endorsement. If you’ve made it most of the way through, I’d say that it’s worth finishing off just for this episode. If you haven’t started on the series though… I’m not sure the one episode is worth the price of admission. Both Ameri’s and Yumina’s arcs vary somewhere between just flat out boring, and almost offensively bad. If you can make it through that, at least there’s a pot of gold at the end of the road.