Holy crap! The eye-candy! To think that Satelight had saved its best budget for last, that really took me by surprise. I didn’t expect to say this of Basquash of all shows, but this really was the prettiest episode I’ve seen during the entire Summer Season.
And I must say, that the creators actually did it. This episode was actually a pretty good prelude to the final episode that’s going to air next week. It was completely different from what I expected (I expected some Shin Mazinger-esque action-fest, but instead the pacing was much, much slower), but this finale has actually managed to get me excited about this series again.
It really was a risk to switch directors for this series, but in the end it actually worked. I really didn’t know why the first director was laid off when it was first announced, but after a while it did become apparent that he lost his touch around episode 8 or 9. While the characters did get developed, it was all just shallow and predictable, and nowhere near as fun and original as the first part of the series. It was a weird decision to bring in the director of Kiss Dum of all people, and he really took a risk by focusing a lot on build-up, rather than action-scenes, but I guess that it did pay off in the end. Sure, it was stupid at times, but then again I’ve stopped taking this series seriously by now.
As for the next episode… who knows how it’s going to end? It’s most likely going to feature the world getting saved and all, but whether it’s going to be action-packed or slow like the past episodes, I have no idea. At least, it really looks like it managed to avoid the Macross Frontier ending: the bad guys this time don’t feel as shallow that they can suddenly turn into good guys with a Deus ex Machina, and Dan’s love interests are instead all fine right now, and not playing the parts of damsels in distress, but actually turned out to be worthwhile sidekicks. With that, I’m happy enough. In a way, Basquash turned out to be the complete opposite of Macross Frontier for me: great start, great end, dull middle.
Rating: ** (Excellent)]]>
Basquash! – 25
