So the phenomenon that was Magical Girl Madoka Magica is finally over. From the start, many had compared it to Neon Genesis Evangelion with its genre subversion and psychological themes, and the ending provided plenty more fodder for this comparison. The final 2 episodes tried very hard to emulate great endings that had come before it, but, lacking the focus and cohesiveness of such works, it ended up merely stumbling its way across the finish line.

I was somewhat disappointed that Shaft didn’t take this opportunity to retool the 2 episode finale into a singular unit, as had been the case with the finale of Code Geass‘s first season. Episode 11 stood on its own with its own story arc, featuring some good action as Homura went all out against Walpurgis Night. And with the cliffhanger end, it was clear that these episodes were meant to be released a week apart.

But that’s not a knock against it. There’s nothing wrong with having the episodes structured like they were originally intended. It was just a missed chance for greatness. And so was the ending. Shaft was obviously swinging for the fences with this one, and though I wouldn’t say they struck out, at best, they managed a weak single.

A wholly unnecessary scene. This was about the point when Shaft's intentions became too transparent.

I have the belief that, for the most part, people are pretty good at telling when they’re being manipulated, and when one senses this, the compulsion is to push back. This is why people have a problem with melodrama – they don’t like it when they’re tricked into feeling things, instead of having the feelings come to them naturally. I know I don’t like it.

Instead of providing an ending that was simple and tightly held together, Shaft provided one that was a hodge podge of scenes clumsily thrown together, trying as best as it could to force its way to greatness. This is exactly what I meant when I wrote that Madoka Magica ran the risk of being crushed by the weight of its own narrative. Greatness comes effortlessly and naturally; it’s only after the fact that the viewer should be aware of how his emotions were toyed with.

A beautiful scene with which to close out the series. Homura's epilogue, I have absolutely no complaints about.

It was so obvious that Shaft was trying to make us feel a certain way, that, ironically, it achieved the exact opposite. This, despite that I liked most of what happened in the ending. Madoka’s wish of breaking the rules and going beyond the impossible (row row fight the power) was pretty cool. Was it a deus ex machina? Even though it literally introduced a god in order to tie things up, I don’t think it was, because it fit in well with the rest of the show. And the end result, with Madoka disappearing from existence, Homura the only one to remember her, still being a magical girl but fighting… things that aren’t witches, with the red ribbon in her hair and a bow as a weapon in remembrance of Madoka? Corny, yes, but also poignant and moving. Corny things became corny for a reason. The fact that the ending was not a perfect one, that magical girls still had to fight in order to save the universe from heat death, was much appreciated. It gave a happy but cynical end, by showing that Madoka couldn’t create a perfect world despite her godly power. She could only take away one specific source of despair in it. Yet destroying that one specific thing was something impossibly noble and beautiful.

But when it’s obvious that the events were there just to enable the Evangelion-esque conversation sequences, to bring back Kyoko and Mami for a final farewell, to bring back Sayaka to converse with Madoka, forgive Kamijou and Hitomi and to give her story closure, to have Madoka and Homura say goodbye half naked in the stars, there was an undeniable feeling of being manipulated. These scenes were supposed to be touching, but the smell of artificiality overwhelmed whatever goodness they had.

What a wonderfully moving scene... it would have been if it didn't seem completely forced. Again, unnecessary.

It certainly stole from the best, like Evangelion, Diebuster, and Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann had done so before it. But those works managed to take what they stole and seamlessly integrate with their own identities. Madoka Magica‘s ending threw together all the great things it stole, with little in the way of order or sense, forming a messy jumble of would-be great scenes. It was completely transparent in what it was doing, resulting in something that so clearly was meant to be great but wasn’t.

In fact, “thrown together” is an appropriate phrase to describe the entire last 3rd of the show. Whereas everything up to episode 8 had been carefully and lovingly constructed, forming a slow but exciting magical mystery thriller, the rest of the show was messy and cluttered, a collection of nicely done scenes and story elements in search for a common thread to tie them all together.

The ending could have achieved greatness by tying everything together, a pretty standard way for endings to do so. But many things were dropped and introduced at the convenience of the story. Madoka’s mother’s earlier advice about messing up was one of them, with the conversation they had in episode 11 serving no useful purpose (other than to show that’s Madoka’s mother is a really bad mother! You don’t let your kid run out into a supercell!). Same goes for shoehorning famous figures as being Magical Girls, as well as the 2001-esque aliens-made-humans-evolve plot element.

It was messy, it was all over the place, it was manipulative. I don’t want to go as far as to say that it was outright bad; I’ve seen plenty of bad endings, and this wasn’t one of them. Neither was it good, though. It was passable. And that’s alright. But certainly not up to the standard set by the show.

Series End

Now that it’s over, what exactly was Magical Girl Madoka Magica? At its best, it was a mystery/thriller that kept us hooked, pulling us along for an unforgettable, intense ride where every move mattered. At its worst, it was a jumble of great elements that didn’t tie together in a meaningful way. It was a show that peaked at the 2/3 way point and then stumbled the rest of the way, through the climax.

The common criticism that it suffered from underdeveloped characters was very true, and that was the issue that came to define the show’s success and failure. When it really delved into a character, her feelings, and her motivations, as in the case of Sayaka, it was a success, a sublime combination of writing, directing, and pacing into which you simply couldn’t help get sucked. But when it tried to force drama with characters with whom the show had not allowed you to form a connection, as in the case of Homura or the eponymous Madoka, it faltered.

At least the art was great throughout, even though even that weakened a bit in the last third, with the craziness of the witches’ realms not being as prominent or as crazy. The cinematography, though, I have no complaints with. Same goes for the music which, even though it took me a bit to warm up to, was perfect for setting the mood of this dark and somber show. Too bad Claris’s opening theme Connect and Kalafina’s ending theme Magia, along with their respective animation sequences, were just passable.

Now this was a good scene, both emotionally affecting and visually stunning.

Greatness, Manufactured

Perhaps it’s a shame that the end is so much more important than the middle or the start, but that’s simply the nature of the beast when it comes to fiction. And Madoka had a start and middle that was about as good as it comes in the world of TV anime. But it could only do so much in the face of the weight of the disappointing final third.

It will rightfully be remembered as the incredible phenomenon it was, and for the absolutely thrilling ride it provided. But, years from now, will it sit at the same table as the rest of the greats? Well, that sort of greatness must come naturally; it can’t be manufactured.

Though the show ended on a low note, it's hard not to feel emotional seeing this, knowing that it's all over. It certainly did many things very well.

So Magical Girl Madoka Magica has been delayed indefinitely (a Shaft show being delayed near its finish? Say it ain’t so!), or at least until some time in April. But no hard dates as of yet. Which I guess gives us some extra time to step back and reflect upon the ride it has provided us so far.

Below is a chart of my reactions to each episode. Bigger is obviously more positive.

I remember going into the show with cautious optimism, which I guess is the way I go into any show that has so many big names behind it and receives so much hype. As you can see, the first 2 episodes didn’t wow me, but neither did they disappoint me. They just… were. Typical urban fantasy stuff, with a distinctive and compelling art style.

Obviously, then episode 3 happened. Killing off Mami was a move that I greatly respected. As I wrote in my post, it put a serious tone on the rest of the show. And the moment of Mami’s death was wonderfully directed, fully conveying the horror of what had occurred.

I'd buy it. Seriously, someone make this thing so that I can give them my money.

Episodes 4 and 5 were a bit slow, but Kyoko was a welcome and surprising addition to the cast. The reveal at episode 6 was well done, and though it lacked the power of Mami’s death, it made the setting feel even more stark. Getting one’s soul removed and becoming a zombie is no laughing matter.

Episodes 7 and 8 played on that to great effect. Sayaka’s downfall was the most well done part of the show. It was handled in a believable and entertaining manner, with each step in her downward spiral lovingly laid out in front of us to enjoy. The insanity at the end of episode 7 was beautiful, and the double reveal at the end of episode 8 capped off what was the best episode of the show so far.

Then we had episode 9, for which I guess it was just unfair to try to follow up 8. It could have been done much better. Kyoko’s death wasn’t handled poorly, but it did feel forced at times. It was a convenient way to get rid of two of our favorite characters in one shot, but it paled in comparison to Mami’s death 6 episodes back.

At least episode 9 gave us plenty of Sayaka/Kyoko fanart. Hopefully they're together where they are now. ;_;

And speaking of convenience, that’s pretty much exactly what episode 10 was for. Its reveal, the biggest reveal of them all, may have been telegraphed since the 1st episode, but it was handled appropriately, making it pretty impactful. In fact, perhaps it had too much impact. Anime has never been known for being subtle, and this surely wasn’t. It was beating us over the head with how Homura had been beaten over the head by fate.

I do like having Homura as the gun-toting badass magical girl.

To the show’s credit, none of the reveals have been twists. That is, they didn’t achieve their impact mainly through shock value or surprise. Rather, if there’s anything to criticize about them, it’s that they were too obvious. Everything fell too neatly into place. It’s just that the execution has been so top class that it’s been a joy to watch. Even when I think some things should have been done better.

And that’s been the story of Magical Girl Madoka Magica so far. When you dig into the details, things start to break down. Kyubey’s explanation about entropy just falls flat and gives a needlessly physics based explanation to a fantasy story. Kyoko’s death seemed wholly unnecessary, even if it had been telegraphed like crazy in the episodes leading up to it. And the introduction of the Groundhog Day time loop for Homura was jus as unnecessary.

Always read the fine print. Always.

But it all managed to work. It’s a testament to the overall direction of the show. Cinematography and music have been top notch throughout (even if it took me a while to warm up to the music). The radical shifts in art style have been used very well with the story itself, besides just looking pretty. Every scene has felt purposeful and deliberate. It has created a work that has the pacing just right, a mystery story that has kept us hooked step by step, baiting us with little bits here and there, steadily building up to… well, where we are now. Only the climax and ending are to follow.

