Masamune-kun no Revenge – 12 [END]
♪♩♬ The curtains close on a kiss/God knows, you can tell the end is near….♪♩♬
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It was a fun show to cover week to week, even if it was a reserve choice. But when it’s all said and done, it ended with the 12the episode that’s for sure. Let’s see what happens once the final curtain drops and all the actors have relaxed a bit… |
As They Say, The Show Must Go On
Actually, this was a nice little dance/performance
So we pick up where we last left off, as Makabe bursts in all melodramatic, trying to save the day, to be the hero, and he winds up being too late. The show he wants to – not sure what he wants to do – has already gone on without him – and it’s other prince for that matter, he’s still stuck in a gym closet – and yeah, I swear it’s almost like the vain fool has no real place here…Which I think is exactly what the story wants to tell us, or at the very least that’s been my read on it so far. As a story, Snow White is full of tons of hoary old world tropes, and it exactly the sort of thing you can smack around with this sort of send up. It’s so well know it practically drives itself, so an errant co-pilot works for this story. Which is exactly how they let Makabe approach the material on both levels, he knows he’s probably an intruder in this story, even if there is a place for his archetype he has shoehorned himself into, he has to ad-lib, everyone else has to play along for him to get, feverishly still, from point A to point B…
With mixed results, she clobbers him soon after…
But at least Yoshi is amused, right?
Where do we go from here…
Does anyone know the words to, “Denouement Get?”
So, with just a little dignity and some rather strained aplomb, the show that had to go on ends almost as soon as it started. Again, I swear, they could have just tacked it on last week’s episode, and used this episode to play this sort of catch up, but you deal with what you have. With that being the case, what we have is a somewhat random karaoke box ending, probably a first of sorts, so score one for originality? Again, that being the case, it was a good way to see where all the characters are in relation to one another. For Aki’s crew of meddling meddlers that meddle, they’re still on the hunt to take Makabe down as many notches as possible. Neko continues to pursue her new, more practical in outlook, romance with him. Yoshino remains just as mysterious in motivation as she was when we started, and newcomer Gasou is still kinda the newcomer, so no bit deal there? Lots of things happened, they might have learned something, and life goes one. It moved a few inches and will continue to do so until it runs out of space.
So, I see you sing as well as I do, we shall be legitimate rivals…
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This really was a pretty wan ending, wasn’t it? It was to cordial to really hate, but to darn room-temp to really call all that great – it feels like it could have gone to better places had the rest of the episodes been more strongly composed and arranged with more than this sort of anime-ending feel in mind. I think the supporting cast, strong in the first half, fell to much by the way-side and ended up not really adding much to the mains by the middle of the second half – their arrivals feeling to late, and any development, say from Yoshino and Gasou, felt to small to make much of a difference. Neko was probably pitch perfect and with this ending we can see why? So my final word is: Enjoyable, but could have been better. As for the future. They do set up the infamous Paris Arc, so who knows if that will be the beginning of a second series, or an OVA or two? I don’t know where it’s going, as I stopped reading the manga sometime after the show was announced,so I never got that far. Now that the show has ended I can make up for that. But regardless of all that future talk, we have the present day. So what did everyone else think?
Thanks for Watching!!!
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
POWUH: Meta Team and Spammy Tamer with 7115 comments
Neko certainly rebounded better than ever. She probably ended up as the best character throughout, never carrying the idiot ball, always looking out for herself first. That’s the kind of character I like.
Masamune and Aki actually weren’t bad throughout. They both exhibited “stupid teen” behavior that was authentic, if annoying (what’s more annoying than authentic teens?). And I like how both are learning about themselves, while resisting actually learning, which is again pretty authentic. People don’t like to question their motivations, they don’t like to question their convictions. But it has to happen for us to grow.
POWUH: and LOLi Defender with 10997 comments
Neko carried the plain vanilla, low-fat ice cream cone ball. It plays second fiddle to the dump the buffet into my purse ball the other two carried, and as you point out, serves to contrast them.
POWUH: Metanorn Lover with 163 comments
A useful comparison might be to ask how this stacked up to the end of the first season of Nisekoi – you know… the one that also ended with a play (Romeo and Juliet in this case).
POWUH: Meta Team and Spammy Tamer with 7115 comments
If I were comparing this to Nisekoi, from an overall standpoint, I’d say I enjoyed this one significantly more. Nisekoi continually felt, from the very beginning, like a calculated exercise in leading the audience on. Make a bunch of characters that each appeal to a niche, have them appear to compete for the affections of a guy while becoming friends with each other, but none can actually make any progress relative to the others without some balancing, because the entire point isn’t for people to end up with someone they like, it’s for the manga to sell more copies, for the show to keep people watching. And even if you felt like there was an OTP in Onodera and Raku, or Onodera and Chitose, it was not ever going to arrive within the time-frame of the show.
In contrast, to me, Masamune-kun felt a lot more like an inevitable OTP with Aki. Now, granted, they could go down the same path as in Nisekoi, and have things happen to prolong it forever. But at least through this show, it didn’t feel like that. It didn’t feel like there were inauthentic pullbacks happening, things that just felt like the cynical hand of god to pull characters that were getting too close apart. Maybe it’s the way things were ordered. For instance, Neko got rejected before she left to get her surgery. But Neko’s rejection itself is something that I don’t feel like you’d get in a show like Nisekoi. No character would put themself out there so unambiguously, so out on a limb, and risk getting shot down. So in the end no real progress would be made. Because real progress is something to be studiously avoided, unless everyone else makes the same progress, but you can’t let everyone make too much progress because there’s a finish line eventually, and we can’t have anyone cross it.
POWUH: and LOLi Defender with 10997 comments
I never, for a single moment, considered this show a harem in any aspect (This is to answer both Rathje and Highway) at any moment, given or considered. It just didn’t ring those bells. It was a a relationship story with a detour, and from what I’ve read of the Paris Arc, it’s largely the same, the loop-de-loop of the detour has gotten wider and there are some traffic stops. It’s also, perhaps, devolved into farce as the mangaka is searching for way to keep it going?
As for ending with a play, both of them play with a similar narrative device, but I never got the feeling that it was played the same way. This one way purely meant to show that none of the players – Aki, Makabe, etc – were ready to commit. In Nisekoi is was meant to show how much closer they had gotten. But then that is my rather vague recollection of Nisekoi…But I’m sure people will line up to correct me or refresh my memory.
POWUH: Meta Resident and LN Informant with 1529 comments
So, with just a little dignity and some rather strained aplomb, the show that had to go on ends almost as soon as it started.
The anime’s covered the 1st 29 chapters of the manga.
Chp 39, the climax chapter, came out last December, and Chp 40, the aftermath, comes out this month.
(Jan and Feb’s chapters were side stories which didn’t advance the plot.)
Some people think there’ll be a sequel soon as the manga Ends, but that’s for the publishers and the powers that be to decide.
POWUH: and LOLi Defender with 10997 comments
Thanks, as always, for the information! I’ve got some time carved out special for the rest of the manga tomorrow on a bus ride/transfer/anther bus ride/etc – manga is nice on the bus!