Star Crossed Anime

And so it has ended. Phew, it surely has been one great ride, from start to finish. Like I said, so far Asatte no Houkou is standing on the #1 spot for the shows released in the fall season. All that’s left is to see whether another show can take its place. Heh, it surely won’t be easy.

Regarding the ending, it was a great ending, another one of those heavily emotional ones. Still, how great the individual scenes may have been, the ending didn’t have anything special. But then again, a special ending is extremely hard to do. I’ve only seen a handful of shows which really managed to impress me with their endings. Still, Karada really shined during her scenes with both Shoko, Tetsu and Hiro. Shoko also reveals that she hasn’t really been honest with herself, and that when she saw Karada, she indeed longed back to her childhood. Hiro also managed to cut his hair, and it seems that Kotomi has found the wishing stone. She kept it with her all this time, and at the end of the episode, she returns it to Shoko, after she understood everything that had happened. Because of this, Karada and Shoko get returned to normal. I’m having sortof mixed feelings about this. On one hand, it’d be interesting to see how Karada and Shoko live the rest of their lives, though on the other hand, it does provide closure.

Also, this has been the first series I managed to watch entirely raw (not counting Himawari and Sasami Mahou Shoujo Club, I still don’t consider their seasons individual seasons). It’s been quite interesting, and I managed to enjoy most of the series, even though I didn’t understand the literal meaning of each of the sentences. Still, the show used fairly simple dialogue and more often than not, I could understand the meaning behind the characters’ sentences fairly well. Still, there were also disadvantages. I did miss the small details, for example, I missed the entire story about Kotomi’s father. Only after he called her again, I realized that she had troubles with him. Remembering names also went a bit tougher than usual, and even while writing this entry, I had to look up Kotomi’s name. Still, I did find that it’s good to read up on either episode summaries by other people, or watch the show subbed after a few weeks. Especially with the latter, though, I’ve noticed that I’ve been getting lazy with that. ^^;

Still, now that I’ve been watching raws for longer and longer, I do have to say that my Japanese skills are making progress. Okay, it isn’t much, but I can understand the dialogue much better than half a year ago.

Great pre-ending episode. Even though nearly everything it’s been doing is build up for the final episode, we do get to see Karada telling Tetsu about what happened to her. Unlike Hiro, however, he doesn’t believe her. Asatte no Houkou has really been the best anime to air in the fall-season so far. But then again, most other shows have yet to even reach their halfway mark, so there’s still a lot to happen.

It’s interesting to compare the time when Shoko told Hiro with this episode. Why didn’t Tetsu believe Karada, while Hiro did? One of the major factors probably is the fact that Tetsu’s an idiot, just like his sister says. Though the circumstances also aided a bit. An angry Shoko is much more imposing than a shy Karada. Still, I think the message needs to sink into Tetsu for a small while. The final episode will definitely do something with this.

Shoko was awesome when Karada phoned her again. Her reaction was SO different from the first time she called. She acted extremely calm this time, and actually listened to Karada, instead of yelling out of surprise. I think that she also realized that isn’t the proper way to tell someone to come home. The end of the episode also shows the two of them, going on the train to try and recover Karada. The final episode will probably show the confrontation between the two of them and Karada.