Xebek\’s Blog

Mamoru frees Ayako from the Return to the beginning project and together they set off to stop the missiles that have been fired to stop it.

Impressions:

I thought this episode was great. It felt like a very good end to this series and overall I’m pleased with the way the events took place. I was a bit surprised that they solved the bird thing so quickly, but really glad. Although the bird thing disappearing and Ayako returning to normal wasn’t the end of it, they still dealt with the missiles, it just felt like overall that bit of the story was done with rather quickly. I was very impressed that during the whole destroy the missiles thing the amount of focus they had on Ayako and Mamoru telling each other they loved one another. I thought that was done very well and overall what made the whole bird event worthwhile. The scene at the end, having Mamoru saving Ayako bringing them closer together w as easily the best part.

This episode was really good though because of the epilogue they had. It seemed as if the entire second half of the episode was an epilogue and I’ve said this before about many shows but I LOVE when shows have epilogues. Even if they don’t end suddenly I think epilogues are really good for the show and help the show to be more enjoyable. They did a good job with this series. It had a lot of content about Mamoru and Ayako but also just the general state of their friendships and so on. I thought the bit where Maya was telling everyone they were dead was great. I was a bit taken off guard with it fearing they actually died but it was very funny and just overall fun to see them pop out like that. Then finally the very end scene between Ayako and Mamoru was very sweet. In general this was a very good ending episode.

Final Words:

Well, this was a rather interesting series, if nothing else just because of how odd the releases were for me. This obviously doesn’t apply to everyone but having to go by the sub releases things were very sporadic. There were month long gaps between some episodes and then some bursts of episodes, it was very odd and really looking back on the show it has had a negative affect. I may go back sometime soon and just watch the series over again in a time period less then a year. It was a bit hard to judge the pacing of the show with gaps as big as that and overall I’ll try and ignore these shortcomings because it obviously isn’t the shows fault.

The one thing that really shined in this show was just the overall relationship and romance between Ayako and Mamoru. You see a shy girl in anime often, even her actually going out with someone and you see tsundere often as well even times when they are certain to end up with a particular guy however this show seemed to really take some of those things in Ayako’s character and switched them around not only making her character very interesting but all of the content involving her and Mamoru very fun and touching to watch. She wasn’t a tsundere like many others are, acting nasty and cute and shy to the guy she likes she was really always very shy and cute around Mamoru and its just her temper at everyone else especially when she is embarrassed, but never directed at Mamoru. It really allowed for a very sweet romance to go on while still having some very funny moments when she exploded and because she didn’t explode at Mamoru it allowed for the relationship to really be real, not something that was on and off, do they like each other or not back and forth, it was real in a way that other shows don’t achieve and was really nice to see.

Overall the show didn’t really seem to reach great heights. As much as I loved the interaction and relationship between Mamoru and Ayako I think that some of the shortcomings of this show was that they didn’t spend enough time on that. If they would have gone on a few more dates or gotten further romantically in their relationship, not physically but mentally, I think the overall show would have been much better. Instead some of the sub plots seemed to not really fit. Sure there were a lot of filler episodes, filler as in fluff I don’t care if they were in the books or not, and some of the events that happened just seemed weird and out of place. The overall conclusion, the Return to the Beginning thing seemed out of place and although resulted in a conclusion between the two characters still didn’t quite seem very good. They spent a lot of time on Emel but seemed to get far in her development, then drop it and return again making things seem repetitive.

Overall I did enjoy the show; I probably would have enjoyed it more had I seen it on a less sporadic means. Although the show did have a lot of shortcomings for me personally I think the romance between Ayako and Mamoru was great and although I wish they did more what they already had in the show was very fun to watch, add on Ayako’s great character overall and the show was fun to watch. Not the best, but was fun.