The lead up to the climax of this episode was utterly amazing. Dean’s character in particular went through a leap of character development. “Getting shot right before the ending”-twists are common, but this show has actually been building up to. Sam actually died back there, and like, immediately, however, the previous episodes made it very clear that it’s possible to revive someone with your own life, and Dean had to beg for it even more than usual. Dean made one heck of a decision to just live one year for the sake of his brother, especially after his father gave his own life so that he could keep living. That really made this episode for me.
As for the actual climax: Jake indeed was a great villain here. After that though… the creators unfortunately did pull a number of Deus ex Machina. Sam now got his powers much more under control, but the most notable was that ghost of their father showing up at exactly the right time to get rid of the yellow eyed demon. It’s a tad too conventient for a) the Yellow Eyed Demon not firing off the final bullet (he only wanted the Colt, not its bullets), b) their father knowing where the gates of hell were, INSIDE of hell, and 3) the yellow eyed demon being scared of ghosts. Sam coming back and his powers: okay. Those were built up. Unfortunately we never really got an in-depth look into the yellow eyed demon himself. We never really learned about the nature of hell. That hurt this episode.
Overall, the thing I hated about this series the most is its release schedule: airing at these batches of six at a time was… a bit too much at times. It is that this was a great series, but the next time such a thing happens I’ll probably write some sort of compilation post. And don’t get me wrong: it’s great to have three series with an irregular schedule in half a year (Mitsudomoe 2, Moshidora and Supernatural): these are the series that need to be successful in order to get rid of that weakness that anime tends to have, when they are too constrained by having a fixed amount of episodes. Just don’t make me blog 22 episodes in three months anymore…
Rating: ** (Excellent)
Seems like the plot followed the live action series pretty closely.. This is pretty much the 1st+2nd seasons.. And I really hope Madhouse gets to create The 3rd, 4th, and 5th seasons, cause it only gets more epic (And Meta!) from here on out.
But I think the live action version is better in the comedy department, Dean is extremely funny in there, mainly because Jensen Ackles is just incredible.
kind of deux ex machina… after a few seasons you can at least justify some of them…but not all… anyways…it gets more fun in the next seasons 😛
Really got to hand it to the anime for being able to cram two seasons worth of material, with almost half the episode time of the liveaction, and still make a pretty damn good adaption. I wish they’d adapt the other seasons too, because this was quite fun 🙂
“the Yellow Eyed Demon not firing off the final bullet (he only wanted the Colt, not its bullets)”
The colt was a threat to the Yellow Eyed Demon and that is why he wanted the gun, if he really wanted to kill a human he could have just used a regular gun or any other weapon. Anyway, till the gates were open he had no intention of killing Dean and killing Sam was always out of the question.
Also, I have seen far worse Deus ex Machina in anime, imo they did a pretty good job with the way they killed the Yellow eyed demon and Jake.
Pax: that’s not what I meant: the colt only was a threat to him with that bullet inside of it. People could have taken the gun away from him or Jake in order to fire it against him. If he just fired that bullet in a random direction (like, waste that bullet), the only threat to him would be gone.
I see, my mistake then.
btw I forgot to mention this but I think there will be plenty of anime viewers only who will complain about the ending, after all if you don’t watch the live action you don’t know what will happen to Dean and there are also other questions that were not answered. the 3rd season focuses on Dean and Sam trying to break the crossroad deal. Even so, I can’t really recommend those who have watched the anime to continue directly with the live action, some important characters were not introduced in the anime.
For those who want to know, no spoilers, these are just a few things that the next seasons(3,4,5) in the live action have to offer: demon allies, angels, the prospect of an imprisoned Lucifer being set free and so unleashing the apocalypse.
maybe he wanted to keep the gun…
you know… having a gun that can kill anything…
is kind of useful….
even if you are a demon…
😛
The Anime was okay but I have to agree with HBash in that the live action series is better, especially the comedy-aspect.
The pacing of the anime was just a bit too fast for my liking and left too much behind that makes the live action series really good.
Still, would be nice of they continue the anime because the series just gets better and better.