Well, I’m glad that at least in the final two episodes this series stuffed in some bits of character development. Whether it was a wise decision to save this for last is a different matter, though. I do think that it would have improved this series if this arc was shown somewhere around the beginning, so that we would have gotten a bit of a better feeling for Watashi. But ah well, the result is a strange and heart-warming ending and that the rest of the series put its focus more on its satire than on its characters.
But yeah, this episode showed how she grew up as an alienated teenager, to the point where she started to interact with others again. The way in which it did that was rather strange though. I mean, she was all happy, then she discovered that her classmates had severe psychological problems, then she spent a bunch of years with the white-haired girl, only to stop caring about it afterwards anyway. There was no drama whatsoever put into that point, even though the rest of the episode was pretty much the most dramatic that this series has ever been.
It worked well though, only the addition of the fairies felt a bit forced. They were completely absent in the whole episode until it felt like the creators suddely remembered their existence again and had Watashi sprint somewhere off for them. It felt unnatural, even in this series.
Still, great show. It’s not the best of the season, and the lack of characterization throughout most of the series definitely cost it some points, but its unique charm was enough to redeem it. And really: it’s great to see AIC do something good again.
Rating: 5/8 (Great)
Being mostly a satirical series, I wonder if it really need much character development or does static characters serves better to accentuate the humor and the satire
This was much more a thematically-driven series than a character-driven one, so it shouldn’t be expected that the characters are going to change dramatically from episode to episode. But even when taking that into consideration, I still felt there was a very vibrant and engaging cast for this series. Definitely one of the most memorable casts I’ve seen in an anime, at least. I guess it will just click better for some than others.
eg I don’t get some of the problems Psgels finds in this episode, such as the fairy element being “forced in” at the end. The whole point was that the fairy was there all along without the protagonist knowing–that message is lost entirely if the fairy is there on-screen throughout the episode. Also, the episode was largely about the protagonist maintaining relationships with the Wild Rose Society regardless of the fact they were all hiding a cruel or dangerous side to them. Every step of the way Humanity Has Declined works to subvert expectations–rather than a drama-filled conflict ensuing between the protagonist and the other characters (as would be expected), the series simply plays with a theme of how we need to accept just how flawed people are and learn how to work past that.