And so we enter the final sixth of the show, the last 2 episodes. I don’t know how the whole release schedule deal will pan out, but I’m kind of hoping that this delay gives Shaft a chance to retool the episodes to fit as one 2-episode unit that are released quickly back to back. It’s a trick a lot of US TV shows use, and Code Geass‘s first season used it to good effect. Neon Genesis Evangelion‘s final 2 episodes also went together, though they weren’t released back to back. As I’ve said before, Magical Girl Madoka Magica has been a fun, gripping, tight ride so far. It hasn’t been without its missteps, but with the final bits to go, thanks to the strength of its direction and narrative, this is a show that genuinely has the opportunity to be one of the best, as long as it doesn’t get crushed by the weight of its own narrative. And there aren’t enough shows like that.

And I leave you off with a scene much sweeter than we're likely to see in the episodes to come.

The reveals are coming hard and fast now, and the one in this episode somehow managed to top everything else so far. It was a move that many had predicted from the start, and a perhaps disappointingly convenient tool for explaining Homura’s story up to now. Still, the episode was filled with solid action and moving stand alone scenes and did its job of teaching us Homura’s story and letting us feel for her.

So this little twist gave Shaft carte blanche to do anything it wanted with the characters and story (in fact, I’d bet that that was one of the main reasons that the twist was used in the first place), and at the very least, it made for some good fanservice. Much like in doujin, we got to see various “what if” scenarios play out starring our favorite characters, without worrying about the continuity of the main story. Plus, there was something deeply satisfying about finally seeing Madoka as a magical girl, fighting and protecting as she had longed to do throughout the show.

So her weapon was the bow and arrow, after all. Now, will we get to see her use it in "our" timeline?

One thing I liked was the brevity with which each loop was shown, and how much variety there was in them. Homura woke up, she fought along with some of the girls, failed on Walpurgis Night, tried again. There was no dilly dallying around. And Shaft clearly had a lot of fun with what they were allowed to do in the loops. One of my favorite moments was Homura shooting Madoka after Walpurgis Night. The shaded zoom out followed by a simple flash as her gun went off, with Homura’s pained screaming going on the whole time. The scene leading up to it would have fit well as the ending to a separate story about the two girls. Of course, that part was the only glimpse we saw, but the Groundhog Day loop let us forgive the lack of development up to that powerful climax and just accept the moment for what it was.

Another thing I really liked seeing was Mami losing her head in the loop in which they had to kill the witch Sayaka. Who would have thought that she would turn out to be so unstable and suicidal? I mean, her magical girl wish was to live, so of all of the girls, you’d think she would want to keep going. But that’s what’s convenient about the Groundhog Day loop, isn’t it? You’re allowed to have crazy, out-there situations that don’t necessarily jive with what’s been shown thus far.

The progression of Homura's facial expression during each reset. She flinches in the 1st 2, is just plain distraught in the 3rd, and isn't even shown awakening in the last.

Maybe I sound very positive about this reveal, but I’m actually not. Introducing the time loop is a cheap way of explaining everything up to now. Again, it gives Shaft carte blanche, and that power is a double edged sword. It’s just too powerful a tool and can result in a deus ex machina. So that they decided to use it annoys me somewhat. I would have preferred a more typical back story for Homura, in which her cynicism slowly crept into her over time in a linear progression, instead of it bashing her over the head through the loops. Alternatively, since Shaft decided to go the route of the Groundhog Day loop, I wish they had really run with it as is the norm for uses of the loop, that is, that Homura had to suffer through hundreds, thousands, or even millions of loops to get to where we are now, instead of just 5.

At the same time, I always say, it’s never the concept, always the execution. And this episode was executed very well. Not amazing, mind you, but it did its job of letting us see Homura’s character development, and it had some awesome action and heartfelt scenes, to boot. It convincingly presented Homura as a gun toting badass magical girl, and that’s pretty cool. The cinematography, art, and music were top notch as usual. I can’t take anything away from that.

Homura performs the quintessential badass move, walking away from an explosion calmly without looking.

So, and I’m repeating what I wrote last week, the stage is set for the finale, to defeat Walpurgis Night and save Madoka. We know that this will be the last loop Homura has to suffer, because this is the loop that this show has followed. I’m really pulling for a happy end, because that would be just so unexpected at this point. And it would be darn hard to pull off well, which would make it all the more satisfying if it did. There are a lot of traps the story can fall into in these next 2 episodes, and it will be fun to see how Shaft navigates around them.

What made this scene for me was Homura's unending scream. So much pain.

After last week’s intense reveals and Sayaka’s quick spiral into despair, we were treated to an episode that was decidedly more relaxed in its pacing. The reveals came calmly this time instead of as big hits, with Kyubey finally explaining his motivations to Madoka and Kyoko rediscovering herself in the face of Sayaka’s transformation. As usual, the pacing was spot on, and the development of Kyoko’s character was handled wonderfully, but the way the climax played out left a bad taste in my mouth, ending an otherwise good episode on such a sour note that this may be the worst episode in the show so far.

It’s not that Kyoko’s sacrifice was too predictable. It was predictable, but that in itself is not a problem, as the show wasn’t playing it as a twist. Nor was her decision to do it unbelievable. The show did a fine job of turning villain into heroine through bits of character development in the past 3 episodes. Her wistful comment this episode about why she became a magical girl to begin with – and how Sayaka reminded her of that – had impact. It was just as clear to her as it was to us, the audience, that she was Sayaka’s foil, and seeing that girl’s downfall made her regret the loss of her innocence. Her desire to find redemption by saving Sayaka felt genuine.

Rather, the trouble was that what should have been a crowning moment of glory turned not to be, due to the poorly directed action of the climax. The necessary sense of danger and urgency just wasn’t there. I was ready to believe that Kyoko would give her life in this battle, but it should have been done under a truly dire situation, when no other option presented itself. Though the battle did a good enough job of showing Sayaka as dominating over Kyoko, there was no immediate sense of danger at her moment of sacrifice. It could have been a dramatic, powerful moment, capping off Kyoko’s journey for redemption with a truly selfless and needed sacrifice. Instead, we got a bit of yuri subtext which (though pretty damn cool) framed her death as one out of romantic love for Sayaka rather than of out of a desire to redeem herself for her crimes by aiding Sayaka. As I mentioned above, the latter was very well developed over the past few episodes. The former was jarring and, more importantly, unnecessary for justifying her sacrifice. There was a perfectly good reason to have Kyoko sacrifice her life! Why not use it!?

First of all, HAWT. Second of all, was that really necessary?

As for Kyubey’s reveal of his origin, I don’t like it, but I’ll allow it. I’m wary of stories using science fiction mumbo jumbo – especially “fancy” things like quantum mechanics, chaos theory, or, in this case, thermodynamics – to explain its fantasy. It’s just magic; by watching this show, we’ve already accepted a certain level of suspense of disbelief, and trying to rationalize it further just takes away from the mystique. And, as was the case here, when the science is wrong, it flat out sounds stupid.

To be fair, the science wasn’t completely wrong. Kyubey was conflating entropy (loss of usable energy) with the actual loss of energy (which is impossible), but perhaps he was simplifying things to explain to a middle schooler. Even so, the time scale he’s talking about – the point at which the universe will be so dominated by entropy that energy might as well not exist – is just too damn long to care about. Even if Kyubey’s race is as old as the universe, the time it would take for this to happen is several orders of magnitude longer than that. It’s a bit ridiculous to accept that his race thinks in that long a time scale.

Looking very predator there, Kyubey.

Of course, Kyubey’s race is supposed to be unfathomable to us. Their inability to have emotion, I thought was good enough to explain his manipulative and disattached personality up to now. I don’t think the show was trying to use it as an excuse to forgive him for his actions, because it doesn’t. He’s still a psychopath. It merely served as an explanation of his reasoning, which will help us understand his moves in the future.

For example, his manipulation of Kyoko to kill her and Sayaka at the same time. His giving Kyoko false hope was a really clever move to set up the situation to force Madoka to become a magical girl. The kind of cold and calculated move fitting for such a villain. Given that he’s the villain, of course, it’s also probably a good idea to take what he says with a grain of salt. He might not state outright lies, but there are ways to lie without doing that.

"Are you human!?" "No. And neither are you." Fucking badass.

So with 3 out of our 5 heroines disposed of, all of the pieces are in place. Walpurgis night looms ahead, which will be a challenge too much for Homura to handle alone, and the only possible source of help being Madoka. This should remind you of Madoka’s dream in the very first episode, in which Homura was shown fighting alone against… something, with Kyubey telling Madoka she could help her by becoming a magical girl. Was that dream indeed a glimpse into her future? I didn’t like that conjecture from the beginning, and I still don’t, but it seems quite likely to come true. But excepting the little misstep at the climax of this episode, this show has proven that it can execute on its story very well, regardless of its contents. After all, 2 very early conjectures came true in the previous episode in a truly awesome way. And when the show finally got around to character development the last few episodes, it has done it incredibly well. We’re entering the final act now. Madoka is still not a magical girl. I wait anxiously to see what comes.

Going out with a smile, that's so typical, Kyoko. You and your sugary voice will be missed ;_;

Very exposition heavy episode this week, but that doesn’t mean we didn’t see some epic shit go down. Kyoko’s back story went into Key territory in its forced drama, but the way it was told was visually entertaining, and it added depth to her character. And we were finally served with some genuine character development in Sayaka as she came to terms with the fact that she’s a “zombie.”

The stars this week? Kyoko, Sayaka, and… Hitomi? You know, the girl who’s hanging around Madoka and Sayaka? Her crush on Kyosuke came out of left field, but still wholly believable given the middle school setting. What was unbelievable was the maturity with which she handled it, telling Sayaka outright that she was willing to give Sayaka the 1st chance. Now, I’ve talked with someone on SCCSAV who thinks maybe this was a ruse by her to play matchmaker for Sayaka and Kyosuke, but I think that’s overthinking it. It’s just a straight up love triangle.

At least, it would be, if Sayaka believed she was capable of being loved. Nameless’s post comparing magical girls to child abuse victims painted the scene in which Sayaka cried in Madoka’s arms in an even darker light than it initially appeared. It’s a painful catch-22, isn’t it? Because she got her wish for Kyosuke granted, she no longer feels that she can have his love.

The pain that a magical girl has to bear... it's too much for one person. Also, I like that Sayaka used the z-word to describe herself.

