Well, there you have it. The ending of Robotics;Notes. Did they seriously just do that?
I really dislike these types of endings. I was hoping that they would at least put the focus on the robot battles and all, but that just came second place. No, at the first place in this episodes were the attempts to talk the big evil monster to death. This is exactly why I dislike brainwashing: you take away all free will, and it’s just vague enough to conveniently stop working at right the exact moment. After all that build-up, this sure was a big let-down.
What did the creators really want to show with this series? What was all of the build-up with the realistic looking robots good for? Why did Kimishima Kou really want to wipe out the entire earth and what kind of point would that have made for the story? I think that airing this series aside Psycho Pass was also a bad idea, because of how well that series wrapped itself up. Here we have a solid build-up that eventually just ignores everything and goes to end with a cheesy robot battle… yeah. I did not like this at all.
Judging this one is going to be hard, because by far the worst part of this series is its finale. But yeah, I keep saying that endings are really important for a reason. Perhaps not in the sense of storytelling, but they are the last thing you remember when you think back to a series. Now, when I think back to Robotics;Notes, I will think back to that cheesy ending more than the other parts. It hurts even more that in the end, it never really used its best parts to their full potential (the mecha deconstruction and all).
Rating: 2.5/8 (Lacking)
Definitely a bad finale. The series had very good build up, but the finale was just so boring.
Full agreement here. This “everybody wins” sort of ending didn’t feel realistic. I went in hoping for either Kai or Misa to kick the bucket, which was funny considering I wanted no one to die in the finale of Psycho Pass. Kai’s death had been foreshadowed, but nothing ended up happening to him. Misa’s death would have been tragic, but I liked the idea of Kai dying after fulfilling his goal to save her and reunite her with Akane. Maybe Kai could have died from his condition, but freed Misa from Kimijima. Misa, due to her brain damage, ends up in a coma, and Akane visits her everyday in the hospital. Last shot of the show could be a sobbing Akane by her bedside, and sudden increased brain waves on the monitor.
I found it most humorous when Kai tells Aki to push the button to give him a seizure every single time the robot moves just a bit. I couldn’t help but feel it was extremely unnecessary. What possible super complicated button inputs could he be pressing to make the robot shuffle a step to the side to not really dodge a missile?
I don’t know if the writers were just scared of a tragic ending, but they really should have just gone for it. I wasn’t a fan of how nice and cleanly everything ends up in Steins;Gate, and I’m not a fan of it here. I can’t really think of any sort of good moral message a tragic ending could convey, but at least it would get me emotionally involved. This ending was just boring. It tried to force drama with Kai’s seizures and the rocket countdown (it even had that cliche ‘stopped the bomb with 1 second to spare!’) but none of it got me interested. It was a dull finale. And what a shame too. I was getting really into the show ever since Mizuka’s prosthetic legs malfunctioned. Oh well.
Seizure button (kind of lol, but whatever) helps for reaction time, in addition to actually inputting the commands. That said, the robot’s so big and slow to respond that saving some 200ms or so over his normal reaction time doesn’t seem likely to be a deciding factor. It’s not like actually playing a game where movements and changes are instantaneous.
In my opinion, a tragic ending here wouldn’t really make that much sense either or really have an emotional impact. The whole sequence at the end is just unsalvageable. Well, maybe Misa should’ve died.
But you know, I don’t think it was all that terrible this episode. When Kai and Aki talk at the end, and also during the segment when Kai deletes Kill-Ballad, that was within the norm for the show in terms of quality and character development. It was alright.
The problem is that Robotic Notes is a visual novel. So it just doesn’t have one ending, it has several.
Technically the producers decided to mix 3 endings into one, that didn’t worked at all.
One of the endings is the Furugori hacker rise of the robots. I think that was well done.
The other is Kimijima Kou’s human extermination, problem is, since the other plots of the visual novel intervened the story got dragged. Actually in the visual novel, the battle between Kai and Kou is done inside Iru-O. They ended up mixing it with the ending of Akiho’s sister with Kou’s ending, so in the end the battle occured in the real world. That ruined it for me.
Akiho’s robot building ending, got completely screwed with the plot. Her ending is they build the robot and go to the Expo and actually win it, earning her sister recognition. At least the romance part was well done.
They totally avoided Subaru’s are where he and Kai travel to the US for the Battle Expo, but then again that one is a neutral ending. In the end they choose Subaru’s half good half bad ending, where he suffers an accident but he manages to fix his relationship with his dad.
Hell, the producers totally skipped Nae’s Arc. But i guess that’s ok, since that Arc is pretty much an ode to Steins:Gate.
All in all, this is to be expect of a visual novel based anime. They most of the endings, and end up with an unsatisfying ending.