They could have spent the episode speaking in Urdu with subtitles in fucking Swahili for all I could understand. Maybe I’d have learned something new!
Impression
If you’re reading this, there’s a good chance you’re not actually watching Glasslip any more. If you are, you must truly be a gentleman and a scholar. I am torn between respect and discomfort for your dedicated yet masochistic behaviour. Or maybe you actually like it! Anyway, I will now try to explain some past events and predict the future, just like Touko! Hopefully this will be more entertaining than the episode itself.
On the way to Kakeru’s house, Touko must have dropped by Sachi’s place, deciding to steal some assorted drugs after realizing that no-one was at home. The happy LSD trip she experienced was what culminated in today’s episode.
Now for what will happen in the finale. Touko gets a call from Sachi, who demands that they meet up at the observatory place so she can get her drugs back. When she confesses that she’s already inhaled the vast majority of what she stole, Sacchan gets very upset and they start fighting. This culminates in Touko somehow falling over the edge of the tower and slipping, injuring her leg. Yuki arrives and decides to give her a piggyback ride home. Sacchan is horrified at what she’s done to the object of her yuri lust and rushes down, only to find that Touko has gone. In a crazed panic she rushes across a road and gets hit by a car badly driven by Hiro’s sister, ending up in her hospital bed again. Yana-chan chances upon Yuki carrying Touko and angrily confronts her while summoning a flock of dark crows, saying that they make a cute couple together. As Touko stays at home all day and doesn’t go to school, no-one is left to care for the chickens. They are eaten by Kakeru’s pet eagle.
That night, under the guise of another fireworks festival, Sacchan enlists Yanagi to subtly firebomb Kakeru’s house, deciding that he is the root of all evil after having smoked one too many joints. Sadly, Kakeru, Kakeru and Kakeru are the only survivors, as they sleep outside in his tent. He goes and lives in Touko’s house. Not deterred by her first failure, Sacchan tries firebombing Touko’s house this time, but accidentally blows up the glass workshop instead, leading to Touko and Kakeru being admitted to the hospital’s burns ward, where they meet Hiro’s sister’s boyfriend. Yanagi is caught in the explosion and fails to outrun the police despite her recent training. Tired of the bunch of crazies he calls his friends, Yuki escapes the town with Hina on a bicycle. They stay attractive. The end.
(And the name of this show is… The Aristocrats!)
Whew, that was fun. I think I covered them all. The snow, Yana-chan’s dark crows, the exploding glass, the falling, the missing chickens, Sachi in hospital and finally more fireworks. As far as I’m concerned, this is the only way for the show to redeem itself and address its missing plot cogs.
Okay, now for the episode itself. At this point, I have questioned exactly what the fuck is going on a countless number of times, and this episode took the cake. So much so, that I no longer have any fucks to give, just like Hiro’s nee-chan. Useless innuendo aside, what was all that about Hiro embarrassingly polishing his hiking stick while asking for some privacy?
Not content with fucking up the show, they’ve decided to send Touko on an episode-long LSD trip.
The saltflake snow falls and falls, and for some strange reason Touko has been sucked into an alternate dimension where she is the one who’s moved to the town, and Kakeru has been here all his life. I shit you not – if you’re not watching the show any more, bear in mind that I am not joking here; this is what actually happened. She’s suddenly all alone, in this parallel universe where it snows in the middle of summer – what is this, Prisma Illya 3rei? They meet for the “first time”, Kakeru shows her around and they talk about the winter fireworks display scheduled to happen that evening – at some point it became a PowerPoint presentation instead of an anime for some reason. Kakeru still sleeps in his tent even though he’s never been outside the town before, which negates the idea that he sleeps there because it’s the only place familiar to him during his travels in the original dimension.
Wait, that’s not even the problem here. It’s already a hopeless mess, and they decide to go ahead with hallucinating parallel worlds?!
Are you actually serious?
If things weren’t already trippy enough, suddenly the alternate dimension warps even more. A plot twist within a plot twist! Two versions of everyone appear – in the first parallel world, everyone decides to stay in groups of two away from the shrine, while in another time pocket there’s a four-person group of Yana-chan, Yuki, Sachi and Hiro. They ignore Touko, and are unable to see or hear her. At that point, Kakeru decides to steal from poor Sacchan too and joins Touko on her overdose. They say some stuff after the high ends, and at that point so does the episode. I don’t even care any more. If I’m going to be honest, I spent the episode divided between wondering what was going on and wondering why today’s episode of Rokujouma no Shinryakusha wasn’t out yet. The piano music was great, the art was great and the soundtrack was great… but it’s wasted on Glasslip. It really is.