Meanwhile, Kyubey offers her no consolation. In fact, the cold open showed him to be a sociopath, unable to sympathize with the girls’ horror at getting their souls sucked out. And literally torturing Sayaka to make his point. I feel that this might be Kyubey’s true nature; he’s not malicious, but he just can’t understand humans. His motivation is something that’s still up in the air, and his obsession with Madoka comes off far too strong, but hey, maybe he just wants a really powerful magical girl to take down witches. Still no reason to suspect him of ill intent.

Who does step in as a sort of a mentor to Sayaka is, surprisingly enough, Kyoko. Her explaining her back story was another thing that came out of left field given what we’ve seen of her so far, but it humanized her, letting us see her as more than just a villain but a victim as well. In fact, she’s the girl of whom Kyubey and Mami spoke when referring to a magical girl who wished for someone else only to have the wish backfire. And boy did it backfire! To the point that it had me rolling my eyes a bit, but hey, it wasn’t as overtly trying to manipulate our feelings as some of the shit we saw in Angel Beats! And the presentation really helped.

No fourth wall? In a Shaft show? Say it ain't so!

The paper cutouts during Kyoko’s flashback should remind you of the flashbacks from Bakemonogatari – Mayoi’s and Tsubasa’s back stories used this technique. But this show played with it by showing Kyoko actually holding the cutouts as she spoke, a visual metaphor for her verbal recounting of her past. It’s not a new trick, but it worked well in delivering the feeling of Kyoko telling her story to us. Also, the rundown church in which the scene took place was flat out gorgeous and fit in with the music by Yuki Kajiura better than any other setting in the show so far. The view of the dilapidated beauty served as a metaphor for the magical girls of this show and also reminded of the haunting settings from the Kara no Kyoukai movies.

Speaking of hauntingly beautiful, how about that final fight scene? Shaft is notorious for hiding cheap animation with its artistic style, and the silhouetted fighting did that quite well. We finally got to see Sayaka kick some ass, and the choreography and action direction overall were great! Beyond hiding the money-saving animation, the silhouetted fighting fit with the theme of the fight, which was Sayaka finally accepting her situation as a “zombie” and going mad. I had thought Kyoko was the one who had gone mad from the horrors of being a magical girl, but it looks like it was Sayaka! Then again, Kyoko is clearly Sayaka’s foil, and perhaps Sayaka has simply taken a step toward becoming another Kyoko.

Flat out badass and beautiful. This is the type of action scene I wanted to see Sayaka in.

It seems that each of the girls we’ve seen represents a different stage in the life of the magical girl. At one end of the spectrum, there’s Hitomi, who’s unaware of the existence of magical girls, and our heroine Madoka, who knows, but hasn’t become one yet. Then there’s Mami, who became a magical girl, didn’t know all the details fully and was still fairly idealistic, but got killed before she could progress any further. Sayaka, on the other hand, survived, and discovered the true horrors, and we got to see her go mad. Kyoko seemingly went through that phase as well, and now she’s a cynical, narcissistic, self-serving jerk. And at the end, we arrive at Homura, who has fully accepted her role, completely jaded by what she’s seen, but also fully committed to making sure that others don’t have to go through what she has. It’s a very sad progression, and so far, we’ve gotten to see Sayaka go from start to, well, where she is now.

Will Madoka be the one to break this seemingly inevitable downfall of magical girls? That’s the question in my mind, as we cross the halfway point in the show with our title character still not a magical girl. And showing no signs of wanting to become one, being present to both Mami’s death and Sayaka’s descent into madness. What will finally drive her into becoming one? What is the wish that she will deem so precious that she would be willing to go through what she knows is the hellish life of a magical girl? Part of me hopes that we will enter the final episode with her still not having turned, because the anticipation will have built to epic proportions by then. It’s still far too early to pass judgment on this show, but I haven’t had this much fun watching a TV anime episode to episode since The Tatami Galaxy last year. Which won our best TV Show (traditional) award for that year if you’ll recall.

Speaking of badass, Kyoko was that in this scene. Holding up another girl entirely by her collar? Awesome.

Another couple weeks, another worldview changing revelation. What else is new in Magical Girl Madoka Magica? Episode 5 wasn’t really inspiring, despite having some solid action, but combined with episode 6, it has been a solid pair of episodes in this show. The fantasy set up stage seems to be coming to a close here with conflict against our first major villain in Sakura Kyoko, and new questions join old ones as we see hints of what’s to come.

One question that has been present since the beginning and whose answer gets more and more intriguing as we learn more is, what’s the little fella’s motivation? At this point, with how Shaft has portrayed Kyubey’s actions, without his pleasant voice and reassuring words, he would clearly be a self serving, villainous figure. Hanging out with Kyoko before she gets into a (potentially) lethal fight with Sayaka? Pushing Madoka to make a wish during said fight? Then pushing Sayaka to perform some peer pressure on Madoka to achieve the same thing? One thing’s for sure: he really, very badly wants Madoka to become a magical girl.

That’s even without mentioning the creepy cold open to episode 5 in which he sucks out Sayaka’s soul through her breasts using his extended ears and puts it in her soul gem. Or his unnecessarily pulling Madoka into the fight between Sayaka and Kyoko at the end of episode 6. Then there’s his consumption of the grief seeds via that red mark, which he hand waves as just “being one of his functions.” He just purifies the evil dark power contained within? It’s hard to buy that he’s not getting some benefit out of this, given that magical girls have been shown to consume power from similar sources.

His unchanging smile gets creepier and creepier as we dig deeper and deeper into this world.

What is Kyubey after here? I stress time and again, there is no reason not to take Kyubey at his word. But with it being so obvious that Shaft is showing Kyubey as being overly pushy and depicting him with demonic imagery, I think it’s safe to say that Shaft wants us to think that there’s more behind Kyubey. Is he just after more grief seeds for himself, and he sees an incredibly powerful magical girl such as Madoka as a good means? Or is he after something more sinister?

A simple twist would be far too obvious, and a red herring would be far too easy. I want to think that our opinion of Kyubey will change at least a couple times before all is said and done.

Certainly, Kyubey’s off-hand comment about magical girls “always being surprised” at the discovery that they’ve been separated from their bodies makes him seem at least callous and insensitive. Like the type to use magical girls and throw them away, cycle after cycle. It was a bit of a surprise to me that Kyoko was taken aback, since she’s made out to be the hardened, cynical veteran, same as Homura, who already knew about the gems holding the magical girls’ souls. I wanted to think that Kyoko was someone so horrified by discovering the world of magical girls that she went psychotic. I guess she’s just a plain old power hungry bad guy. Oh well, at least she makes for quite the villain. Her threat to disable Kyosuke’s limbs permanently was wicked, exactly the kind of speech we want coming from a villain. Plus, she has fire in her eyes (yes, she – and the show – reminds me a lot of Shakugan no Shana. I’ll keep using that joke).

Flame Eyed... Kyoko? Ai Nonaka's voice is a pleasure to listen to, and combined with the art and writing, creates a great villain in Kyoko.

Besides Kyubey, Kyoko really was the star of the past couple episodes. I loved the DDR scene with her and Homura, starting with the shout out to the show’s OP and ending with her getting a perfect score before offering Homura a Pocky in the style of a cigarette (with how this show is playing out like a crime thriller, it was very appropriate). And there was one of Shaft’s favorite tools, the bullet time head tilt, in the middle, when she asked what Homura’s story was without missing a beat. Kyoko was being made to look really cool here, and it worked.

Her fight scene against Sayaka at the end of episode 5 was excellent as well. The use of recycled clips was distracting, especially since there was enough unique content in there to make a good fight scene! But, well, there was enough content in there to make a good fight scene. Kyoko’s oversized spear/multi-sectioned staff is badass, full stop. Such things are what I love about animated martial arts violence: the ability to have crazy, physically impossible, beautiful weapons. Unfortunately, Sayaka was a pushover, and her fighting hasn’t been much fun to look at. She needs to get in close with her sword instead of throwing them.

When combined with the knowledge gained at the end of episode 6, this image from the cold open to episode 5 becomes more... wicked.

What about the big reveal at the end of episode 6? So magical girls can theoretically move from body to body. That solves the whole aging problem. But that raises some major questions. How old is Kyubey anyway? How old is Homura, for that matter? How many bodies has she been through? Are magical girls like Roa, jumping from body to body as need arises? Maybe her first body was Joan of Arc? Mary Magdalene? Cassandra? Eve? More importantly, how will this new information come into play later in the show? In a fantasy work such as this, the writer doesn’t throw in such an element without the intent of using it. I would welcome some body switching hijinks. I could use something light hearted in this show (hey, Shakugan no Shana did that too!).

While on the topic of Homura, we finally got to see her teleportation powers clearly and in action, and that was pretty cool. Don’t get me started on why she did the whole “teleport a few meters at a time while running” bit instead of landing right on the truck (or why she painstakingly climbed the truck after catching up instead of, again, landing on top of it). For all the cool action in this show, some scenes test my suspense of disbelief with their stupidity. Sayaka pushing against Kyoko’s spear in episode 5 was also one of those.

This clash kind of pissed me off. Just tilt the sword 30 degrees and stab her instead of needlessly pushing against the spear, you twit!

Then there’s our eponymous (non) magical girl, Madoka. Hard to believe that we’ve almost reached the halfway point, and she’s still not a magical girl. Whodathunkit? The way she keeps getting hyped by Kyubey and Homura as a game breaker, I wonder if we won’t see her as a magical girl until the very end, under duress like Mami, in order to save something or someone. Or what if she never turns? Maybe the lesson is that by simply being herself, she was magical all along and just needed to click her heels 3 times! Yeah, that would suck.

Given everything Madoka has seen up to this point, who would blame her for not wanting to set foot into the monstrous world of magical girls? Yet she continues to do so despite lacking powers, because she cares about the safety of her friends. So like you’d expect a magical girl show to be, this is about the power of FRIENDSHIP and LOVE. Her nighttime conversation with her mother makes it clear that that’s what this show is going to go for. And to its credit, by putting these girls in tough situations and giving them life-altering and life threatening challenges, the show manages to make this boring message compelling.

