The word of the week is anticlimactic. After last week, I was expecting the story to continue all the through to the end of the series, but it all came to an end in this episode. It even omitted the OP, as is common with final episodes. That’s not to say that this one provided closure. No, it seems that J.C. Staff is gunning for a 2nd season, and doing a poor job of it. Hopefully the final episode can provide some lulz before this mediocre series closes out.
By the end of the first half, it became clear that this story was likely to end by this episode. Everyone except Ryouko had been saved, through means that were not made clear. Liszt and Majo somehow magically found their targets, Alice and Otsu respectively, without any explanation. Tarou’s story was more interesting, with him resisting an army of bikini clad lasses to beat down the punks who brought him to Otohime. That and the cosplay obsessed captors of Otsu provided someone laughs.
Product placement? In my anime? Wait, that actually happens a lot. Even Saten had an iPhone in J.C. Staff's A Certain Scientific Railgun. An iPhone that took over her mind. Hey, subtle social commentary?
The second half was essentially episode 5 redux, following the same structure of Ryoushi and company storming the Onigashima High School, aiming for Shirou’s office. Even Momoko was there, along with her posse plus the three pigs from episode 8, speech impediments and all.
To be fair, the fighting animation was the best in the show yet, and it remained consistent throughout the episode, from Tarou’s fight with the punks to the battle in front of the school, all the way to the final boss. I was especially impressed by scenes featuring Neko-san, whose fights involved some classic, fast martial arts choreography.
But Ryoushi’s showdown against Shirou was the anticlimax of the episode. It was just Shirou beating on Ryoushi – beautifully animated, mind you, somewhat reminiscent of agent Smith’s beatdown of Neo in the subway in The Matrix – until Liszt and Ringo showed up and told him to stop. Okay, Ryoushi managed to get a punch in, a la episode 2 against the mid-boss. And the flashbacks – to moments ranging from a day ago to a minute ago – were just tacky. Maybe if Ryoushi had received training from Neko-san throughout the show, it would have worked. In the end, they just left, exactly like in episode 5.
This makes it something like Ryoushi 1, Shirou 143. But at least he made him bleed!
Where was the ending? Where was the conclusion? It was as if every story got its closure except for the main one. You know, the most important one, the one everyone is supposed to care about? Otohime and Usami made up. Tarou showed his monogamous love for Otohime. Even Neko-san redeemed himself for his inaction 3 years ago, a plot thread that was literally introduced halfway into this episode. Shirou? He’s still at large, in charge of Onigashima High School, able to strike at will. And Ryoushi is still as fearful as ever at being seen, which ruined a perfectly good moment between him and Ryouko at the end.
The one positive from this is that it leaves room for an episode about Majo, still my favorite of the cast (at least, looks-wise. Otohime is probably my favorite for her back story, something with which I empathize). But with the preview shot for and the title of the next episode – The Girl Who Didn’t Sell Matches But Was Still Poor – doesn’t make it seem like she’ll be the star. Then again, who knows; if nothing else, Ookami-san and Seven Companions has done a good job mixing various fairy tales together.
I really like the composition in this shot. Even these two got back together in the end.
I wrote last week that I felt more positive about this show than at any other point in the series. I had a feeling, given J.C. Staff’s track record, I might end up eating those words. But I had no idea it would be this bad. This was literally a swing from the zenith to the bottom in the course of one episode. I don’t know what the show could do at this point to salvage what’s left of itself – maybe have the narrator be the only voice for the entire episode? – so we might as well close the books on this one. Ookami-san and Seven Companions was a pedestrian show that showed flashes of brilliance when it emphasized its unique setting, but was far too comfortable with being plain old conventional.
You’re so right and it’s so sad. I kept wanting Ookami-san to be a really, really good show because they have such good character design in both art and personality. But in the end they failed to rise above “amusing” and so the only word to follow “anticlimactic” is “disappointed”.
I gave it chance after chance after chance. There was magic in the first episode, magic that was kind of replicated at a few points along the show. I kept waiting for it to shine again. But there is literally a time limit to these kind of things. One can only wait for so long before you look back and have to realize that what you were waiting for should have already happened by now.
I can see ur point but just because it doesn’t live up to ur expectation doesn’t make it a bad series. Please if your going to write a review please refrain from using ur expectations of the series and whether it lives up to it or not as making it good or bad.
A review is quite literally someone’s opinion. If someone doesn’t feel a series lives up to expectations, then that is a perfectly valid platform for criticism. One person’s negative review doesn’t necessarily mean a series is terrible, but it does mean it is not for everyone, and it is an opinion which needs to be represented.
But to review something you need to be unbiased n watch without expectations. Because otherwise you just sound like an upset fan rather then a reviewer
I’m sorry to say, there’s no such thing as an unbiased viewer. Really, there’s no one in the world without bias. We are the sum product of our experiences, and as a result, any time we give an opinion it will be colored by those experiences.
If someone truly unbiased existed, they shouldn’t be writing reviews. They should be sitting on the Supreme Court.
First of all, let’s get one thing out of the way: this is not a review. I don’t review individual episodes. I consider that to be a pointless endeavor, akin to reviewing a chapter from a book or a segment of a movie. I write commentaries.
Second, I want to second Rakuen’s point, which is that reviews are inherently biased. That is the very purpose of a review: for a reviewer to present his biases, to lay them out in a way that someone reading can understand and perhaps be convinced by. But more to the point, no good reviewer believes that a work exists in a vacuum. To take a piece of work in isolation while ignoring everything surrounding it is as foolish as it is dogmatic.
All that said, the whole point is moot, because the expectations I was discussing were the expectations set by the show itself during its early episodes. What, you’re not supposed to judge a show by its contents?
Ookami-san looked so promising. If episode 12 doesn’t help at all, then damn the show was nothing but a walking advertisment for J.C.Staff’s other works, especially Railgun and Toradora.
And umm yeah, there’s no such thing as an impartial, fair viewer. A review is a person’s opinion. A blog is a collection of someone’s opinions about things. Editorials are opinions. So heck, almost everything is, or involves opinions. If you can’t take that Ren, then you’re the upset fan.