So Souji being stuck as a girl was pretty fun. His mother’s reaction – “I wish daddy was still alive to see this proud moment” – was priceless, as was Twoearle’s more predatory one. Still, it felt like there was a lot of potential there that was wasted. Think of all the wacky hijinks he could have gotten into in school as the overly chaste protagonist stuck in a girl’s body. All we got was just one conversation with some girls in the hallway. Haven’t these people ever watched Kampfer? And Aika was hugely disappointing too. Come on, girl, you were plotting to get Souji to ask you on a date last episode, and here you waste a perfect opportunity for some close skinship in the bath? You deserve to lose to Twoearle. Or Erina. Or Isuna.

Instead of genderbending hijinks, the show was more focused on how this forced transformation seemed to have robbed Tail Red of her mojo. Which just isn’t all that interesting. And confusing, too, since one would think becoming a full-on twin tailed girl would increase Tail Red’s powers. Maybe it’s connected to Souji’s newfound interest in lips, which may be pushing out his twin tail love from his mind, much to his dismay. But such a connection hasn’t been established, so we’re left to speculate. It’s good that our heroine has been weakened going into the finale, but being left in the dark as to why and how and how she might be able to get back to her old self dulls the excitement somewhat. Now I’m just hoping the show is bold enough to end with Souji permanently stuck as a girl.

Nice to see the show finally bounce back with some decent animation.

Damnit, Aika, I know you’re proud of being able to keep that towel from slipping off, but this is neither the time nor the place! (Click for stitch)

Parasyte spinoff confirmed?

An episode that started with promise – a gratuitous hot spring scene featuring all the main heroines – ended with 5 minutes of terrible melodrama about the death of someone I couldn’t give 2 shits about. Wasting nearly a quarter of its runtime mourning the loss of a minor sidekick is not the way to do a penultimate episode. I get the feeling that they wanted to raise the stakes by killing off someone close to Tigre, but you don’t get to use someone who barely got any screentime for that. You need someone that we’ve gotten to know and root for a little. Problem is, all such characters other than Tigre are also very attractive women, and you know how often those people get killed off in light novels.

At least a path to the finale is becoming clearer now, with a set goal involving Regin’s royalty and a well defined villain in the older Thenardier. He even got a fairly decent fight scene with Eleonora, giving hope we’ll see a good showdown in the finale. Though I’m once again made confused by seeing a non-War Maiden holding his own against a War Maiden. Are we or aren’t we supposed to consider them as demi-gods capable of singlehandedly taking down armies? The rest of the fighting wasn’t too inspired (why the hell didn’t Tigre pull off his 3-arrow trick against that one gigantic blond enemy knight?), but on the bright side, we didn’t get the crazy lazy CG armies of the larger battle sequences. Keeping the fights small and personal in the finale would be A-OK with me.

Nice of them to skip over the rest of that half-fought battle at the end of the previous episode to get to what really matters.

Really appreciate that they gave Eleonora dem legs actually fitting for a warrior. (Click for stitch)

theyseeyourpenis.jpg

Not much to say again. Everything went as expected. The girls started dying one by one. The group went insane and turned to cannibalism. Kazuki sacrificed herself to save Amane. Or maybe not on that last one, but I guess they’re saving that for the finale. Personally I’m hoping that Kazuki did die because it would be a pretty cheap cop out to have the primary source of Amane’s guilt survive. That would basically give her a short cut to coming to terms with what she had to go through. That said, Kazuki is a rather resourceful girl so I have to accept that it’s very possible she managed to make it out of the hell hole alive. But I digress.

Kazuki sacrifices herself(?)

We also learn that Amane approached Yuuji to “atone” for her sins but fell in love with him on her own. So nothing surprising there either. Grisaia chose not to involve some sort of promise with Kazuki. Which is great, because that would have really cheesed things up. Plus, we now know in hindsight that Kazuki isn’t the kind of person to say something like that. What I don’t understand though, is why Kazuki chose to withhold her little food supply and escape plan from the others. First off, I’m not sure when she mapped out a path since we never saw her doing any kinds of activities to that end. We can pretend that happened off-camera since that is the only possible explanation, not to mention she definitely had lots of time to spare to go about it. But if we at least saw some of that, the two girls’ escape attempt wouldn’t feel so sudden and convenient. And coming back to the point, I still don’t understand why they had to wait until the group crossed “the line” to make their escape. Why not let all of them know as soon as an escape route was found, and help prevent the whole situation from falling apart completely?

The lone survivor.

I’m sure the knowledge of a way out would help pacify the anxiety. Moreover, they could just go and get the help that they needed. The only justification I can see to the timing of Kazuki’s revelation is that she had only just found the way as the group started to really become unhinged. But that would be so forced that I’d have an extremely hard time believing it. And how about that secret stash of food? How selfish is it to hide that from the group when they’re all starving to death? Sure, all the other girls become “inhuman” by the end of it. And I can let pass not sharing valuable resources with monsters. But there was a over fortnight before the girls became “beyond saving!” It just doesn’t make any sense. Unless, of course, Kazuki never had any intention of saving the other girls to begin with. Which I suppose is fair enough, since saving all of them is a tall order in their circumstances. I’d still expect some sort of “moral high ground” from the sister of the main character though. Even if it might be more characteristic for her to be a calm, calculating realist.

Ookami Shoujo all over again.

Well, I went and said a whole bunch when I had claimed that there wasn’t a lot to say. But that’s nothing new for me, so I’l just end this post on that awkward note. (｡･ ω<)ゞ tehepero~

Tags: grisaia, grisaia_anime, madan_anime, ore_twi

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