It’s never the idea, it’s always the execution. So far, Magical Girl Madoka Magica has taken a very tired old premise and has executed wonderfully, especially with its consistently impressive art and pacing that provides slow burn punctuated by significant, memorable events. Again, because I don’t know much about magical girl shows, I’m staying away from the word “deconstruction.” But all that and the enormous amount of speculation aside, this is simply a fun, intriguing fantasy action show that tells its story very well. I can’t wait to see how the story will run its course and am eagerly looking forward to what else Shaft has in stock for when the Walpurgis Night that Homura mentioned comes.

Great end title card by Hajime Ueda, he of FLCL manga fame. He was also responsible for the ED art in Shaft's previous hit, Bakemonogatari.

So soon we’ll see the release of the 3rd episode of the massively (self) hyped work by Yutaka Yamamoto, Fractale. When the 1st episode came out, it receiveda a decidedly tepid response, and deservedly so. This was a Noitamina show. Yamamoto had staked his career on it. Yet there was pretty much nothing about it that was special. The 2nd episode only continued that trend. Indeed, this is a show we’ve already seen before.

By now, magical-girl-falls-into-boy’s-lap is a well established and rather overused genre in the world of anime. The girl isn’t always magical or even a real girl, and she doesn’t have to literally fall into the boy’s lap, of course, although she often does. But this is something that has gone way past being a mere trope and is a full-on cliche, not the good kind. And that’s exactly what Fractale is, with a dash of the bumbling-villain-trio for fun. The only thing that sets it apart is its interesting vision of the future, wherein people have all their needs taken care of and only interact through virtual avatars or surrogates of themselves from afar.

Or does it really set it apart? No, actually, it doesn’t, and not because the setting isn’t particularly original. In fact, the setting is quite compelling, if only for the fact that it’s one that’s unusual, even if it’s not new. The problem is, plenty of shows have already gone down this route. Anime, by its very nature of being animated, attracts settings that are fantastical. It’s no coincidence that the most popular franchises in anime – Evangelion, Gundam, Haruhi – are science fiction, or that fantasy is such an overrepresented genre in season after season of anime. You can make really cool, fascinating, compelling settings in anime.

But too often, these settings act as little more than backgrounds as the same interactions and stories that we’ve seen a thousand times before play out. At best, the settings serve as excuses to justify whatever magical powers the characters might have or encounter.

At least the official art lets us fantasize about what could have been...

For me, a recent perfect example of this problem is in the Index franchise. Academy City is a fascinating place, filled with neat bits of near futuristic technology and students studying and researching with academics the limits of supernatural power as set up in this science fiction world. The story, naturally, should play to the show’s unique strengths and explore this interesting concept, right?

No, the setting becomes an excuse to give people magical powers while Touma goes around shouting self righteous tripe while using his plothax fist against generic villains. Oh, and his superpower is to make everyone else normal. Throw in the magical-girl-falls-into-boy’s-lap cliche as well as a generic harem for good measure. The Railgun side show failed just as hard, except that it mainly consisted of a poorly conceived and executed story of friendship. These were just your typical harem and cute-girls-doing-cute-things shows, just with a neat science fiction fantasy setting behind them.

Why take this goldmine and insert the same old characters and cliches we’ve seen dozens of times before? Even in the same series, the MISAKA sisters and the Last Order arcs showed off that the show could be strong when it took its setting and ran with it. In those, the characters and their interactions weren’t just dropped in there but rather integral parts of the settings themselves. The plot actually went into some of the interesting details of the mechanics of the world and came out ahead thanks to it.

Why not make the protagonists a BADASS TOP LEVEL TELEKINETIC with a chip on his shoulder and a loli with (almost) 10,000 HIVEMIND SUPPORT instead of a boring self-righteous prick whose power is to make everyone else more boring, and a nun who's really good at remembering things and being hungry?

Another great example, perhaps a better one to which to compare Fractale due to their sharing the same studio as well as the type of setting, is last year’s Sora no Woto. The backdrop of the post-post-apocalyptic world, while not original, was certainly unusual, and provided plenty of potential for fun world building and exploration. Instead, what we got was cute girls doing cute things, punctuated by them saving nations from war through THE POWER OF LOVE AND MUSIC! Excuse me while I barf from merely remembering this horrible show.

Another example? Last year’s Ookami-san and Seven Companions. Funny and whimsical fantasy premise, torn down by being a typical boy-protects-tsundere story. While we’re piling on J.C. Staff, why not mention the 2nd season of Shakugan no Shana, which decided to eschew all the fun and exciting action from the 1st season and replace it with a typical run of the mill high school harem love comedy?

This is a problem that plagues even good shows. Katanagatari, for example, is a great show, the best of last year in the opinion of some, but the places where it faltered were those when Togame devolved into a typical tsundere moeblob, completely unfitting for the fantastical past setting. Thankfully, those times became less and less frequent as the show progressed, but when they happened, they distracted from the world of the show and reminded us of this stale, boring, and downright annoying character cliche that is so pervasive in anime today.

Here's a scifi/fantasy show that embraced its unique setting and built its story around it. It was pretty successful.

If I may anthropomorphize a bit, the way I see it is that these shows are not confident in themselves. They have these intriguing uncommon ideas, but they’re afraid of showing them off, lest they be rejected. So they put on their proverbial masks and instead of showing their true selves, they show what has been tried and true, dozens and dozens and dozens of times before ad nauseum, because that’s what people responded to in the past. Unfortunately, that’s how you create unoriginal, boring tripe like A Certain Magical Index or Sora no Woto.

A phrase I think of often is “ambitiously itself.” This refers to works that don’t fall into the traps mentioned above. They are confident about what they are, and, for better or for worse, they’ll go about doing their own thing without catering to what they think you want. Surely, this is a formula that can – and has, often – fail. It can create niche products that appeal to just a few. But it also has given rise to some of the greatest, most memorable works in anime. Look at a couple fairly recent huge science fiction successes The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya or Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann. They each had a clear vision for what they wanted to do and executed on them, using their unique settings to full effect. That is how they ended up in such high stature, that is how they found success.

So, what am I trying to say here? Certainly, not every science fiction or fantasy work needs to fully exploit its setting. In fact, it can be a lot of fun to see an otherwise normal piece of work take place with something fantastical as the backdrop. What determines the work’s quality, then, is the execution of the narrative itself, regardless of the setting. And that’s something true for all works. Simply having a fascinating world such as the one in Fractale or A Certain Magical Index or Sora no Woto is not good enough. In fact, it’s nothing. The actual story that takes place within must be compelling as well, and for the setting not to go to waste, the story must use it to shine in a way other works can’t.

Don't even get me started on the militant-anti-pervert-girl cliche. How does that even make sense in this kind of world?

What is sure to lead to mediocrity is to shove cliches we’ve gotten sick of years ago into the setting and to call it a day. In the end, A Certain Magical Index is just another supernatural harem show despite the really cool city in which it takes place. Sora no Woto is just another cute-girls-doing-cute things show despite it taking place in a post-post-apocalyptic world. And so far, Fractale is just another (genki) magical-girl-falls-into-boy’s-lap show, despite the post-scarcity science fiction setting. I’ve seen this show before. So have you. And we both know that it’s not something worth watching again.

Well, what do you know, looks like this show is going full on scifi fantasy. Last week, it was time travelers, this week, it’s aliens and ghosts. That’s not to say that this episode was driven by the scifi/fantasy elements. Rather, they were used mainly as convenient devices to facilitate the storytelling, much like in the previous episode.

That first half really didn’t have any business being as enjoyable as it was, but it was. I found it so funny because of my own incredulity at the situation being shown on screen. Hotori accidentally battling it out with aliens? Then Futaba bringing out a story of her own, with that fixing device? Was this show really going down this path? The things that happened weren’t actually all that funny, but they didn’t need to be. Just having Hotori really run into aliens was enough.

I’m reminded of the aliens in Pani Poni Dash! They were used as comic relief, shown to us only when convenient but rarely actually affecting anything in the main story. Similarly, if the aliens do show up again, I expect it to be in a similar context as in this episode, where they’re used for a gag instead of being drivers for the plot. Of course, there’s the issue that Futaba still has that alien fixing tool, which I hope will make some sort of appearance in the remaining episodes.

In most anime, this type of encounter, especially on a school rooftop, means only one thing. But this show isn't like most anime.

I’ve been noticing similarities between this show and The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya due to the non-chronologically told high school romance, the culture festival concert, and the scifi/fantasy elements of the past 2 episodes, and Futaba was definitely giving Haruhi vibes with her desire for an extraordinary life. It was ironic that Hotori, who is always the one to go on about her fantastical desires, whether it be to date her math teacher or to become a high school detective, was so down that she actually ran into aliens. Not sure what the deal is with that – though it was funny to see Futaba jump immediately to her period as the cause – I suppose this is meant to show us that despite all her quirks, Hotori is someone who does have a firm grasp of reality.

As for the 2nd segment focusing on the ghost of the head maid’s late husband, I didn’t think much of it. It was boring, likely because this was an all new character whose life and times we’ve never been privy to before. I suppose it was meant to be sweet that the head maid still prays/talks to her husband and leaves an offering each night, which gives us a bit more insight into her character, but she’s still not that interesting. One thing I did like about the 2nd segment was that it allowed the gag involving Sanada’s prayer, letting us see it for a 2nd time (shot-for-shot, I believe, though I didn’t bother to check), but realizing that the ghost of that old man was there the whole time. I was hoping that he would make a more meaningful comment about the follies and joys of youth instead of basically repeating the narrator’s line that gods must have it tough to grant such wishes.

Shaft uses one of their favorite cinematographic techniques - reflection - to good effect here, showing us the cat seeing both Sanada and the ghost.

With this episode, I’m reminded of Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei, a show that was pretty explicit about its lack of continuity, often ending its half- or third-episodes with irreversible events such as killing key or all main characters or destroying the world. Yet the Town Keeps Going does have continuity, but it has shown us that it’s comfortable with throwing in anything it wants at any time it feels like it, and it will find a way to make sure that it doesn’t affect the continuity.

The show is really living up to its name – yet the town keeps going. It hasn’t spent enough time developing any of the main characters, instead jumping back and forth between the various goings on of the town, giving side characters or meaningless events a too much screen time. The show has been brilliant when developing the relationships between the main characters, but it has fallen into a rut the past few episodes of just going through the motions. There are only a couple of episodes left in this series, and if it returns to the character development, it still could finish strong. Next episode’s title, Kon’s Summer of Tears, makes me hopeful that it will.

