It's the second to last episode, and finally the show is pulling itself together. Continuing the trend from last episode, the flashback sections were some of the best parts of the episode while the rest was fun to watch but flawed. I'm much happier with this week's episode than last week's though, since it's finally directly addressing many of the questions that I wanted answered about the alternate world instead of leaving everything up to heavy implication and speculation. For starters, this episode spelled out the fact that Yuu and STRength had traded places, in case anyone hadn't picked up on that yet, having Yuu--in STRength's body--be the first one to actually talk in the other world, and not just as a mouthpiece for their "other self." Last week I mentioned that Yuu's story seemed to focus more on a desire to escape because of her crappy circumstances rather than being crazy from the start (*cough*Yomi*cough*), and this episode confirms that as well, having Yuu say that she would rather live a world where all you have to do is fight to survive than learn to deal with reality. Yuu is the only character that has managed to get genuine sympathy from me, and it's sad that she's given up trying. However, as much as I want to see a happy ending for her, the problems that I brought up last week are still relevant; even if Yuu does leave that world, what does she have to go back to? Saya is her friend and cares about her, sure, but we don't know how long Yuu has been in there. She may be past saving. This doesn't seem like an easy problem to solve, and I hope that the show doesn't gloss over it in its final episode. On a slightly different topic, I'd hoped that we'd get more backstory explaining how Yuu got into this situation, but I thought that it would come from the perspective of Saya. Having STRength explain it from her perspective was surprising but ultimately a great decision, since that scene easily became my favorite in the series so far. I really liked the style change for that scene; it reminded me a lot of Gainax, which is always a good thing when it comes to action scenes. The was enough violence in some of those still frames to give the last episode of Blood-C a run for its money. A good deal of explanation about how the alternate world works is woven into it as well, which is what I've been waiting for all along. I still find the "FEELINGS" excuse hard to accept, but at least it's not all metaphorical and it explained why Insane BRS was making unintentionally hilarious faces for most of the episode. The explanation for how BRS's power works does fit with how we've seen Mato behave throughout the series though, trying to act like everyone's white knight. They've even managed to tie in the storybook in a meaningful way, so I have to admit that I'm optimistic about how all this will wrap up, even with the lingering plot threads. I still found some parts of this episode outright silly--Yomi revives Dead Master with the power of love friendship, no one is suspicious that the counselor is taking the day off right when a student goes missing--but this show does seem to be getting its act together. I just wish that it had started earlier. Images from Nico Nico Douga.
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