I suppose I could wait until dishing on the episode itself to call this show a disappointment, but that is what it is. The shoddy serious plot handicapped a fun cast and a skilled director, and ultimately had no implications on how the story ended. There was a lot of pain and suffering to return to a status quo that would have totally still been maintained without said pain and suffering. Effectively, the whole of the nonsense that the people nominally trying to prevent a disaster caused resulted in the titular youmu being sealed (perfectly safely) right back inside of Akihito.And that wasn’t even the most bald-faced part of the script. The straight-up ass pull to revive Mirai at the end was considerably. In these past 3 episodes, she’s been dead, not really dead, dead again, and not really dead again. And that final example happened for no reason in the context of the story, beyond the meta one that the main heroine needs to be alive to bait people for a sequel hook.

I rag on Jukki Hanada for Mirai coming back at the end, but that’s ultimately a secondary detail. There was no binary choice that would have salvaged the show this late in the game. Regardless of whether Mirai lived, died, or died and was resurrected for no reason at the end, it remains a fact that the show spent a good half its run on a dramatic plot that was weakly justified, poorly handled, and not at all fun to watch. I’ll keep my fond memories of this show from the first half, but there wasn’t a whole lot in the second worth its weight.

There were some pluses to the finale. Akihito’s voice acting in the first two minutes may have been horrendous, but after that, the banter started to really flow between the two and the scene got progressively more comfortable to watch. The visuals were, as usual, well-handled; the ET shot with the motorcycle and the Lupin-esque climb up a 70 degree slope were a good deal of fun. I just wish there was even an average script behind it so I could remember it for those aspects.

Character Designs: 1/1 (Every cast member has looks that match their personality, and details in the design lend themselves to more elaborate fight animation.)

Soundtrack: 1/2 (The music is serviceable, but lacks either a strongly unique flavor or seamless integration with the scenes.)

Writing: 0/3 (Attempted a serious plot that was both generic and ultimately pointless, with extremely uncompelling villains. Even with the enjoyable first half, I can’t reasonably call what happened here a replacement level script.)

Direction: 4/4 (Showed off a great deal of visual sense beyond the stylish fight scenes, handling still-frame moments with care.)

Overall: 6/10 (Starts out as a fun series with potential and spends most of the latter half playing to its weaknesses.)

It seems like a bit of a truism to say that SF has changed significantly since the beginning of the show. While it’s true that the show has upped the ante in a number of ways since the main duo defenestrated a gorilla, the change in the core of the show has been a little more delayed and tougher to identify. Before the obvious change, and even immediately after, the show was weird in a quirky kind of realistic downbeat humor. Then things got serious with King Torture, but now that that’s past, the show doesn’t seem to be going back to that kind of small-things approach. Instead, we got Red Axe in full costume and a helicopter tapping Masayoshi to lead a fight against alien spore warriors apparently created by a combination of alien spores and Sketch Turner.

In short, the show is relying a lot less on cleverness than it used to. The scripts as they were this week weren’t not fun, but they were less clever. It used to be built around oddity, and now it’s built around spectacle. While stuff like the scene where everybody came out in red ranger uniforms was in that old brand, the general trend of the episode was to rely on bigger and bigger situations to make less clever dialogue hit its mark. It worked, and I don’t dislike that kind of power play production, but it can as easily collapse on itself like a neutron star if it keeps on adding weight without a base of material to fuel the characters. I don’t believe it will implode, but it’s something to watch out for come January.

A note: for reasons that have nothing to do with this show itself and everything to do with how I want to try running the blog in next year, this will be my last post on it in a weekly format. I’ll post about this in detail soon, but it’s difficult to write the longer-form articles, which require a generally higher degree of prep, when I’m working on weekly deadlines, so I’m going to try and loosen up the deadlines and emphasize quality over quantity.

Before this episode I was perfectly willing to stick the show with an 8 or a 9 for an effective variation of comedy and combat that had a first gear that it wasn’t always in. Thankfully, this was one of those episodes that took the decision well and fully out of my hands. While the structure of the climax smacked very heavily of an anime-original story, the spectacle dial was cranked up to the highest level and we ended up with action scene after action scene that probably would have broken the show’s budget had it been a non-3D anime.*

What particularly did it for me was the once scene of Iona evading the missiles while airborne. I mean, we knew mental models could do superhuman things, but that was nothing if not a spectacle rivaling some episodes of Asura’s Wrath. To say nothing of the Unlimited Blade Works biz Kongou pulled out once Iona actually reached her. I’m gonna remember that scene for a long time. Forget what I’ve been saying about not being able to do full-body motion in 3D anime, and lump it in with what I’ve been saying about 3D anime in general; it’s demonstrably doable (Kishi & Uezu, 2013).

Two side notes before I finish up. First, if there was one thing I liked about Kirishima, it was the silliness of her being in a Teddy Bear while retaining her core personality. Nowhere was that more on display than the moment in this episode when the Bear started going Arrivederci all over the missile swarm readouts.

Second, aside from the first episode and one bit in episode 5, the show has been nigh-entirely devoid of flashbacks, opting to introduce characters by having them do things. This didn’t just mean devoting full episodes at a time to particular characters, but showing how both the crew and various enemies reacted to a variety of situations. Given the 12-episode nature of the anime and the fact that the plot was packed as tight as it was, that seems like an even better decision in hindsight.

Character Designs: 1/1 (Even characters that seemed robotic at first proved capable of a wide emotional range as the story progressed.)

Soundtrack: 2/2 (Well matched to both the tense naval battles and awkward social situations the crew found themselves in.)

Writing: 2/3 (Steadily built up a likeable cast, and set some very entertaining battle scenarios.)

Direction: 4/4 (In addition to building a generally solid alternating comedy/battle atmosphere, Kishi Seiji does an excellent job in covering for what was mostly the largest deficiency, full-body locomotion, of the animation style, liberally applying cutaways, reduced FPS, and other visual slights-of-hand to keep the show entertaining. Too, the action is an expensive display not to be missed.)

Overall: 9/10 (A very entertaining ride throughout, partially thanks to the aspects it borrows from 70s/80s era military anime.)

*A perfect time to stick in a reiteration of the point about how using 3D opens, rather than closes, doors for anime as a whole when it’s not being used purely to cut corners.