The ending to Gakkou leaves me with a feeling similar to that I felt after watching Madoka’s final two episodes. The ending isn’t inherently bad but I can’t help but feel like I have been cheated. When you tease darkness and provide instead light its hard to appreciate. Contract to popular belief, not everyone loves a happy ending. There lies my problem with this ending, its far too happy. The grim situation is defused far too fast with Yuki making use of the zombies lingering memory to get them to abandon the school. It’s a bit far fetched of a solution but still feasible so I will leave it be. But the speech was rather cringeworthy. I understand the need for finality and the parallel to the first episodes words is a neat link but the cheese was far too much.
At least the show knew there had to be some grim turn in this last episode and here we have it. Just when I was about to roll my eyes at not just Kurumi, but Taromaru coming out of this alright as well, Taromaru dies in Miki’s arms. Well when you trip that many death flags its unlikely you would come out unscathed. It was a really well done scene and pretty effective. Being a man whose heart has been tempered into apathetic cold steel, I was surprised to feel tears almost well in my eyes over Taromaru’s last look at Miki being him saying thank you. Curse you for making me feel feelings again, you manipulative puppy plot device.
Other than that we have graduation which is less death and more the girls moving away from the school now that the self sustaining machines are broken. The Graduation tried to tug at my heartstrings but it felt rather hollow and overly dramatic. So with episodes end I decided to check out the manga to see how things went there and its very different from its anime counterpart. For one it wasn’t Zombies that took down the school in the manga, but a crashed Helicopter which started a fire and destroyed it. Kurumi’s infection and Megumi’s death by shovel where solved before this pretty fast. Overall the anime handled the story better but there were small things in the manga that I wish made the transition. Like Miki arriving with the medicine only to find Yuuri poised, ready to kill Kurumi with the knife or how Yuki’s snap to reality was handled in the manga. Overall the ending does leave it open for a potential second season which I would be most interested to watch.
I feel that most people expected a happy ending, but the way in which we got a happy ending was too easy.
If Yuki started going insane on zombie skulls, that would be equally unbelievable.
Taroumaru’s death was perfectly done. That worked the best for me.
I’m surprised you didn’t comment on the solution to turn away the zombies. I mean, it makes sense for what has been established, but for a story it was very simple. Kinda like if you bring a bicycle to a zombie movie, it’s makes sense but doesn’t make for exciting moments.