I really liked the final drawing for this episode. If the show stayed with the theme of this picture, it could have been much better.

Here’s the short version: whatever you’ve heard about it is true; it’s really that good. The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya is an absolutely stunning film that succeeds on every level. It does not make up for the horrible second season, but if you liked the first season of The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya and long for more of something of that caliber, this is a must-watch. You will not be disappointed.

If you actually want me to expand on those thoughts, proceed downward (note: like any proper review, this will contain no spoilers, although I will delve into story bits when necessary).

Let’s first make one thing clear: you must watch the TV show The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya in order to understand Disappearance. It is a sequel that depends on the first work, and there is just no getting around that. Of course, if you’re reading this, chances are high that you’ve already seen both seasons of the show. But in case you haven’t, make sure to watch it in the following order: 1. Season 1 in airing (not chronological) order, 2. Bamboo Leaf Rhapsody, 3. 1st and last episodes of Endless Eight, 4. The Sighs of Haruhi Suzumiya. Don’t make the mistake of watching all 8 episodes of Endless Eight.

As I write above, Disappearance is a direct sequel to the TV show, taking place in December of the protagonist Kyon’s first year at high school. The movie starts off with a brief set up to Kyon’s daily school life before he awakens one day to find that the entire world has changed around him, with him the only one aware of this. Haruhi Suzumiya has literally disappeared, and the one sitting behind him is, well, I won’t spoil that bit for you. Gone along with Haruhi is the should-be transfer student Koizumi Itsuki, and while Mikuru Asahina and Yuki Nagato are still at the school, the former doesn’t know him, and the latter is still the glasses-wearing girl, the sole member of the literature club whose room that Haruhi had taken over when starting the SOS Brigade in the show. That’s when the story really begins, as Kyon attempts to untangle the mystery of this sudden shift in timeline, to find the one responsible for it, and to figure out a way to go back.

Technically speaking, Disappearance follows Kyoto Animation’s tradition of being ridiculously well animated. It sometimes takes things a step too far, and the over-smoothness of some of the animations look unnatural, but all things considered, that’s a good problem to have. The cinematography is excellent throughout, reminiscent mostly of the anime original episode, Some Day in the Rain in its wide angle shots of rooms and long single-take cuts. The music is subtle and serves its purpose, though the use of new versions of the same tunes from the show will definitely please the fans. Unusual for a movie, it features an opening sequence, using the first season’s opening song, Bouken Desho Desho? – as if to help us forget about the epic failure that was the second season.

At the surface, the movie is just plain fun. It doesn’t lose the lighthearted sense of humor of the show. Most of the comedy is at the beginning, as Kyon first discovers the differences of this new world, leading to some very embarrassing situations. His run in with Mikuru involving the mention of her unique mole was particularly humorous. But the movie remains amusing throughout, revitalized when Haruhi finally makes her triumphant reappearance and acts in ways Haruhi only could. Throughout, Kyon’s narration is as dry and sarcastic as ever.

The scifi/mystery-thriller aspects are also well executed. The pacing is sublime, never lingering on any situation for too long, but also never feeling hurried or rushed. The movie keeps you hooked with its constant twists and turns, always leaving you in anticipation and maybe even a bit uncomfortable, but never frustrated. The fact that this movie is 163 minutes long may scare some away – it certainly scared me, though obviously not enough to keep me from watching it – but this is one that uses every bit of time it has to the fullest extent. There are some awesome OHSHI- moments as well, which would be criminal for me to spoil for you here.

But simple entertainment was never the hook for Melancholy. Though the show succeeded in that regard, what made it special was the subtle emotional and personal story taking place, specifically between Kyon and Haruhi. The show was ultimately a high school romance story of those two characters with the science fiction/fantasy comedy genre being used as a vehicle, and it was that layer that had made it, in my humble opinion, the best TV anime of this past decade. And Disappearance exploits that same method to be not just an enjoyable movie, but also a deeply meaningful and emotional one.

In that context, Disappearance is the story of a couple separating and realizing that they can’t go on without the other. It’s mainly told from one end, Kyon’s, but both parts are there. Perhaps for the first time ever, Kyon is actually honest to himself about his feelings regarding Haruhi and the SOS Brigade. Kyon performs far more introspection than he ever did in the show. Some of his internal scenes are reminiscent of the scene at the train crossing from the episode The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya Part 5, in which Haruhi explains to Kyon how she decided to be the way she was. Kyon’s inner struggles feel honest and heartfelt, and there is a powerful feeling of release and relief when he reaches epiphany.

But the movie takes things even a step further than the show and examines the relationship Kyon has with other members of the SOS brigade. Nagato is the one that receives the most focus. Perhaps the purpose of Endless Eight was to give us just a small taste of the pain that Nagato had to go through during the 15,000+ cycles she had to live through. And the conversation that Kyon has with Nagato at the very end of the movie simultaneously leaves us feeling ache and hope in the heart.

Indeed, one could interpret that the whole movie was about Nagato and designed to make us sympathize with a character whose physical manifestations of emotion have only been subtle up to this point. It makes us ponder, what issues face one who is effectively omnipotent, but at the same time is not allowed to make any decisions in how to use that power? How does she, quite literally a slave, deal with them? More than that, it makes us sympathize with her, to feel for her plight, and to want to fight for her. This is a somewhat common theme in the realm of science fiction, and Kyoto Animation presents it to us in a way that can only be presented in the world of Haruhi Suzumiya. I don’t consider that to be the main focus of the movie, but it is undoubtedly a key element of it that is integral to making it as powerful as it is.

The other members get their moments too, though they are mainly there for fanservice. An adult Asahina gets to spend some time alone with Kyon and reminisce about her fun days. And Koizumi, the one who has always seemed easygoing and bright shows us a small glimpse into the pain and heartbreak he must experience due to his position. Besides the members of the SOS Brigade, Kyon’s friends Taniguchi and Kunikida get plenty of the screen time they couldn’t get in the show.

All in all, The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya is an amazing film. Don’t let its near 3-hour run time or the bad taste from season 2′s Endless Eight scare you off. If you are lucky enough to live near one of the places it is showing in theaters, go see it. Does it make up for the debacle of Endless Eight? No, but nothing can. This movie comes as close as possible, though, and reminds us of why we first fell in love with the world of Haruhi in the first place. In not only recapturing the magic of the first season of The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya but expanding upon it, Disappearance truly is a marvelous achievement.

I’m not much one for attaching numbers to reviews, but, for what it’s worth, I give it 5 out of 5 stars, a perfect 10/10, A+, etc. This is the best anime movie I’ve seen since… well, Evangelion 2.22, which I saw earlier this year. So that’s actually not saying much. But this is a movie that easily ranks right along with it, far above anything else in the past decade. Melancholy showed us that Kyoto Animation was capable of creating anime that was not just entertainment but also deeply emotional pieces of work. Disappearance proves to us that that wasn’t just a flash in the pan, and they are very capable of doing it again.

Now, to get them to stop adapting banal 4-koma or vapid visual novels and keep making anime based on award winning novels…

Notes

• I watched this film at its screening last Friday at the New York Anime Festival. I also made a post on the cosplay I saw at the festival.
• Disappearance was originally released to Japanese theaters on February 6, 2010. The DVD and Bluray of the film will be released in Japan on December 18, 2010. The film has been licensed by Bandai Entertainment and is currently set to be released on DVD and Bluray in the US sometime in spring 2011.
• Given the technical excellence of the film, I recommend that you avoid watching the camrip that is floating around and rather wait for the movie proper to be available.
• All art contained in this review are official art by Kyoto Animation from various sources.

For several episodes now, we were led along thinking that the elimination of the nobles was going to be some big event. This episode made it perfectly clear that this show’s heroes have far bigger fish to fry by basically glossing over the execution of some two hundred people in seconds. Instead, events made it perfectly clear that the plot has already moved on to the upcoming conflict between Roland and Gastark. Unfortunately, this upcoming conflict doesn’t seem any more interesting than the last.

Setting aside their differences for now.

As disappointing as the whole slaughter scene was, we at least confirmed one thing. Miran Froaude is one hell of a calculating bad ass. For him to plan the assassination of his family members, from the age of 5, shows that he has ice running through his veins. However, as soon we were led to believe that Miran was all but invincible, the show completely pulls a 180. With the introduction of yet another pink haired character (who we later learn is from Gastark, along with the pink haired siblings), we see that Miran isn’t really all that powerful, and that there is another legendary relic with basically the same type of power as Miran’s ring.

Reaching for second base.

Having Clough save Miran seemed like it came a little out the blue, but it did underscore how the situation in Roland has changed. Up until this point Miran and Clough have had nothing but disdain for each other. But now, it seems as though their proverbial “shit is on hold”, until they deal with a greater foe. While I am still hoping that we will eventually get to see Miran and Clough duke it out mano y mano, seeing Miran having to thank Clough for rescuing him was fairly gratifying. On another note, I got the feeling that there was some strange vibes between the two, but I decided to bite my tongue in this case and not make any yaoi jokes.

Yet another pink haired character.

With the revelation that Gastark is the nation causing all the trouble up north, and that all these pink haired characters hail from said nation, it feels as though we are watching the wrong show. Kuu and Sui seem like they are infinitely more competent than Ryner and Ferris, and with nothing of note ever happening in Roland it feels as though we are focusing on the wrong characters.

Lucile is still around.

Of particular note, this episode also featured the return of two characters who have been MIA for some time now. While Lucile’s presence is a constant, it was nice to see that he still keeps tabs on Sion. However, the more important character introduction, in my opinion, was that of Kiefer Knolles. From episode 4, we know she has been traveling the continent for some time now. Her knowledge could prove useful, given that much of the main cast seems to have little to no knowledge of the events in the northern part of the continent. Her reemergence may be what this show needs to wake up from a rather dull couple of episodes, as her character was one of the most interesting thus far, despite her limited screen time.

After six or seven episodes of Sion contemplating his next move, we finally get to see him address the anti-king movement. And what does he do? He gives everybody allied with him promotions. Now while there may be some grand master plan at work here, I was expecting something a bit more exciting to happen. In fact, it seems all this episode did was remind us of the various plot lines introduced in the past few episodes, but tried to make it seem like something new.

