Finally, FINALLY we’re at the end of this show. Ugh. I’ve been wanting to say that for over a month. To answer your all questions, no, the show didn’t get much better. But I suppose you want to hear the summary one more time. Fair enough, so let’s dive in the the final episode of Etotama and finally put this show to rest.
So the episode picks up in the middle of Nya-tan and Chu-tan battling. They slap each other around a bit, as Nya-tan then pulls out the same move that Chu-tan knows, the Etotama destroying technique. Chu-tan is surprised to see that Nya-tan learned it so fast, but with her memories back, Nya-tan reveals that she’s the one who learned it first and Chu-tan actually copied HER. She learned it because a while ago she saw Chu-tan’s Etotama was starting to get messed up (it being all Nya-tan’s fault for that but i’ll get to that later) and Nya-tan wanted to use the technique to heal it. HOWEVER Chu-tan is never told this and it looked like Nya-tan was just trying to kill her because…you know…she never bothered to explain.
Eventually Nya-tan does manage to heal Chu-tan, and, no longer crazy, Chu-tan gets very upset with Nya-tan for deciding on her own to leave her to “Quote unquote work from the shadows to help chu-tan”.
Meanwhile the god who showed up earlier pops up and asks Takeru if he thinks the zodiac spirits are worth keeping or completely restarting from scratch as they’re currently imperfect. Of course Takeru says that humanity needs them so he leaves the spirits alone. Chu-tan and Nya-tan finish their battle as friends offscreen and Nya-tan supposedly wins.
After the battle is over, Chu-tan refuses to give Nya-tan her sol/lull seal because she doesn’t want to put that burden on Nya-tan and decides that Nya-tan can go off like before and do stuff.
Oh, and because I called it last episode, Mo-tan isn’t really dead, she hid a piece of herself inside chu-tan and through the power of friendship and farts, she reincarnated. Wow. I am so surprised. (previous line in the voice of Ben Stein). And that’s really where the series ends.
Ugh. Where do I begin with this episode let alone the series? Okay. Let’s start with this. First off, Really? We went with the ‘power of friendship’ ending? That’s not only one of the most overused things in anime. I knew that was going to happen last episode. You know, for priding itself as such a lampshading show, they sure as hell kept the same tropes. Look. Here’s the thing. If you’re going to lampshade yourself, it doesn’t matter if you SAY you’re lampshading a show, if you don’t DO anything about it. If you simply state something, but use every preconceived idea from the past, it doesn’t make you original, it just shows that you’re pointing out how unoriginal you are. And that’s not worthy of praise.
Secondly. Nya-tan is a horrible, terrible, awful character. There is nothing interesting, good, fun, or enjoyable about this character. First and foremost, her voice is one of the most annoying things i’ve ever heard. Her japanese voice sounds like a japanese girl injected a mixture of speed and helium into herself before recording. I’ve heard hyper voices before and I like a lot of them. This one is just irritating as all fuck. Not only her voice, but her character makes absolutely no sense and is an annoying shit. She didn’t learn a single thing since episode one and is still an idiot. Her entire plan was to help Chu-tan from the shadows and not be a member of the zodiac. And yet, even with her memories back, now Nya-tan is desperately TRYING to become part of the zodiac, even though Nya-tan specifically didn’t go the first time to NOT be in the zodiac.
Every time this character is onscreen I want to punch her in her stupid face. Honestly the first episode with Takeru was amusing because he wasn’t taking her shit. That quickly fell off though as he began to like her and he fell into every “Guy housing the main girl” trope. Hey show, do you REALLY want to be a trope reversal lampshading show? How about have Takeru not being able to stand Nya-tan but keep her around because another zodiac member you like wants to have her around and you just deal with her for her. See? THAT’S a reversal of trope. Maybe if he had a crush on the sheep girl for example and kept Nya-tan around because he knows if he kicked her out then the sheep girl would leave. THAT would create some interesting scenarios and lampshading jokes. For example she could be like “Nya! Why aren’t you fawning over me! I’m the main character!” Something like that. But of course since this show gave up on being original by episode 2, we were left with the stupid, boring, blithering fuckface that is Nya-tan.
