This episode suffered from a classic shounen syndrome: “I’m about to kill you! But first, let me play with my food in order to give you a chance to regroup and kill me.” The youkai with blindness powers was an interesting idea, but his powers were just too overwhelming so that the creators had to resort to dumbing down the main villain in order to prevent him from winning. That’s not good story-writing!
As for the rest of the episode… it was decent, I guess. It was a nice start to a climactic fight, but at the same time it also had nothing that really wowed or impressed me. It’s just… there. A decent episode, but not exactly the most wanted at this stage in the series. Much like the problem with Durarara’s final episodes: if this episode wasn’t the third before last I probably would not have minded it at all. Now however, I’m getting impatient.
The thing I liked best of this episode was that finally the grown up Rikuo isn’t all powerful: finally his combat shows any signs of flaws when he got blinded and I liked the interplay between him and Yuki-Onna after that. It’s not like this show is bad or anything, but I really do fear that it’s going to leave a bad aftertaste at this rate, especially when a second season isn’t going to be announced.
Rating: (Enjoyable)
This episode had some really weird design decisions.
First, they gave the battle more mystery feel (this anime in general gives that element wherever it can, but here it ain’t fitting) and it sacrificed epicness. But then again, it was art in manga and the timing of scenes that gave it more epic feel there. It would have been hard to adapt that feeling… but for final episodes, you could invest more effort…
Second was Tamazuki: why did they turn him into such a wimp o_O. The wrestling scene was beyond ridiculous. While his other actions were more or less the same as in manga, here he still left the impression of one pathetic villain. And wimpy final villains don’t leave good impressions.
Third, I noticed that anime likes to change stuff for absolutely no reason. It is like… they are changing it for the sake of changing which is just a waste of resources that could have been used better. Seriously people, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”.
If we get S2, I hope they either change the stuff (hardly possible because it seems that the Director was the one who requested to work on this adaptation) or make radical changes to their design philosophy.
Psgels. . .
You are right, its goign to leave a bad after taste after this is over. . .the arcs ending. . .is just pretty lame really. . .and if you are not having this much fun at this point, just say that the series after like episode 12 or 13 (when they started doing fillers) was it.
In the manga itself, this arc wasnt that great as well. BUT after this arc the manga gets REALLY good. . .
but its probably not gonna be a second season. . .which is why I stopped watching at around ep 15 or 16 when this arc first started. . .
Im pretty suck of shows that dont ever plan to finish up what they start, I mean why even bother if you cant finish and just do a halfass job on an unfinished story?
It would be better to take a chance on some Original Material and make it as awesome as you can. Or at least something. . .FINISHED.
God the anime industry drives me nuts. . .after getting in with the master pieces or long ago. . .nowdays they are few and far between, its like creativity just stopped.
Actually, I’d say here we have a problem of too much creativity: the anime stuff wanted to add too much and change stuff just for sake of changing which ended up in a mess.
If they did an uncreative copy-paste, it would have ended up better. If they changed just bad things and left good things as they were it would have been much better. However, they changed good stuff as well just so it wouldn’t be the same (Inugami arc being the best example: it was a good arc which was changed for absolutely no good reason into something mediocre)
Lack of creativity is bad but forced creativity is even worse IMO.
I usually happens with series like this. They change some things, but they lead to more losses than gains. And somehow, the anime adaption of the manga makes the main villain look like a total idiot. Making stupid plans, sending out low class minions repeatedly (one by one) for no real reason and in the final battle they turn out to be a real wimp and are totally incompetent.