I seem to be saying this a lot recently, but the end is nigh, and perhaps a few of us are rather relieved that this Winter season is ending, and that the Spring season is about to begin. Well, the Spring Equinox (Ostara) has been and gone now, and some of you are likely anticipating the big franchises coming back. As I’ve never really been one for them, I won’t be covering them when they all begin. I have picked my shows though, and I hope you’ll like them.
I also said last week that I’ve reached that stage where, even though I’m enjoying the shows, I just want them to end and I don’t mean that in a bad way either. Take The Magnificent Kotobuki, for instance. So much story has happened in the last 4 or 5 episodes that it’s become so fun to watch. I was initially a little apprehensive about how slow it began, and how we weren’t getting much in the way of character back-story, but I’m very happy with where this has all gone.
Safe to say that pretty much everything that has ever happened in this show has led up to this point. The Brotherhood of Freedom Union make their final attack on the remaining towns that haven’t already ‘submitted’ to them, and so it’s left to the Kotobuki Corps, the Hagoromo, both town’s defences, even the dodgy Elite Industries decide to join in on getting rid of Isao and the Union, who desperately want control of the hole, which we learn this week does lead to somewhere else…Japan, in fact.
It wouldn’t be a penultimate episode without a few bombshells, of course, and this week we learn that not only was Isao (as a pilot) responsible for shooting down Ol’ Sab (Kylie and new girl Naomi’s mentor), but responsible for crippling Allen (Kate’s brother). Who is to say what the finale will bring, but what has really bugged me is how they chose to suddenly end this week’s episode abruptly, mid-conversation almost. I notice that this was something that they did quite a lot each week. It doesn’t help that I don’t think much of the ending theme, as it doesn’t have the same kind of grandeur and bravado that the opening theme does.
It all went down last week in Domestic Girlfriend though, when Natsuo and Hina were caught by Rui. And I stand by my choice of not giving a damn about what happens to those two anymore, because only Rui deserves true happiness in this show.
Leading directly on from the end of last week’s episode where Natsuo tells Rui that he has had feelings for Hina long before they all became family, the three of them actually behave more maturely than I thought this week where Natsuo’s cast comes off and they all go on the school trip to Okinawa. I figured there must be something odd about that, and then I learned why: thanks to info from readers of the Domestic Girlfriend manga, I discovered that this episode alone goes through the space of around 15-20 chapters in the manga. So that goes to show how much has been skipped, censored, cut out or just not covered in this adaptation.
It has dawned on Rui that she has been trying to fight a losing battle, and so decides to give up, and let Natsuo and Hina make their own mistakes, which we learn they do at the end of this week’s ep, which I won’t spoil…but it is something that we (as the anime-only people) sort-of saw coming anyway. As I have no clue on what will really happen in the finale, I hope that Rui has one last laugh or something. Please no spoilers.
While I’ve been talking a lot about two shows I have enjoyed immensely (whether they be action-packed or trashy soap-opera romance), Girly Air Force has been the most awkward watch. I’ll be going into a lot about why so in my season review post, but as the show is wrapping up, we have still been left with a lot of questions.
This week though is largely focused on the big fight. In the midst of it all, Kei/Gripen and Rhino end up getting split up from the other Anima and are forced to land in Shanghai, which is enemy territory, to refuel. Now while these past few episodes have gone by, Kei has been plagued by some weird dreams, and they come back to haunt him as soon as they land at the deserted Shanghai airport. This is going to be another show where I have zero clue on what will happen in the finale. One thing’s for sure is that I don’t think we’ll get that happy ending we all want for Minghua, who should have left Kei to his own devices a long time ago.
Now to finally bring up the show that I talked about a while ago but looked too silly to regularly watch. Bermuda Triangle: Colorful Pastrale is, essentially, a ‘cute-girls-doing-cute-things’ show, or more accurately, ‘cute-mermaids-doing-cute-things-underwater’. If you ignore all the glaring scientific errors in the show (mermaids drinking tea and eating cake, talking seals, having phones, watering plants, etc.), it becomes a cute but rather bland watch. I was expecting it all to be rather a weird show too, and I was a little let down, but the moe goddess strikes again.
The sleepy underwater village of Parrel is known for its ‘coral sugar’, and so the teenagers there, Sonata, Caro, Kanon, Fina and Serena, have nothing better to do than just do moeblob things. It’s only when a freak tide exposes an old movie theater that everything changes for them. Well…that’s what the official description goes by; the rest of the anime didn’t show us much in the way of outstanding character design, thrilling plot, or even much in the way of good animation either. It was only recently when I learned that not only is this all one big spin-off of the Cardfight Vanguard franchise, but is directed by Junji Nishimura, the same guy who gave us some other…not-great shows, in particular Glasslip, True Tears, and Bakuon!! This show was not received well by either the critics or the public, and has been at the bottom of many peoples’ Power Rankings, but if moeblob mermaid girls doing moeblob mermaid things and breaking the laws of physics is your jam, then you’ll find this show on HIDIVE.
So on to Kemono Friends, and…umm…that escalated quickly.
When Kaban and Serval are rescued by some ‘Cerulean hunters’ Golden Snub-nosed Monkey, Brown Bear and African Wild Dog, and when Lucky Beast shows them another message from Mirai talking about the ‘four gods’, a lot of alarm bells began to ring for us viewers…they certainly did for me. At this point Raccoon and Fennec Fox had finally caught up with them, and I was right about the two of them not being malicious at all. Anyway, a large and dangerous Cerulean threatens the entire park, leaving the 8 of them to formulate a plan to lure it into the nearby ocean to drown…only for that nail-biting event to happen, which I won’t spoil for the people who still haven’t seen this show yet.
I have some vague idea of what happens in the final episode, so I won’t be going into this one totally blind, but episode 11 was a great one, for sure. Not only did it answer our question of why Raccoon and Fennec Fox were chasing after Kaban and Serval in the first place, but it showed us that Kaban realises that she’s not a visitor here, and she was clearly brought to Japari Park for a reason. I hope that reason will come about in episode 12.
The finale episodes are always the most anticipated, aren’t they? What are you hoping to happen in the shows you’re watching right now? Feel free to hit that like button and air your opinions in the comments below…