I will shake my fist, but not actually do anything. Just like every other politician.

Let’s be clear, if I have to hear Miran Froaude talk about sweet honey one more time, without actually doing anything, I will drop this series. I really don’t know what else to say about the opening third of the episode. Aside from a short description about increasing warfare on the continent, caused by the aggression of Gastark, we have heard all of this before. In recent weeks I have tried to guess the origins of the pink haired siblings, and while Gastark would be my number one guess at this point, I’m not going to bother as this show will probably just introduce a new nation next week. Fortunately, the rest of this episode was fairly interesting, though each of the subsequent scenes offered something different.

It seems like every episode has the exact same shot of this guy.

The last half of the episode focused on Ryner and Ferris trying to save a young Alpha Stigma user from nameless villains inflicting cruel and unusual punishment on the boy. While the dynamic duo eventually rescues the kid, there was nothing in this episode that we haven’t seen before. Ryner used his Alpha Stigma to acquire a new magic ability, Ferris’ skills varied as the situation called for it, Ryner moped over being an outcast, the magic knights died, etc.

Even the episode’s most important point, in which Ryner came to the conclusion that he is more complete with Ferris by his side, seemed rehashed. It didn’t help that this development had absolutely no build up to it. While it seems like the kid they rescued may play some sort of part further down the road, his introduction may herald in a new era of Ryner being too emo for his own good. On a positive note though, I thought the fight scene in this episode was the best yet in this series.

There was absolutely no build up to this moment, which lasted all of two seconds.

Perhaps the only intriguing development from this episode involved the only guy with a normal name in this series. After getting a brief recap of a previous episode from Milk, in which she explained she was completely outmatched by Ryner, only to immediately reverse her position we got to the real purpose of the scene. In a short discussion between Miller and Luke, who from the preview looks like he might actually have some real power, we learn that Milk can’t stay in Roland as she could end up a victim of the upcoming political upheaval.

Thankfully, this scene seems like it clears up a lot of things in this series. Now, I’m not trying to be sexist, but it doesn’t seem like Milk has that much ability, and furthermore it seems like the whole taboo breaker squadron is a farce. Instead, it now seems like Milk’s crew’s real purpose is to act as her babysitting unit and to protect her from any real harm. This is all speculation, but it’s just too hard to believe that Milk has any real power.

Apparently, she is somewhat important.

From the preview for next week, it looks like the much talked about purge in Roland may finally happen, but to be honest I’m not holding my breath. This show seems like it is doing whatever it takes to drag out its story, so I wouldn’t be surprised if nothing of note happened in the next episode either.

In general, I wasn’t that impressed with this episode. It wasn’t that Ferris, Ryner, or any of the other main cast weren’t interesting (they were), but I just couldn’t force myself to care about any of the side plots. I mean, was I supposed to care that Fiole was murdered? The last time he had any real screen time was in the first episode and he was never going to be a main character anyways. I found myself even more apathetic when it came to the citizens of Imperial Nelpha.

Aside from Dango, it seems that sex is all she thinks about.

Though I didn’t really care that Fiole was murdered, the show has made it clear that it is willing to kill off people without hesitation. Whether or not that translates to important characters kicking the bucket, Book of Bantorra style, remains to be seen, but this anime does have its fair share of blood thirsty characters. If nothing else, Fiole’s death saved us from hearing more about Sion’s mundane tax planning problems. Unfortunately, this episode’s Sion centric story didn’t reveal anything we didn’t already know since the first episode. The other part of the episode featuring Ryner and Ferris wasn’t that much better. Save the comedic portions, the duo met Toale, a disowned heir to the Nelphan throne, and the rest of the episode’s focus was showing how good of a guy he is. It wasn’t the dullest thing I’ve ever watched, but it certainly wasn’t exciting.

If I wanted to hear about taxes, I would be working.

As indifferent as I am to Fiole’s death, I must say that I find Miran Froaude to be one of the show’s most intriguing characters after just one episode (though I think he made short appearance in episode 1). The thing I love about this guy is that he just oozes evilness, despite his ridiculous get up. His whole dark side speech along with the music playing in the background would seem to seal the deal. But all these not so subtle clues lead me to believe that he may not be so evil after all. In fact, I’m getting a sort of Paul von Oberstein from the Legend of the Galactic Heroes feeling from this guy in that /SPOILERS/ we may go throughout the entire series waiting for him to betray Sion, but in the end all he really cares about is his job, and maybe even a puppy, too /SPOILERS/. Likewise, there will likely be a lot of tension between him and Sion’s other generals, who seem to be do-gooders.

Seriously?

If I had to pick one highlight in this episode, and this series, it continues to be the interactions between Ryner and Ferris. Remarkably, I finally noticed something that is, with 20/20 hindsight, fairly obvious from the first four episodes. Ferris’ personality in episodes 1 and 5 is markedly different than the others that focused on the past. Though the pervert joke is only two episodes old you can see that the general tone in Ferris’ delivery from when they first met in episode 4 is vastly different from what it was in this and the first episode. I got the sense that being in foreign country far away from the influence of Lucile she may be a little less stiff than she would be otherwise. Additionally, I’m sure that hanging around Ryner for a while may have also contributed to her personality change. That leads me to my next point, which is to question the time frames introduced in this episode and the first, and to ask how long Ryner and Ferris have been traveling.

Ferris' beauty obligates me to include this picture

Looking back to the first episode, I am somewhat confused by the two different timelines. In one part of the first episode Sion saves Fiole, and in the other, Ryner and Ferris are fighting the rock monster. However, the Ryner/Ferris part of this episode didn’t tie up the loose ends from the first episode. Could this episode’s Ryner/Ferris story have taken place before the first episode’s Ryner/Ferris story? If so, I don’t understand why the story is so poorly organized. If it isn’t, I really don’t understand why we can’t get more continuity between episodes.

Anyway, it looks like this was the first in a multi episode arc, so I’m not really that upset at the lack of action in this episode. In fact, I don’t really mind when an entire episode is devoted to political intrigue, but it needs to be intriguing. If Sion’s only opposition for the entire series turns out to be the weak anti-king movement, this show will suffer. As unlikely as that scenario is, I would like for something exciting to happen in Roland.

After much delay and, depending on where you hang around, much hype, the 50 minute OVA Black Rock Shooter was finally released yesterday, July 24. Despite the solid visuals and music, the poor pacing and storytelling make this an anime that I can’t recommend, even to die hard fans of Vocaloids or Supercell like myself. You’re better off just waiting for the soundtrack and seeing some of the highlights.

For those who don’t know that much about Vocaloids or Supercell, here’s a brief introduction to Black Rock Shooter. Ryo, the only musician in the now professional band Supercell, got his start uploading his songs sung by Hatsune Miku onto Nico Nico Douga. One of his most popular ones, perhaps second only to Melt, was Black Rock Shooter, a song that he had written based off of a picture drawn by an artist who goes by the name of Huke. It was uploaded in June of 2008. You can see the original video with English subtitles on Youtube.

Some time since then, anime studio Ordet decided to pick it up and to create a 50 minute OVA based on the song – which itself was based on a picture. It was originally supposed to be released in September 2009, but it got pushed to Spring 2010, then again to Summer 2010. And yesterday, on 7/24, it was finally released, for free on DVDs that came with the September issue of Hobby Japan. There are a couple other magazines will also have the DVDs packed for free.

An iconic shot from the original Nico Nico Douga animation, rendered in the anime.

One of the biggest questions I had going into this was what the story would be like. After all, the OVA is ultimately based on an image, and the lyrics to the song don’t exactly build up a cohesive world. Well, contrary to the more fantasy oriented images associated with this production, Black Rock Shooter tells the story of a middle school first year named Mato Kuroi (Kana Hanazawa) and her friendship with classmate Yomi Takanashi (Miyuki Sawashiro). The 2 become friends on their first day of school and grow closer throughout their first year despite their being in different sports clubs (basketball for Mato, volleyball for Yomi). About half way through, the basketball team manager Yuu (Kana Asumi) gets into the mix as well. The main conflict manifests itself as jealousy when Mato and Yuu get put into the same class for their second years while Yomi gets put into a different class, stuck outside looking in.

Interspersed in this story are brief scenes of the eponymous Black Rock Shooter – an obvious stand-in for Mato – chasing and fighting against Dead Master – Yomi’s stand-in – in the dark fantasy world most associated with the work. The action scenes are short and inserted fairly evenly throughout the OVA, and it’s only at the end when Yomi disappears that a clear connection between the 2 settings is shown.

Dead Master looks down at Black Rock Shooter, both about to fight.

The core problem with Black Rock Shooter lies with the storytelling. The pacing is horrid, with pretty much nothing happening in the first half. 50 minutes is longer than a TV show episode, but it’s still not a long time, and you simply can’t waste that much time with the set up. The more action packed fantasy scenes inserted throughout that half didn’t do anything to help the pace, because they felt unrelated – at best, only loosely connected – to the main story in the real world.

The first clear indication that the 2 worlds are connected, about 2/3 of the way into the OVA.

On that note, the story just doesn’t tie together. There is a fundamental disconnect between the scenes in the fantasy world and in the real world. There are hints at how the events in the two settings relate to each other, but it is only at the end that a clear connection is made, and even then, the explanation is unsatisfactory. Clearly, the fantasy scenes were meant to serve as a metaphor for the emotional conflict taking place in real life between Mato and Yomi, but the rest of the connections, including the reason for Yomi’s disappearance or her blank text to Mato at the end, are left as exercises for the viewer. Same goes for the opening fight between Dead Master and Black Rock Shooter, which clearly happened before the events of the show. Having an open ended story up to the viewer’s interpretation is one thing, but this is either laziness or ineptitude by the director.

The orange, yellow desert background contrasts with the dark green castle background of the other fantasy scenes when this character appears. That's about all this character does before she disappears.

Heck, there is even a 3rd character in the fantasy who never does anything. Perhaps the entire purpose of this OVA was to set up a series. At least, that’s what it feels like with its open threads and the cliffhanger-style ending.

