Agh, that was way too ambitious. With that, I don’t mean that this episode was rushed. This episode was well paced for the story that it tried to tell. On top of that, the direction was also as solid as ever, so there’s also nothing wrong with that.
Instead, this episode flopped because of basic storytelling. Mistletein has been built up as this unbeatable villain. Nothing could face her. At the start of this episode the creators had two very solid options to take her out: either fire that bullet once it charged up enough dreams, or kill the host. For some strange reason this episode found it a good idea to abandon both of these and end with a string of deus ex machina. That is nt how you use your build-up!
The bullet does get fired, but even that isn’t enough to kill Mistletein. And that’s the point where the writers realized that they wrote themselves into a corner and opt for the laziest solution: magically make Mistletein weaker so that she can actually get beaten. Suddenly from out of nowhere she actually takes punches, and to make matters worse: Yumeji also starts pulling random powers out of his ass. Oh, and Merry also conveniently gets the power to actually send demons back, in order to prevent destroying the dreams of his friend.
The weird thing is that this episode is contradicting itself horribly. Take Isana: this episode had a great moral at the end, about how the amount of dreams in the human heart was limitless. Having your dreams destroyed is bad, but you can recover from them. They could have done exactly the same with her and it would have made for a bittersweet yet very fitting ending. But no! She’s a cute girl and we can’t actually do things with her because otherwise the fanbase will whine!
All the while throughout this episode, the creators also refused to just kill off the host. That’s nice if you want to spread messages that killing is wrong. Only, at the end they just kill him anyway. I mean, he just disappears, completely unlike what happened to any other dream demon so far. What’s wrong with just showing him in the aftermath? It’s bizarre that this show wants so badly to be cliched that it actively introduces deus ex machina, just to get to these cliches, instead of getting an original conclusion by just letting things play out naturally. What the hell?
Overall, this series was a waste of potential. It was very good, and had an amazing first half, but Mistletein just was a bad villain. She’s just way too one-sided to make anything interesting happen. This show really suffers from being way too short. A very, very annoying trend that is the single biggest pitfall of anime in general.
I think that compared to other series that had to end early, the way that this series decided to solve it was below average. I can appreciate that the creators wanted to resolve the story, but they didn’t really resolve anything. It really would have been much better for this show to just continue with the manga and end somewhere in the middle. If that had happened, I would have been less annoyed than I am now.
Rating: – (Disappointing)
Of all the things they could have pulled out to end the fight… Chaser John Doe helping out… Merry’s mysterious keys… they go with Merry just punching the bad guy but this time it works because she believes in herself?
And their teacher just disappears? What the hell? The guy was an ass of course but they somehow figured that having him completely erased from existence is a better alternative to showing him with his dreams of torturing children crushed? It would have been so much better if they showed him freaking out and running from the store and THEN he mysteriously disappears. Hell it would have even been more satisfying if he just got up and wandered out a hollow person like what happened to everyone else.
This show had so much potential but it’s as if the writers suffered from some sort of long term memory loss every other episode and just plain forgot all of the potentially awesome stuff they’d set up earlier in the story.
– Previous cliffhanger wasted
– Unneeded despair bud
– Yui VA’s terribly acting
– Air trumpet
– Isana spent the whole arc being knocked out and oblivious
– Yumeji’s corny speech = turning point
– Kawanami and Leon sacrifice unimportant and practically ignored by the rest of the cast
– Weak epilogue (even for an open ending)
– Worst animated episode of the series
This ending may be just as bad as Dragon Crisis
Actually, the did a lot of things that are in the manga as well. (the whole merry believing in herself and sending them back, was sort of in the manga as well, only there… it was good) The difference is that the manga did proper build up for them
Okay, sooooooo…
Apparently, the Yumeji’s Jonh Doe weapon thing and Merry REAAAAAAALLY having ability to send Dream Demons back to are in manga.(which is why that girl with glasses and green hair didn’t become zombie after having that guy inside her defeated)
Anyway, on baaaaaaaad things…
1) Mistelein’s defeat was kinda anticlimatic
2) What the heck happened to the teacher?
3) I guess they wanted to get rid of anime only characters if they ever get season 2, but didn’t want to be too dark, so they didn’t make that red haired girl lobotomized =/ Which doesn’t really make sense, if losing dream make people lifeless zombies, shouldn’t losing soul be even worse?
I agree with most of what was said, I have not read the manga, so alot of what happened in the last episode wasnt really clear to me,
I was waiting for Merrys key to appear and for some serious ass kicking,
And the biggest let down was the big bad villian who was blowing fire, what happened to him?
Whats up with the trumpet playing? I really
missed what that was about,
Yui’s dream demon, what happened to her
multi swords attack, I thought she was
stronger against Merry, then she was with
forest girl,
After the first three episodes I almost quit
watching, since I wasnt too impressed, now
I wished I had
thanks for all the insight you guys have given, it helps me to understand a little more
didnt make it a better watch, maybe the manga would be a better choice