So far, the endings this season have been pretty generous for me. 11Eyes was pretty exciting, Darker than Black’s finale also had its good points, and White Album’s ending was really good. This however, was just bad. I wish that I could at least praise it some, but it did just about everything that you shouldn’t do in a final episode. Let’s make a checklist of what all went wrong here:
– A Disney-ending: the lead character is hit. He/she falls to the ground, seemingly dead. But wait! She turns out to be alive anyway. This is completely pointless in terms of storytelling: it accomplishes nothing, and is just used to generate some cheap sentiments for the lead character. Let it be the characters who create the drama!
– The lead character is cornered, about to be killed. But wait! Something unannounced suddenly pops up to save her. Again, pointless and cheap! If you want to do something, then at least show Lilan take off or something.
– It forgets to take its surroundings into account. What happened to the Touda riders? They completely vanish after Lilan screams. Where the heck are they?
– The villain, battered and defeated, finds a weapon and takes a final shot at killing important person X. Only to be obviously stopped. Cliched! Cheesy!
– “Save him! Save my precious loved one because he is about to be killed! The others on the battlefield? Who cares. I just want to be with the person I love.”
– And they lived happily ever after. seriously, all of the conflicts magically resolve themselves. Very sloppy.
I mean, this was exactly what I feared when I first found out about the staff of this series. The director has shown that he can adapt a story well, as long as he’s given enough time. But he’s utterly terrible when he needs to write stories for himself. There are so many things wrong with this episode. It’s not just a case where it’s simply rushed, and just could have used some extra episodes. Even with ten extra episodes, what happened here would not have made any sense.
I mean, I seriously wonder what happened to everyone on the battlefield. For some reason, everyone aside from Shunan completely disappears. As if those lives are completely unimportant. That completely shatters the previously built-up themes about the hardships of war: who cares if people get hurt? They’ll just disappear anyway. Let’s send those kinds of armies toward each other!
This really is a bad timing for this series. You know, if the series had simply ended at episode 49, it would have left a better impression than right now. Here I was, really happy with the slow build-up of the past few episodes and that the creators were actually trying to let everything play out naturally… and then they pull this. Oh come on. And added to that they even have the guts to pull a “nearly dead”-twist TWICE. I mean, what were they thinking? This is just me, but I personally hate it when a show has to resort to these kinds of plot twists. Especially near the end.
Overall, I like the series, but I think the parts I blogged weren’t the best. For me, this show was at its best from episode 30 to the episode in which Erin lost half her hand. After that, it was just build-up for this particular episode, and that was just all dumped down the drain in less than 20 minutes.
Ah crap. I was going to give this show a very positive review, and then it pulls this. I’ve noticed this plenty of times: great series with bad endings, as much as I hate it, do end up leaving a very bad aftertaste. There you go, show. Thanks for pissing me off.
Rating: —- (Bad)
Oh, come on. I knew Erin wasn’t going to die from the moment I saw the preview last week. Well, actually I knew she wasn’t going to die from the moment I found out there were two more books, but even if I hadn’t found out about those, I would have known the preview last week was misleading. This was slotted as a family show, and you don’t take kids along on a year-long story only to kill off the main character at the end.
As for the rest, I’ll have to see it for myself. I’ll also be looking for comments from people who have read the books, to see how closely the story matches up.
just read d 1st 3 paragraphs..
LOL, but hey!!!, atleast they were succesful about giving viewers an aftertaste (Good Or Bad, but mostly bad)…thats what makes it successful… They’ll be thinking bout the ending for a week.!!!
I havent watched the final episode, but i guess i already know what to expect…. So basically, the final episode is nothing but a bunch of predictable stuff like what happens in KID movies?, and a happy ending?..not to mention some stupid inconsistencies…
I guess il be thankful 4 d blog…If i watched the anime without reading this, Im 100% sure that il be thinking about d ending 4 quite sometime (prolly like a week)… With this il be mentally prepared…
back then i ran out of animes to watch so i ended up doing a marathon, it was ok, silent, boring in a good way, then her mom died.it got interesting at that point, then it got slow, and boring again(more like a spice of life anime)…still boring…then comes episode 30- 49….it became intense, especially d part where she lost some of her fingers…..(crap its taking a bit long….what im saying is that, I;m dissapointed…for a 50 episode anime to give an ending like that…)
heh im glad i read the blog instead of wasting 20 mintues watching the ending, well for me this series ends at ep 49, thanks for blazing the trail for us!
Erin does die later on with Lilan. I read it somewhere in wikipedia I think. Don’t know if it’s true.
So I peeked at the rating as being bad but I didn’t read the blog. PSGELS’ opinions can differ from mines and I didn’t want his opinions to influence how I view the episode. So after watching it, yes, it was a BIG disappointment. The first being that the episode picked up differently to how it ended in episode 49. I mean the music and the feeling it gave was different than from the ending of episode 49. It was abrupt beginning. I was emotional when Erin rode off on Lilan to save Shunan in episode 49 but in this episode, I didn’t get that feeling.