Even the fantasy scenes, while containing entertaining, visceral action and beautiful art, suffers from the fact that nothing about these characters’ motivations is revealed until the very end. There were hints here and there at the bigger story, but the mismatching chronology – the fantasy scenes have no connection to the real life scenes being shown at the same time – meant that I was left wondering why Black Rock Shooter and Dead Master were fighting for most of the time. And fights in which you have nothing invested in the outcome just aren’t as fun to watch.

It doesn’t help that neither of the two show any emotion through most of the fight. As they get hit, thrown, shot at, and tied up, their faces rarely change from their monotone dead stares, as if they were both Terminators programmed to fight each other. The closest thing up until the climactic moment was Dead Master’s evil smirk. They don’t talk, and they barely even grunt as they fight. The brevity also hurt these fight scenes, as none of them lasted long enough for a real story to develop within the fights. Just as the fights started to get into their grooves and made me excited, the OVA would cut back to a plain real life scene. There are things that can be done with single long action scenes that can’t be done with many shorter ones. They need time to build a sort of rhythm, something that Black Rock Shooter never managed to do.

The action, while pretty, doesn't make for very good still shots. Hence why I'm showing shots from still scenes.

That being said, Black Rock Shooter is still a very pretty anime. The real life scenes have the level of detail you expect from an OVA, and the stylized animation of the action scenes work very well. Some of the backdrops in the fantasy scenes are obviously created using CG, but they almost never stand out. The use of the color and light, as well as the architecture in those scenes do a wonderful job of creating an oppressive, dark, almost depressing mood to the speechless fights. I’m a fan of the character designs as well. The purposeful contrast between Black Rock Shooter’s tall, lanky, unbalanced design with Dead Master’s curvaceous and symmetrical one was not lost on me. Heck, they even put scars on Black Rock Shooter’s stomach in order to emphasize the straightness of her design (ironically, Yomi is taller than Mato).

And the music was very enjoyable as well. No, there was no Hatsune Miku music; not even Black Rock Shooter was played. Instead, it was a largely classical score, fitting for a school story. In some scenes, the music really took center stage in communicating the emotion to the viewer. One of the first scenes, in which Mato climbs the hill near her house before going off to school, sticks in my mind. In the world of TV shows, where usually some plot has to be fit into a 24 minute less 1:30 OP less 1:30 ED slot, the background music almost always stays right there in the background. Without such limitations (in fact, one might argue that they didn’t even fill the pressure to fit a story into its 50 minute slot), the OVA was free to implement more movie-like usage of background music, to good effect. There were also call backs to Supercell’s Black Rock Shooter song as well, with some of the music, particularly at the beginning and end of the OVA, using themes pulled straight from that song.

This picture kind of summarizes Black Rock Shooter. So much badassery when free to act, but chained and restricted by the plot, unable to fulfill its potential.

Ultimately, Black Rock Shooter is two separate stories connected only loosely by theme and character design, with 80% of the time spent on a, though heartfelt, tragically generic story about friendship, and the other 20% dedicated to the good parts: the fun, even if meaningless, action scenes. The uneven pacing and storytelling unraveled a technically solid production, and as the credits rolled, I felt sorry for all the people whose hard work went into producing what amounted to essentially nothing.

The only way I can see this OVA being somewhat redeemed is if it turns out to be just the 1st part of a longer series, one which explores the fantasy world that this one only briefly touched upon. Both the pre-credits ending and post-credits ending tease a possible continuation. But as a stand alone work, it is incomplete and not worth the time to watch it.

This is when the story finally begins, right? It couldn't possibly be that the ending credits are about to start in less than a minute, right? Right?

Notes:

• As always, screenshots galore at Tenka Seiha and Random Curiosity.
• The free magazine-packed DVDs include 7 different languages of subtitles, including English. The other 6 are Japanese, Chinese, Italian, German, Spanish, and French.
• Other magazines that will have this DVD are Megami Magazine (7/30) and Monthly Animedia (8/10). (source: Anime News Network via Vocaloidism)
• The character Dead Master was never named in the OVA. I got her name from the figures of her they’re selling, such as this one.
• This is the 2nd anime for which Ryo of Supercell did the music. The other one was Cencoroll, and it also starred Kana Hanazawa as a leading role.
• Kana Asumi starred as Poplar in last season’s Working!!, in which one of the running gags was that she would always mispronounce the main character’s name “Takanashi” as “Katanashi.” Her character Yuu has no problem with that in Black Rock Shooter, however. The OVA also made the same pun as in Working!! regarding Takanashi’s name being able to be confused with “Kotori” (Takanashi’s name when he cross-dresses).
• At the point when Mato was giving Yomi the star cell phone strap, I started wondering if the fantasy world was far in the future, given the post-apocalyptic style of the setting. I was hoping that there was some falling out between the 2 that the OVA would show, before they somehow became Black Rock Shooter and Dead Master. I think that would’ve been a better twist than, “It’s a metaphor, lol.”

This is it. It’s finally here. The wait is over. On Friday, 6/25/2010, the final episode of Bakemonogatari was released as a streaming video on Shaft’s website. The 15 episode series took just 1 week shy of a full year to complete. The final episode was released 122 days, or just over 1/3 of a year, after the previous one.

Let us bask in this moment just a little more.

It's finally the last episode!

Okay, that’s enough. Part of the big deal of having a new episode released is that there new content to watch, after all. And as the finale to perhaps the most popular series in the last year, there was plenty to look forward to. The conflict between Tsubasa’s Cat and Koyomi finally came to a head, creating some excellent tension-filled moments that were finally released by Shinobu’s triumphant return. And the denouement following provided a hopeful conclusion to this cynical series, a conclusion that I found to be both touching and enjoyable.

The conversation in the 1st part of the episode between the Cat and Koyomi was the real “meat” of the episode, with it providing us with the climax and conclusion of the Tsubasa Cat story arc. If you’ve watched this far, you know that there’s far more to these character interactions than just the conversation, and this one was no different, filled with the visual treats that have pretty much defined what Bakemonogatari is. I especially loved the shift to the more malicious facial expressions by the Cat, which helped to shift the mood in a much darker and more serious direction. The typical Shinbo/Shaft cinematography was used very well here, with the zoomed out shots and the contrast between light and shadow also adding to the more stark atmosphere.

We get to see a bit deeper into how Tsubasa truly feels.

In terms of the content, the conversation picked up right where it ended the last episode, with the Cat repeating her line that Tsubasa was in love with Koyomi and that if he fell in love with her, she could disappear. It immediately darkened the mood, seeming to send a shock to Koyomi. It came to no surprise to me that he tried so strongly to deny this, first laughing it off as a joke, and then trying to pass it off as a misunderstanding before finally facing the fact. Koyomi’s inability or unwillingness to accept the stark, cynical facts about others had been in full display in the Suruga Monkey arc, after all.

And like in that arc, we got a heroine who felt malice towards Koyomi, actively wanted to hurt him. I loved seeing the Cat play around with Koyomi, trying to manipulate his feelings by putting doubts in his mind about why he was with Hitagi. And the imagery of the real Tsubasa going to gently caress Koyomi during some of it was a nice touch.

I also liked the return of the paper cutout art.

It was satisfying to see Koyomi start to push back against the Cat. That’s the episode became just as much about Hitagi as Tsubasa. One of the oddities about the Tsubasa Cat arc was that Part 2 had felt completely out of place in the sequence, being purely about Hitagi. I had excused it with the reasoning that they wanted to put an ending into the last TV released episode, but this episode brought it back, with the repeat of Koyomi’s line about liking Hitagi (“All of it. There is nothing about [her] that I don’t like.”). It was great that this was one of the 1st things that came to his mind when confronted by the Cat regarding his feelings for her. Tsubasa Cat Part 2 had been an excellent episode and ending to the TV run by itself, but it was made all the better by being put into the proper context by this episode.

And there was something fitting about the intermixing of the cuts of Hitagi back at the school, preparing for the culture festival – in Tsubasa’s place. I guess it was seeing her involved in and taking care of what was ostensibly something that belonged to Tsubasa, a metaphor for Koyomi and the Tsubasa Cat episodes in general.

Remember this? It was in the 1st episode, almost a year ago!

I loved the call back to that scene in the beginning of the 1st episode, in which Tsubasa and Koyomi were working on the culture festival together. Even as the argumentative dialogue continued – syncing up to the characters’ mouths in the flashback – it brought back memories of a seemingly more innocent time, before we knew of this intense conflict brewing within Tsubasa, before even Hitagi had entered the picture. It served as a reminder that the Cat was just one aspect of this kind girl who was very good friends with our hero.

The Cat was that jealous, selfish side of Tsubasa, and she decided that if she couldn’t have Koyomi, no one could; i.e. to kill him. I had pretty much forgotten the violent, problematic part of the Cat when she latched onto Koyomi and sucked his energy in a flash of lightning. In a way, the Cat’s actions felt more cruel than Suruga’s, despite the fight being less violent (though there was plenty of gore this time around as well). In Suruga’s case, at least she wanted to kill Koyomi out of self interest, but in the Cat’s case, it was purely out of spite.

Yes, the Cat was the antagonist from the beginning, after all.

Suruga Monkey had had a pretty clever ending, with Hitagi coming to save Koyomi and to negate Suruga’s incentive for killing Koyomi. I found it interesting that, at the moment of truth, Koyomi once again thought of Hitagi’s promise to kill whomever killed him, and that was what convinced him that he wanted to live. And this time, it was Shinobu who came to save him.

What an entrance! And what a twist; she was there all along, lurking literally in the shadows, just waiting for Koyomi to call out to her for help. Because we didn’t get to see the beginning of this story – i.e. the events of Golden Week that had Koyomi turn into a vampire – we were left in the dark as to why or how Shinobu is in Koyomi’s shadow and why she came out only when he called her. There were more allusions to the Koyomi Vamp story, including showing pieces of the flashback montage that opened the show, but not enough to shed any light on these issues. Still, it was great to see Shinobu come back and to reach some sort of understanding with Koyomi, even if I had no idea what it was.

And she never spoke! I’m not sure if she even had any groans or other such non-verbal noises. It seems like it was just a troll to have Aya Hirano listed as Shinobu’s voice actor from the beginning.

I didn't notice that band aid until I went back to take this screen shot. Fanservice to the very end.

