Short Synopsis: The finale of the first season of Birdy the Mighty: Stop Ryunka and save Nakasugi.
Highlights: Predictable, but satisfying.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8,25/10
Well, this episode turns out exactly like you’d expect: at the end of the episode, Ryunka is sealed, Nakasugi is saved and Senkawa is back in Birdy’s body. However, I still like this ending, because of the way it took the creators to get there. They succeeded to make the ending too straightforward, first by playing around with Mind-Games with Senkawa and Nakasugi, by keeping switching Nakasugi and Ryunka like someone with a bad personality disorder, followed by Senkawa finally getting the guts to kiss Nakasugi, taking over the Ryunka and thus sacrificing his own body, which he knows can be easily restored.
Seeing the relationship between Senkawa and Nakasugi coming together with that kiss really made up for the predictable finale, although I’m sceptic about the memory-reset the creators gave to Nakasugi. Memory loss can either work incredibly well or flop entirely. The creators really need to use the fact that she lost her memory, and not make it some convenient reset-button like on a gaming-console. For the second season, the creators also need to find a way to get rid of the fact that dead bodies can just be restored. It’s not going to make for good drama if characters can just be revived like it’s no problem. The creators need to find some sort of “Great will of the Universe”-solution (for those who watched Excel Saga) to keep this from happening.
Overall, when compared to Escaflowne and Noein’s halfway-climaxes, this one pretty much sucked, but with the standard of the past season, then it’s an above-average ending, based on the endings I’ve seen so far. It could have been better, but at the same time it also didn’t screw up at all, and I’ll be looking forward to that second season.
