Eromanga-sensei – 11-12 [END]

They’re gonna get you one way or another

Well it’s time to wrap up one of the more popular shows that aired this Spring 2017 season. In all honestly I think the show did a whole lot better than its spiritual predecessor, and in my mind serves as a much better focus on those themes. Even with a corny cameo…

Father and Son, Mother and Daughter

So the penultimate episode of Eromanga-sensei pretty much worked the harem rules as hard as it possibly could.  That first girl ticket is the most valuable commodity after all, for whatever reason the story needs it to be most of the time. But while some can treat it as a shallow non-starter or even just a cliffhanger or dorama moment, here I think the overall story has made tremendously good use of that well worn framework. It was never about romance, the relationship between these two, I mean not really. The love the share is close, and the how it develops is pretty much “all the stops” in terms of “progression”. At least it’s not a serious one, and especially not at this time in their lives. It’s actually more about all the growing feelings they were capable of expressing., and more to the point, the ones they couldn’t express unless they could do it with art. Here art is presented as that universal and connective medium. Where normal words fail, art can make the connection. With writing, Masamune got to work out his feelings, that he couldn’t quite get his young brain wrapped around concerning his mother’s passing. That is what made his goal of becoming a writer worthwhile for him at the time, and that purpose will change for him, as we’ve already seen, and will probably change more as he get’s older. With writing in mind, three cheers for his father, giving him a laptop, and encouraging the kid to work it all out, at his own pace. Good dude. With the writing in mind, and the entry level LNs seem to encompass, it doesn’t take a genius to see that they are typically about youth empowerment. The most common themes they tend to work with very much reflect just that: overcoming embarrassment, realizing your own sense of self worth, and in some cases becoming a person that encourages others. Of course, some of them can be trashy, and trash is as trash doe. Then again, some of them even try to be both. Which is pretty much what this show wanted to accomplish on a couple of fronts. But that is more to the final episode.

Lost in her feelings for her daughter…

When we take a look at Sagari’s past, the desire to emulate her own mother is what makes her who she s at this time in her life. Her shut-in tendencies are probably all her own, and when she is ready to get a handle on that issue, I’m sure she will. If the last episode is any indication, she will have plenty of support. But in going back to the mother-daughter relationship, there were some gaps in there that they wanted to explore. I think it’s clear that there is no father in the picture, and this might be a single parent household. I think having to work for a living inside the home, and the clear joy that glorious woman engaged in while doing so left a lasting impression on her daughter. Yeah, sure, mommy dearest had a thing for the ecchi as well, and that’s adorable in it’s own right, especially the way the show presented it. But the back and forth between them revealed that Sagiri’s mother was probably doing as best she could to raise a daughter all by herself, almost to the point that even having a child at all confounded her, which all parents will feel from time to time. It’s clear she adored her child, and to the stories credit they didn’t show her as a garbage person, in an attempt to mine for cheap and crappy melodrama. Nope, she was just a normal one facing all the challenges she has to, and coming up as best she can.

Sagari, “What are you waiting for!? Get nekkid!”

But speaking of ecchi? Well, the final episode really does speak for itself, in that department. It was naughty in it’s own right, but it was the sort of naughtiness that had its training wheels on. If you take it for the metaphor that it was clearly trying to work, then it’s a huge laugh at our own foibles. The things we do to get and keep attention of the people we get smitten over…goodness that’s a closet full of skeletons. But in this context, the Twister game at Sagiri’s beck and call was clear in how it spoke all it needed to. Despite all the lewd flying around, when you get down to it, these are good natured kids, and this was really just a healthy, yet still restrained, exploration of the things to come for them later in life. Which I think might be a good way to look at the show. Growing up is hard, embarrassing, and tough, but you can do it with encouragement and good natured fun.

So yeah, the cameo was corny, and was just that because they really overplayed Masamune noticing them with any degree of significance. I suppose I could allow most of it, cause both Kirino and Kuroneko are both very striking characters and they both are having a very heated argument about Masamune’s newest work. So yeah, he would notice them. Plus it’s a double moment of appreciation about how far the author has come working these themes of close relationships and creativity, and from previous work, and it has, and he has. Plus, both shows take place in Chiba, and all of the characters are huge nerds, so the fact they they were all in Akihabara at the same time is no weird coincidence at all. They should have run into each other more often, when you think about it. I’m surprised Sagari didn’t try to convince her brother to get these two to model for her. So yeah, corny, but fun, and even appropriate! It did a good job to remind us all that they were, as I said at the beginning of the season, walking a similar path, but doing so at their own beat.

Extra Town in Australia-sensei

The future together started with simplicity and mutual appreciation

“What is bred in the bone will come out in the flesh”…de Sade always sound dirty

You will forever be caught

..in sensei’s eternal game!

Thanks for Watching!

Well, this was a good note to end on…

About skylion

All around nerd that enjoys just about any anime genre. I love history, politics, public policy, the sciences, literature, arts...pretty much anything can make me geeky...except sports. Follow me @theskylion