The conclusion of the Tsubasa Cat story did feel a bit incomplete. The Cat was dispatched, but the source of Tsubasa’s stress – her unrequited love for Koyomi – was not taken care of and remains a possible problem. Then again, none of the other stories had neat or tidy little endings. Koyomi’s wondering of how much Tsubasa knows about the incident and acknowledging that she needs time to organize her thoughts was as much as was needed.

How much does she know, really? As long as things are back to normal, she has all the time she needs to answer that.

The Tsubasa Cat ending – with the Fire Sisters morning wake up sequence – flowed right into the series ending. After the beautiful ending to the TV broadcast run provided by Tsubasa Cat Part 2, I wondered what the “true ending” to the series would be like.

Well, it wasn’t quite as beautiful and certainly not as romantic, but it was a proper and satisfying conclusion to the whole series. Perhaps Shinbo went a little overboard with his trademark shots here, but the final montage was just a joy to watch. I don’t know, just seeing the 4 main high schoolers of this show – Koyomi, Hitagi, Tsubasa, and Suruga – exploring Oshino’s empty home together was pretty cool. The music was excellent as well, working with the imagery of that empty school building to give us the feeling of a breath of fresh air, or of the dawn after a dark night. And even though it all felt a bit bittersweet with Oshino’s leaving, the overarching feeling was one of hope for the future, of moving on. When the 4 gathered to talk one last time about Oshino being a good person, they were laughing and smiling, celebrating his memory instead of mourning their loss.

They looked awesome together at the end. This may be the first time the 4 were in the same shot.

That sense of hope was perfectly represented by the final scene, of Koyomi taking Hitagi out on their 2nd date, her riding on the back of his bike. It was the image of 2 young lovers just starting on their journey, much like the TV ending in Tsubasa Cat Part 2. And Koyomi got to give us a final bit of narration:

I’ll probably run into more oddities in the future. But that’s okay. I know the truth. There are dark areas in this world, and there are people living in those places. For example, there’s even someone living inside my shadow. Tomorrow is the culture festival. Our class’s project is… the haunted house.

When you get down to it, the most significant part of Bakemonogatari's story was the budding relationship between these 2. This is just the beginning to their story.

I feel that it summed up the series well. It was about acknowledging the dark, ugly side of everyone that they try to hide from others. As sad or as cynical as these things may be, the person holding these things is still a person. There is still hope in that darkness, like the all-white, pure image of Shinobu living inside the shadow of Koyomi. It was a line that represented the theme that tied together all 5 different stories in this series, and a wonderful way to close it out.

Note Koyomi, Hitagi, and Tsubasa at the right, in their uniforms from the drama CD cover.

Series End

So, after 15 episodes and 358 days, Bakemonogatari is over. So what was Bakemonogatari? Was it worth the time? To be honest, I’m a little sad to see it end, partly because now it means I have no excuse to avoid answering these questions. Due to having such a big gap between watching the last 2 episodes, I feel like I need to watch it again with less time between episodes before I can have anything to say about the series as a whole. I don’t feel like I can add anything right now to what I already wrote in this post. That is, it is a series of 5 fantastical stories that Koyomi Araragi experiences in the span of just a few months, each with its own heroine, tied together by the common theme of the darkness that people hide from others.

But the show was certainly much more than that. There was something about it that resonated with viewers, including me. I’m not sure yet what that is. At the very least, it was a unique ride, filled with stunning visuals and excellent music. It provided a couple of the most touching and heartfelt scenes I’ve seen in anime while still remaining true to its cynical theme. And even if that was all it was, it was enough to make the series my favorite in recent memory.

Notes

• The online stream’s video quality was rather low, which is why the screenshots look so crappy. The Blu-ray release is on July 28.
• As most of you know, Bakemonogatari is based off of a novel by the same name. There are 2 more novels that follow it in the series: Kizumonogatari, which contains the Koyomi Vamp story, the prequel that explains the events of Golden Week; and Nisemonogatari, which contains 2 sequels, Karen Bee and Tsukihi Phoenix, presumably about Koyomi’s little sisters. According to the article on Wikipedia (with no citations), 2 more sequels are in the works.
• The Blu-ray and DVD releases had audio commentary by the voice actors, in character. Each release had 2 of the heroines speaking to each other through the episodes (e.g. Volume 1 featured Hitagi and Tsubasa, Volume 2 featured Mayoi and Tsubasa, Volume 3 featured Suruga and Hitagi). Unfortunately, no one has subbed these in English yet, as far as I know.
• At 15 episodes in 358 days, the series had a mean of about 25.6 days between episodes. I’m guessing that that’s some sort of record.
• With its sudden release on the 25th, Bakemonogatari’s finale joins the finale of 4 other series ending in the 4 day period between 6/24 and 6/27 that have Hideki Hiroshi Kamiya playing starring roles (update 7/1/2010 0843: Thank you Son Gohan for pointing out the mistake – Bayonetta must’ve been on my mind). The others are: Durarara!! (Izaya Orihara), Angel Beats! (Yuzuru Otonashi), Working!! (Hiroomi Souma), and Arakawa Under the Bridge (Kou “Recruit” Ichinomiya). Of those 5, Bakemonogatari, Angel Beats!, and Arakawa Under the Bridge had him playing the main protagonist.

After getting 3 consecutive action-heavy episodes, we get one that is slower paced and more subdued. We learn a bit more about Meiren’s past and the clans that make up the vampire world. The episode also brings to the forefront the impossibility of the relationship between Mina and Akira in this class-based world and clearly sets up the conflict that will be the focus of the last 2 episodes.
The episode starts with Akira having a nightmare that Mina is killed, a silver stake through her heart. The silhouette of someone who appears to be Meiren appears and says, “I’ll kill you!” before he is awakened by Mina who is watching him sleep. Now that things have settled down and the railway in the Bund has started going up, she invites him to hang out that weekend. Unfortuantely, Akira has another appointment and must refuse. It turns out he had promised Meiren that they’d meet.

So the first half shows the main characters enjoying some down time. Mina, Vera, her maids (including Nanami, who became one after last episode), Yuzuru, and Yuki play around in an indoor pool, while Akira takes a long walk with Meiren. This gives us a chance to earn a bit more about the past of Akira, Mina, and Meiren, though we still don’t get anything concrete.

He gets to do this for all eternity.

In the opening scene, according to Mina, the flowers that keep showing up in the flashbacks are apparently cleome. When Meiren and Akira are talking, Meiren mentions the flower and tells him an old story regarding the flower: because the flower looked so much like a butterfly, a butterfly fell in love with it and flew around it constantly, trying to mate with it, until it finally died from exhaustion. She alludes to how Akira’s relationship with Mina is very similar to this story. Meiren also mentions how the cleome is the favorite flower of the person most precious to her, and we are shown a flashback that suggests that she may have been saved by Mina in the past.

Everyone is enjoying their relaxation when they’re interrupted by the visit of the “3 clans.” Mina explains to Yuki how besides her own royal bloodline, there are 3 clans that serve as subordinates to her own, though she calls them simultaneously her “blood relatives, vassals, and old enemies.” They’re named Li, Ivanovic, and Rozenmann.

Mina in her battle uniform.

Mina gets into a very princess-ly dress (which she calls her “battle uniform”) and meets with the heads of each of the houses (these are the same 3 who were talking over video at the end of the previous episode). It’s immediately clear that these 3 don’t have much respect for her authority. They quickly turn the subject to the fact that according to ancient orders, it is their duty to continue the pure vampire bloodline, and the only ones qualified to do that are the 4 present in the meeting, with Mina being the only female. They grew tired of waiting for her to pick one of them, so the 3 came that night with a contest: they each brought over their best assassin, and whichever one kills Akira wins its master the right to marry Mina.

Meanwhile, Akira, who was informed by Yuki that Mina needed him, is ambushed as he tries to re-enter the Bund, by one of the assassins (who looks very similar to Lady from Devil May Cry 3). He runs away, but each of the other 2 assassins comes at him. And because it matters which of them kills him, the assassins fight one another as well, which gives Akira enough of an opening to run away and back towards headquarters.

The 3 assassins, in order of appearance.

Obviously Mina is very upset over this situation, but she can’t fight back, because as the vampire princess, she can’t admit that her romantic interests lie with a wolfman like Akira and that she likely has no plans of choosing any of the 3. The episode closes on a pretty wicked note: an old lady enters with a chair with restraints at the wrists and ankles while saying that she must perform the verification of Mina’s virginity. The last thing we see is Mina voluntarily having her “battle uniform” ripped off her by a couple of guards.

Mina will have her virginity verified in this. Yeah...

So, one thing that’s clear is that I was mistaken in the last episode; I had assumed that the man with the eye patch was using the royal “we” when he called Mina “our” fiance, but he was actually talking about all 3 of them. The turn of events regarding them should make for a nice way to close out the show. The issue raised by the difference between Mina’s and Akira’s statuses in society had been in the back burner for most of the show, but they’re dealing with it head-on now. One way or another, it’s going to be resolved before it’s over, and I’m excited to find out how.

I’m not sure where Meiren sits in all this, but I’m glad we got to learn more of her past. The nightmare at the beginning seemed to suggest that she might be someone against Mina, but her flashback and the way she talked with Akira suggests that she’s on their side. I wish Akira had been more inquisitive in their conversation. I wonder if, like some other characters in this show, Meiren has responsibilities that go against her personal wishes: i.e. that she wants to help Mina, but whoever she’s working for has its own separate agenda.

The amount of action was minimal, and the quality of what was there was okay . Knowing what Shaft did in the last few episodes, I’m greatly looking forward to seeing the action unfold in the next 2. I think they’re setting up for a series of one-on-one showdowns, as it was just the 3rd assassin who was shown ominously watching over Akira at the end of this one. I’m sure Meiren will get involved as well. Each of the assassins fights a little differently, with the first one using what appear to be wind-based projectiles, the second one using a naginata and claws, and the third one just fighting without weapons. A lot of potential for good eye candy there.

I’m finding myself enjoying the creepiness factor that this show just keeps up. It was bad enough that we have 3 fully grown men discussing mating with a loli while alone in a darkened room, but the show took it over the top with the bit with the chair and the virginity at the end. Instead of letting it be just a shock factor, the show exploits Mina’s perceived age to create a real feeling of discomfort and unease that add to its already high tension scenes.