What can I say? This was a wonderful episode and an excellent climax to this series. The creators stuffed a ton of character development into just this one episode.
This is going to be a bit strange, but I’m going to compare this ending with Tiger & Bunny’s for a bit. The big reason for that is because during that final arc, the side-characters all felt a bit lumped together. This episode of Hana-Saku Iroha however, avoided that: every single character had his or her own presence. Just about every character had his or her moment in this episode. It was a complete chaos in the Kissuiso, and the creators actually gave everyone something worthwhile to do. And best of all is that through this chaos, there were a ton of characters who were forced to act differently from their usual self.
This is a show that celebrates working, and it definitely hose a very interesting climax here: how to avoid getting caught up in it? After so many episodes in which the characters worked incredibly hard, I was afraid that they wouldn’t address this issue, but this episode really completes the circle and balances things out. This episode really added a lot to this series, and this is the kind of ending that I really like to see: the one that takes the series, keeps its core qualities and pushes them even further.
Rating: *** (Awesome)
Um, it’s over? I have to give it a B minus for kinda dragging out certain conflicts 10 episodes past their expiration date.
@Oroboros, One more episode to go
@Oroboros I was confused about that, too. the whole 2nd half I was wondering where Kou was. I guess he is saved for the final episode.
pagels got a bit confused there, the episode had “rushed ending” written all over it but in fact there was a preview for the last episode tacked on at the end.
Actually, if this episode had some conclusion to the whole deal with Kou, it could have worked as a finale for me.
I just hope the next episode doesn’t have the grandmother die or something like that.