Yes, there were a lot of predictable things but what sucked was that there was no development into it. It would be better with a couple more episodes to develop everything in this episode. All I got was “what! that and that happened but how and when???”
And then, they have to stuck a couple of fillers about Erin’s mom…I think we got more than enough of that. And the ending?! What a waste to show every character…it was not needed or important. That time could been used to develop Erin’s relationship with who father her son…Ialu???
I’m so sad…I was really happy with this anime until this episode…every thing was just a “WHAT?!” to me.
ARGH. No. They didn’t! They ruined it! I can’t believe it.
just watched the ending of kemono souja erin with my heart prepared (for doomsday)…didnt go that way btw…
I admit the ending has problems… with all the the build up, its not an ending i expected… I’d say its an ok ending, but the fact that it is an “ok” ending gives problems!!!…
ANYWAYS!!!! NO!!!!!!!!….MY PRECIOUS & INNOCENT ERIN IS TAINTED…IVE WATCHED YOU GROW since ep 1( u were 10 at that thime)..Now youre someone in ur late 20s (prolly 28 yrs old and has a child…( u know what that means))…. wish they didnt another show a time skip…
the ending with her kid,is the continuation from the books, then ext book is about 11 years after what happened here. this book ends with lilan and erin flying off the battlefield, so it’s more like a preview if they make an adaptation the next books.
Well, Erin was hit by a arrow but not in a vital organ (considering she’s still moving I guess it didn’t pierce the lung) so it’s perfectly resonable that she survives. Plus with all the arrows flying it was going to look sillier if she wasn’t hit at all. Lillian swooping in to save her just reaffirms the bond they had throughout the entire series, and also shows what places the Beast Lords above the other animals, that they can forgive and still love.
I assumed the Tohda riders were still running away and screaming actually, that’s what I would’ve been doing anyway. Erin did leave her knife right there (Checkov’s knife anyone?) and of course Ialu is going to stop Deminya. He’s been trained his entire life to fight and it has been remarked on several times on how quick he is. As for Semiya shouting to save Shunan, it’s just been shown in the past few episodes that she doesn’t have enough foresight to be Queen yet, she can’t see past the small and immedate problems, this was totally in character for her. Plus, if Shunan kicked the bucket she would be in even more trouble with Nugan running around.
And I don’t see where you got a “all conflicts magically resolve themselves” idea. We see the end of the battle and then at least a six year time skip, plenty of time for the land to become peaceful (or at least the area where Erin and her son were) and this story has been about Erin first, fixing the kingdom second. So I thought that the story stayed true to itself to the end, too happy for you I guess?
Kemono’s ending was rather disappointing, but it wasn’t THAT bad, was it? Personally, I felt it was an okay ending, but a lot more could have been done with it. For instance, I couldn’t help but feel that the (what was it, five?) minutes spent on the panning throughout the scenery (like dipping into the ocean, and stuff) was used as a fill up. It would have been better if they had used it to let the events play out – naturally? Was that how you put it? The events in the episode were strung together rather choppily, and the characters only seemed to react when it was convienent, not when it was appropiate.
I agree with the person before me, however. I don’t think we have enough insight to say that the conflicts all magically resolve themselves, sans the deal with the Ohjus, of course. It would have been nice if they provided more of an epilogue, of course, but it seems they used their precious time on things that didn’t quite matter as much (like when Erin is hugging Jesh, all she says is his name – she even repeats it. While I feel it is establishing the mother-child bond, they still could have done a MUCH better job of that). There’s also the fact that Erin is really the only main (as in main, MAIN) character who gets an adequate amount of screentime. Ialu, for example, is only shown a few times throughout the episode (couldn’t they have put a little more effort in foreshadowing the epilogue?).
Overall, I agree mostly with your review, (a little harsh though, maybe??), with a few small inconsistencies.
Who knows? Maybe the fan in me is disappointed at the lack of meaningful sentimentality this show was supossed to posess. Ah, well. If I can find the manga…
I just finished watching the episodes last night, and i have to say that i was so eager and excited to finish this short series. Then when i finished watching the 50th episode, a “WTF!” moment ensued because there was so much by the end of the series that were never explained. For example, why was there no further scenes involving the People of the Mist and more stuff about the Players Skill than just seeing it in action in episode 6 when erins mom dies? Also, who the hell is the father of her kid at the tail end of the last episode? I wish the show would have taken the “romantic” scenes and actually put “romantic actions” in it.(like probably a smooch, no going over board with some hinted bed scene, sry if i portrayed it like that)Its just little details that never went into depth that bothers me because its those little details that shape the character and let you know more what theyre like. I really hate shows/movies that make you think at the end. (i dont wanna think, i do enough of that at school!)
I personally loved the ending. This is a childrens show, and a happy ending is what children like. I was expecting a happy ending, and i thought it was very satisfying. partially because my ship was canon but whatever. at any rate. Yeah, it was great imo
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