There weren’t many Hina pictures this week, and I’ve already featured the sole chicken picture above. So instead, here is a picture of a pre-timeskip Nia Teppelin from Gurren Lagann.
What what what what WHAAAAAT? ….I was kinda sitting through this whole review with my jaw hanging slack open. Wait this stuff all ACTUALLY happened in the episode? Is this real life? I mean geez I don’t even known how to respond except mourn Jonathan’s untimely death.
The first section about drugs and everyone dying is just me being an asshole and doing some wishful thinking for what might happen next episode. Don’t worry, Jonathan’s not dead!
Touko hallucinating an alternate dimension and all that trippy stuff is unfortunately true. It took up the entire painful episode.
Oh thank goodness Jonathan’s not dead! breathes sigh of relief I figured the stuff about drugs didn’t happen but everything else actually almost seemed credible somehow, though maybe I was just wishing that crazy stuff actually happened. XD
So…about Touko hallucinating…you’re SURE she’s not on drugs right? I mean it kinda sounds like she was high and all. ^^;
From what I’ve gathered, the hallucination was because of the piano. Don’t ask me why, it’s something to do with… something. The glass and the piano together triggered some sort of nonsensical delusion. But when you’re talking about magical parallel dimensions in what’s supposed to be an ordinary slice-of-life, I think that already fits the definition of “crazy stuff” 😀
Maybe Touko doesn’t know she’s on drugs. That Sacchan can be pretty underhanded.
I GIVE UP!!!! I GIVE UP! I WILL WATCH THE FINAL EPISODE FOR THE SAKE OF IT, BUT OTHER THAN THAT I GIVE UP!!!!!!!!!! I didn’t think the show could get any worse, and then this episode happens. It’s like they want to deliberately have the ultimate train-wreck. Seriously though, what in the world were they thinking when they created this? The idea is there- lots of it in fact (maybe even too many!), but the execution was just a complete failure.
Other than this, this entry is pure gold.
You put up a brave and valiant fight… it’s almost over, don’t worry. Our pain is almost at an end!
You know, I had read a theory somewhere where they thought the world of Glasslip was actually inside a snowglobe. And Touko was seeing images or something pertaining to the outside world or something. Well! After this episode, that theory went out the window. And even if that theory were true, it was a shit execution. Touko and Kakeru are trippin.
One more episode of this and I’m gonna go to a hospital because this was painful.
That sounds somewhat familiar, although I seem to recall a version where an autistic Hina was having delusions about the events of the series while looking through a snowglobe.
I’m secretly hoping that the last episode will be even worse than this. P.A. Works definitely know its shit, and are trying to make it even shittier!
” If you are, you must truly be a gentleman and a scholar.” Take it easy Sir Hammerlock. Well maybe I’m a masochist, but I’m glad to say that I finished Glasslip without suffer too much, yeah it was kind of meh, but I have seen worst animes, maybe in papaer the general idea look good to P.A. works, but the execution was really, really bad.
Great review, BTW, and props to you for finish this show.
It feels like a popular consensus on Glasslip is “there were good ideas, but it was executed badly”. I think the reason for that is that there were too many ideas to begin with – I remember saying in my first impression post that I wasn’t sure what Glasslip wanted to be, and now it’s clear that mashing up a romantic drama + slice-of-life + complicated fantasy within one-cour isn’t the way to go. Many similar shows with those genres tend to play down the fantasy a lot – they certainly don’t go fucking with its mechanics every episode, explaining nothing while imbuing it with lots of “metaphors”. Past successes include anything by Key and shows like Natsuiro Kiseki.
I wanted to finish either this or Mahouka. Sometimes I regret my decision.
Mahouka it’s easy to finish, but is painful to see how they butchered dialogs you were expecting from the novels.
Wait wait does yandere-girl actually shoot up? o_o I can’t tell what’s real or sarcasm!
(Enjoyed this review immensely though. I’ve quoted parts of it to a friend of mine who’s planning to watch Glasslip. He has high hopes for it because of Nagi no Asukara, but I’m confident he’ll be disappointed too. x’D )
Everything before the image of everyone sitting around the piano is my own AU fanfiction. Everything after that image is real, as hard as it might be to believe. I’ve decided to call that P.A. Works’s AU fanfiction.
You should tell your friend that the disparity between Nagi no Asukara and Glasslip is as huge as the drop in quality between the two seasons of IS Infinite Stratos.