I just realized this at the end of the episode… but the opposing team on the finals consists out of a bunch of nut-cases.
I think this keeps true to one of the themes of this series: geniuses are eccentric in one way or the other (even Arata with how seriously he takes his punishment). I’m not sure whether this has a deeper meaning beyond just being really entertaining, but I love it. At first they seem like this very serious team to come over, only to get completely hilarious once the actual match starts.
The creators also really know how to torture Kanade here, by having like, the best announcer in existance voice the finals. If there is anything that this second season has been brilliant at, it’s its build-up. The final match was hinted at many times before, the creators keep referring back to Arata and the Queen, which will just happen much, much later. And it does interesting thing with them: it really plays with its characters and finds creative ways for hinting like that. The comedy really works when it needs to and that really helps.
The cliff-hanger was awesome, but I am a bit worried that at this point in the series, we’re still stuck in the team matches. I mean, this is nice and all but the team matches are not what really matters here in this series. That goes to the individual matches, in which we can see all these characters participate yet again. There are so many awesome matches and re-matches about to happen that I worry that they’re not going to be able to fit all of that in what? eight remaining episodes?
Rating: 5.5/8 (Excellent)
Maybe 2 more episodes for the final match, and then 6 for individual?
I’ll feel cheated we don’t get to see Chihaya, Arata and Shinobu play, and have it properly treated.
I’m also a bit worried about how it will be fit into the remaining episodes…
You can always read the manga, from where the anime left off. I just saw some chapter 89~ 90 ish (just a glance,didn’t wanna be spoiled) and from that, I can say that the anime will pretty soon catch up to those chapters. So we either have an anime-original ending or, just like season 1, have an open ended finish, for room for season 3 if this season does well (and to let the manga collect more material)
Well for continuity of the series… I would say it is wise to end after this tournament since that would be the only possible respite I can see is the slight cool down after Omi Jingu, otherwise with latest chapters if they go into the 100’s up its all individual matches since its a big tournament (guess this season will focus more on the team match time). I think chances are the series will be avoiding an anime original ending given the track record of how they’ve handled things so far.
I’ve never seen a series go on for 2 seasons to land on a gecko ending , so season 3 is likely.
Make it seven, 41 was a kick in the stomach: recap episode. I don’t what you guys think, but for me they ruined the beautiful build up work they had done with that. I feel as if the producers slapped me in the face. I’m very disappointed :/
Same here ><""". I'm just so disappointed they put a recap just after building so much tension -____-… One more week to wait before seeing the actual episode TT… It sucks…
I was hoping for a proper episode, but I did enjoy the extra sketches, and when compared to Space Brothers 3 consecutive recap episodes, it’s livable.
But yeah, now they have to squeeze it all into 7, how are they going to get to the individual tournaments and show everything, it really would be lame if we’ve had arata hanging around in the background and not to even see him play an individual game.
as the queen said, team tourney is for losers