You know what? This was my favorite ending of the season so far. Or in any case semi-ending, because we’ve still got the second season upcoming summer, and the big ones (Natsume, Chihayafuru) still haven’t ended yet. This episode featured a great climax, it was a great aftermath, and it included a bunch of very nice hooks for the second season.
Of course a straightforward climax can work really well if executed right, I always appreciate the endings that try something more than that. For this episode to start with the aftermath, right after last week’s cliff-hanger was a very good idea. For a minute I really wasn’t sure what was going on because Rin and Madoka were also acting a very cheesy romance for some of their school mates, but once the actual climax started, everything fell into place. I like that.
As for the hooks for the next season, it was a great idea to break up the group for a bit and have everyone go their own way for a moment. This makes it more than just a “see you in three months”-ending, but it’s a great moment in this show for a pause in the story. Yes, this is the great thing about 2-cour original stories. They really can be tailored to anime format.
Overall, this Winter Season played out very much like I thought it would. What seemed like the biggest problem really turned out to be true: this season had a lot of great staff, but the one thing it lacked was ambitious premises. This resulted in a lot of very solid stories that however could all have been amazing, if only they took more risks and displayed more interesting plots. Rinne was very fun and entertaining, and I really feel that if it had a more ambitious story, that didn’t revolve around yet another high school, it really could have been a classic.
At the moment, what I fear is going to be the biggest problem of the upcoming Spring Season: strange staff choices. Appolon has mediocre scriptwriters (one wrote the Stitch adaptation, the other was responsible for the horrible adaptation of Persona), Tsuritama will be written by the guy who outlined Suite Precure of all things, Uchuu Kyoudai will be adapted by Makoto Uezu (out of the 20 series this guy did the series composition for, I only liked four, two of which are the two Sunred seasons), Zetman will be adapted by a guy who is notorious for taking huge liberties with source material, and often very rushed stories, the guy who wrote Guilty Crown will be doing another series, and out of all things we have Shoji Kawamori and Mari Okada doing an idol show. On top of that Jormundgand also looks very intriguing, but it’s got a really bad director. These are a ton of shows who have a lot of potential, but what I’m most afraid of is that that one person at the wrong place will take away that potential. And that for so many series.
Rating: ** (Excellent)
Um…Lagrange isn’t getting a 2nd season. An OVA yes, but a 2nd season? No. Didn’t hear anything about that.
Oh. Wait. Never mind.
The large “SEASON 2” at the end of the show is a bit of a dead give away.
What was Madoka’s third “Ehhh!” at the end for?
The first two were the second season and the ova but the third didn’t have any english at all to guess at.
Well colour me surprised. Given I’d heard virtually no hype around it on the usual fansites I’m surprised Rinne no Lagrange did well enough to warrant a second season. Not that I object, the show’s a nice bit of fun even if there’s nothing particularly exceptional, just surprised.
If I remember correctly, the series was planned to be aired in 2 separate seasons before it started.
Despite the fact this series is getting an OVA and second season, we’re glad it rewarded its loyal viewers by providing an ENDING rather than an abrupt cliffhanger. Especially since the story won’t continue until Summer.
The trio of girls are about as separated as you can get, and there’s still a lot of mysteries to be solved about the Rin-ne (and Asteria, and Madoka’s ‘predecessor'(?)), so there’s definitely plenty of material for a second season.
We’d like to see the scale of this series expand. We saw a little of this with the huge space battle, and with the further evolution of Madoka’s powers. Kamogawa was the main stage this season. Will the second be content to keep Madoka there, or will she travel to other worlds or dimensions in search of answers?
I have to strongly disagree with you on this episode starting with an aftermath given that Episode 11 ended on a cliffhanger.
I found that extremely jarring, and it really took a lot away from the overall impact of this episode for me. It also made the combat scenes in this episode very anti-climatic since the first few minutes of the episode made it crystal clear that Madoka and Lan both survived without a scratch, as did Madoka’s home town. So I think that this “Aftermath after a cliffhanger” approach was a very bad idea. I would have much preferred a more straightforward approach, particularly given the ominous foreshadowing that had been built up all season (thus making major character death a very real possibility for the climax here).
Aside from that, it was a good ending, but that was a significant negative for me.