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…Which is far better than "Hermaphrodite Ending."

Impressions:

Well, to the surprise of I’m sure nobody, I’m going to complain about the ending… or rather, the lack of an ending. "Ha ha ha, To Be Continued… Whenever we get tired of adding new frills to Nanoha’s dress and calling it a new movie." I think the really telling sign here, is that as the end credits were rolling they were still introducing new characters. Stop that! The show is over in 90 seconds! Given 7Arcs’ production speed, probably for at least a year. Why are you still introducing new characters! Stop that now! You didn’t even use some of the ones that you already had!

As far as the rest of the episode, the Tsukiumi fighs was pretty well done, as was the Yume vs Karasuba fight. Yume herself was a little silly for my tastes, especially with that Team Rocket toss to get rid of Benitsubasa and Haihane. As per the rest of the series, the Yukari stuff really feels completely tacked on as well. There were about 5 characters running around who had absolutely nothing to do with the main story (such as it was) and who haven’t even come close to intersecting with it since about episode 4… and absolutely nothing was really resolved or revealed there either for that matter.

Yes yes, I know that they cut out the Kazehana winging scene too. *shrug*

Final thoughts at the bottom.

Brief Summary:

After Yuno coughs up some blood (what was the point of that attack anyway? Was Haruka supposed to be knifing them while they were down?) Tsukiumi spars with the two for a bit, but loses. Minato headbutts Benitsubasa. It sounds manly, but then you remember that he’s just sticking his head into her chest with slightly more force than usual. Then Deus Ex Yume brings Musubi back to life, throws Team Rocket into space and Bob’s your uncle. Karasuba wants to kill Yume, but she reverts back to Musubi, too bad. Giant orbital lasers fire on the bridge, but Uzume catches the two wimps and tosses them to the other side with Kazehana’s help.

Somewhat parallel to this, the goons finally attack Yukari and Shina, so Yukari wings her boytoy and he unleashes death on the area, chasing them away.

Then big montage of everybody going back to life as normal. TO BE CONTINUED!

Final Thoughts:

I hate to be a broken record, but come on. What the series badly lacked was direction and focus. It had everything else done and done rather well. Good production values, very good use of music, a very solid group of protagonistss, excellent voicing, but I never really felt like it was all coming together to actually go somewhere or actually do anything. I understand that it caters to the purists very well, but it really wouldn’t have taken too much to have built Benitsubasa and Haihane up as stronger characters for the finale so it would have at least felt like an important battle instead of just some random squabble. Have them be evil geniuses or show them slaughtering tons of other sekirei. Just do something so that it feels like this is important. Showing them in the ending sequence basically saying "Those rotten kids!" didn’t help matters either.

And no, "To Be Continued" does not absolve it from these sins. I’ll be ecstatic if a second season does roll around, but 7Arcs is not exactly the speediest studio, so it won’t be any time soon. So… we get to make do with a show that doesn’t end yet, it just stops, and if you think that leaves a good taste in my mouth… bleh. Well, hopefully 7Arcs really is just touching up the Nanoha crap for the film and will be working on Sekirei Gold/Silver before the year’s over. A futile hope, most likely, but at least it’s something to cling to.