Which brings me to another point. For the final battle, THE REST OF THE ZODIAC WERE FUCKING USELESS. The other 10 kind of just stood there watching the television going “DUHHHHH”. The show’s excuse is that Chu-tan got a rule put in place that another zodiac member can’t jump in and help in a battle. Well that’s my problem. That shouldn’t have been a plot point. Doing so only insured that the rest of them were going to do nothing in the final episode. It would have been nice if all of them COMBINED got through to Chu-tan, each having their own moment, not just Nya-tan being the main character.
Ugh. I’m going to pop a vein. Let’s just go onto the scores.
Head: The plot going in…. wasn’t too terrible of an idea. That’s one of the things that got me into this show. The problem is, after episode one, it kind of farted itself to death. It got lost in it’s own realization that it only had 12 episodes. Since there are 12 zodiac spirits and she couldn’t beat one every episode, we would have some where she got 0 and some where she got 2. It was very inconsistent, and as I’ve said before she didn’t deserve the majority of them. The overall plot was very sloppy as they tried to push off their bad writing as jokes, and half the characters didn’t hardly get any screen time at all (The monkey and the dog especially got fucked over) It had promise, which is why i’m even more disappointed than if it was just a bad idea to begin with. Head 4/10
Eye: The visuals were usually pretty all right. The CG Chibi scenes were okay, but whenever they had dramatic scenes, it made it a lot more awkward than when they were in their regular form. Scenes like the last battle were very jarring and made you feel strange at times. This show also did the thing that for some reason anime feels like doing in a bunch of shows and gave a lot of the girls shine pimples. I’m not sure why they’re doing this. It doesn’t make their skin look shiny, it looks gross. STOP IT. The animation was fun, but it’s not going to win any Miyazaki awards. Eye 6.5/10
Heart: Oh god. THIS is where the show failed on so many levels. They had so many characters, nearly all of them better than Nya-tan. No scratch that, ALL of them better than Nya-tan, and they focused on her. We never get an explanation WHY she’s so powerful…she just kind of is, and her personality is so nasty and wretched that it makes me not want to spend time with her, but to see her etotama destroyed in a million pieces in hopes it never comes back.
I don’t even want to get started on how frustrating the whole “Killing the boar thing and immediately bringing her back” was. If I get into THAT i’ll be here all day.
Also, What about the rest of the Eto-musume? I’d like to have met those. Or how about the fact that Takeru pulls a 180 on his opinion on Nya-tan for no reason other than the plot denotes I should. She doesn’t DO anything to show she’s not an annoying pain in the ass, she doesn’t really grow as a character, but right off the bat about half of the zodiac want to help her and ignore the rest of the Eto-musume. Nya-tan SAYS that she doesn’t treat Takeru like a battery, but EVERY SINGLE ACTION she performs completely contradicts this. She’s a liar, a spastic idiot, she’s not funny, she’s not cute, and she ruins nearly all the emotional scenes with her voice and actions. Why couldn’t the series focus more on the other zodiac? Like Piyo-tan? Yeah that’s right i’m still on that. I want me some Piyo-tan damn it! (Sigh) Heart 2 (really only because the other zodiac were in it saved it from a 1)
Overall Score: 4.1/10
Do I recommend this show? No. No I don’t. There’s not enough of the characters that I like to justify having to watch the “Nya-tan is a special waifu” series. Nya-tan definitely makes my top 10 worst anime females hands down. She…I have no words to describe how much I hate this character. the rooster, rat, tiger, sheep, horse, and ox were all fun characters but there wasn’t enough of them to overcompensate for Nya-tan. Yes. That’s right. HALF THE CAST combined had less screen time than Nya-tan. I just…. I’m so glad it’s over. I can’t deal with this idiotic crap any longer. I’m so done. You’re better off just google image searching Piyo-tan. It’s better anyway.
Peace out.
-Hideki