天下制覇

You need a bigger rock.

Impressions:

So, how are they going to off the second invulnerable-to-physical-damage character after flubbing rules lawyering the first to death. Rules lawyering, but not as imbecilic, could certainly work. Instead, all the rules lawyering crap went to a giant exposition dump to Snow White, who spent literally half the episode just sitting there listening to exposition from the stupid mascot laying out everything that happened and how Cranberry's wish was the true antagonist all along. Even when Ripple and Swim Swim were fighting, the exposition about how dumb it was continued. I don't think that was what they were going for. But getting back to my first point, how was Swim Swim offed? Her only weakness: a small incendiary.

I'm not even sure if it can get credit for not reviving everybody at the end since it failed its initial "one left standing" premise despite the half-assed sparring at the end. If we want a tragic ending, let's kill everyone. Romeo and Juliet this bitch up. Make Snow White actually tragic instead of just crying about things all the time. If you want an uplifting ending, go ahead and wish everyone back to life. We just get something in between, satisfying neither side. And yes, that's the only time Snow White, the main character, was anything but a damsel in distress for the entire show; in the epilogue, literally less than a minute before the final credits run. The only catharsis the story has to offer is that Survivor: Magical Girls is over thanks to one character's strength of character of having no strength of character. So if you were hoping for some kind of character-driven ending, tough balls. Game's over. Unless, of course, they decide that it needs a sequel. 

Final Thoughts:

A frustrating show, which at least means that it was showing how it could've been a lot better than it was. Much of that falls firmly on two major problems that were present through the entire thing; the main character sucked, and the episodic formula that it quickly fell into was awful. Snow White is just a boring character who never really engaged with the plot. She 'won' by sitting on the sidelines and never engaging in anything at all; just moped about how awful everything was. She wasn't even useful as a Young Adult Novel Mary Sue heroine since they kept offing her… I forget what the Twilight vampire and werewolf boyfriend names were, so let's say Wingus and Frau Blucher. The flashback sequences explaining everyone's backstory immediately before death were also not woven into ongoing events at all, and were just about always nothing more than a signal of who would be dying. In some cases, they were slapped onto a character after death.

But like I said, it was frustrating because it did show that it could've been a lot better. The characters that were actually into the fighting, bloodthirsty or not, should've been the ones driving things and could've at least made the ending a little more palatable. Most of them were teamed up with non-combatant partners, and there's certainly a rich well of an escalating shadow war with secrets upon secrets, lies between partners, doing what needs to be done, so on and so forth, especially if they had set up either Cranberry or Mary (or both) as a primary driving antagonist through most of it. Almost anybody but the personality-lacking Swim Swim would've been a better final boss. A sock filled with rocks would've given her a run for her money.