What an amazing conclusion to this arc. This series has really been delivering from start to finish, and I can only hope that the entire story can get animated within the next four episodes.
At this point, all of the characters on the outer side of the moral spectrum are dead now: on one side we have Volken’s immense belief in justice, and Noloty’s endless kindness, and on the other we have the power-hungry leader of an evil organization who wants to change the world. The way this series has portrayed them is nowhere near overused, though. Kachua has been a great villain throughout the series: he always had this air of mystery around him, and it’s not like he started out as someone who wanted to destroy the world: it was only his final trump as the Church neared extinction. But I especially applaud Noloty: she really showed that naivety and innocence in an action-series aren’t overrated.
Sure, there are tons of series with lead characters who refuse to kill and all, but it’s Noloty who takes this a step further. Her kind of love for everyone goes far beyond “thou shalt not kill”, but rather tries to look behind it, in her attempts to infect the world with her kindness; kindof the opposite that Kachua has been doing in the past arc. And I guess that that shallowness of his approach was also symbolized in how easy the infected people turned back to normal: in order to truly change something, you need to change its core, like what Noloty has been doing. Brainwashing is just a temporarily solution.
In any case: now what? The main focus of this series is now going to be this “heaven”. People seem obsessed with entering it. Hamyuts in this episode revealed that she indeed wants to die, but do so gloriously. My guess is that that would be her attempt to become a true man and enter this heaven. That mysterious killer guy who killed Vizac and Noloty has his own ways of doing it, by simply betraying the armed librarians. My guess is that Mokkania also tried it at some point, but locked himself away when he realized what he was doing (since this episode did show that he killed quite a number of innocent people as well).
Speaking of which: what happened to Kachua’s book? Will that one still play a role, since he died as a seemingly true man, after all?
Rating: *** (Awesome)
Remaining content in 4 episodes? Impossible.
I don’t even know if the next episode counts as the beginning of volume 7 of the novels but even if the 6th volume is covered now… there are still 4 remaining to be animated and we all know about how much episodes each arc in this anime got so far. Either they announce another 12/13 episodes season or I will be terribly sad. I want to read the novels when I’m finished with loads of other books anyway but that doesn’t change the fact that this was an awesome anime so far and I would be very happy if they actually managed to produce enough episodes and show the viewers most of the original’s content.
It doesn’t seem like Kachua died.. I get the impression that unless they’re shown dying or in their final moment, anime characters won’t be dead.
I thought Dulltom died too (his scene-of-crime picture was shown in the previous episodes…?) or was I imagining things.
When a Tomatsu Haruka character dies, god kills a kitten
@vee: Yes, pictures of the corpse of Dulltom were in that morgue and it was reported that he died.
But we don’t know how much time exactly passed since the point when Noloty arrived at Kachua’s hideout and was murdered and the point when the actuall events of the Strawprincess-Arc started.
It could very well be that he was either killed by Kachua after he served his purpose or killed by a yet unknown individual.
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Concerning the rest I have to agree with marebito that it is impossible to stuff everything that is left of the story into the next 4 episodes.
It would equal 1 volume per episode and especially volume 9 and 10 are quite long again with both around 330 pages (Vol.6 had 305).
Next episode seems to be a background information episode for Hamyuts, so it shouldn’t even be the beginning of Vol.7 ‘The Banquet of Liars’.
Quick question for you folks… how well is this series doing over in japan? Is it getting enough viewers to warrant a second season?
So we’re at the end of the series, nonetheless it’s still truthfully following the light-novels. It might be delusional, but I hope they will continue animating this in the OVA format. Endings that deviate from the source material are rather disappointing.
@Dan
Viewers aren’t important, it are the DVDs and Blu-Ray sales that matter. And since the first volume was released roughly a week ago, we may get some statistics pretty soon. Hopefully positive ones. (Which I doubt since anime is a niche in Japan and the main thing that sells are moe shows)
Thanks for recommending the series, as it’s extremely entertaining and unique. While the first episode was VERY hard to follow, I began to understand it more and more with every passing episode. Thank you so much!
” It could very well be that he was either killed by Kachua after he served his purpose or killed by a yet unknown individual.”
From my understanding it has been implied that it was Arkit that killed Dulltom.
If you study Dolltums picture in episode 20, then break down the scenes in episode 22, it wouls suggest Arkit killed Dulltom in retaliation.
Arkit hates armed librarians anyway, killing Dulltom wudnt be an issue. But after Dulltom stabbbed Noloty in the back, he had even more of a reason to kill him.
Episode 22, Dulltom goes to thrust the finishing blow into Noloty. Arkit has his hat on. Yet later we see Arkit Bleeding from a head wound, whilst leaning on Noloty during her final words, and Dulltom nowhere in sight … aka already dead at this point.
It is at this point that both bodies are dumped somewhere, as stated in episode 20, by the dude with the pictures(presumably disposed of by the Governor of Paradise, after lascall tok there books).