Mikagura Gakuen Kumikyoku Episode 12: Infinite Grand Finale (FINAL)

“I will definitely make Seisa smile!”

Honestly I have no idea what happened and frankly I don’t even care. I really don’t. I had a blank stare for the entire episode and ended up just rolling my eyes so hard it kinda hurt. I knew the ending was going to be cheesy, but holy crap that was beyond what I thought.

Let me just get to the point: I didn’t like this episode at all. I actually kinda hated it, because they dumped info on us on the very last episode. Info that I’ve been wanting since the first fucking episode. Eruna sees her ancestor with a Seisa-look alike and a Shigure-look alike in some weird trance/dream thing. She tells Shigure and then he tells us what I’ve been wanting to know about the stupid school since the beginning. So yeah those were their ancestors from the Ichinomiya, Mikagura and Ninomiya families. For some reason they’re a big deal and they made the school because they wanted to spread the fun of having these abilities. They never went with why it has to be clubs, but the school was there for people to hone their powers and enjoy them. But then something happened with the Mikagura ancestor where she had a misunderstanding and shut herself away and the Ichinomiya ancestor helped her out. Whoa, oh my god, this is happening again. Gee, I wonder what’s gonna happen now.

Let’s make this short. Eruna goes to talk to Seisa and makes the deal that if she wins the midterm matches Seisa has to join her club. Eruna is winning her matches, Seisa watches from her room. Eruna makes it to the finals with Kuzuryu as her opponent. He and the drama club planned something stupid where Kuzuryu is “kidnapped” and Seisa is then taking his place to fight Eruna. They fight, they fly into fucking space, make a crater in the moon or something, and the fight ends. Seisa joins Eruna’s club (and start a band???). The end.

Holy shit. Somehow Seisa’s powers come back during the fight, they don’t explain how. They fly into space, I don’t know why. I just don’t know. It was so dumb and the ending was so predictable. I wanted something a little more gripping for the finale but sadly I didn’t get that. They picked a terrible time to just dump that info on us. That should have been something that could have been revealed in the middle of the show, because everything else that happened didn’t matter. Nothing mattered. There was nothing great about this episode, not even the fight. Just…I don’t know what else to say so I’ll just get to my overall thoughts.

---

This show had no flow. If I really had to describe the plot, it’s just that an annoying girl named Eruna Ichinomiya transferred to a school because she thought the principal’s daughter was cute and then there’s weird abilities involved. There wasn’t really any main plot, it was more like a slice of life surrounding Eruna, while some episodes were reserved for some characters, and those weren’t even that good either. When it came to the plot, it went everywhere with club fights, making clubs, Seisa’s mystery, and Eruna doing…stuff. There were no explanations given for almost everything and you basically just had to accept that because this show is just not deep. It’s not.

Crappy plots can be saved with good characters but we didn’t really get any of that either. Eruna is just aggravating. I thought she was pretty fun at first, but then her personality just grated on my nerves. Eruna really likes girls and she’s not afraid to hide that, to that she can be really fucking creepy and gross about it like smelling Seisa’s leggings and stealing her lipstick. I actually read somewhere by someone that if Eruna were a guy, their shenanigans would be much more creepy, but because Eruna is female, her lack of personal space and tendency to gawk at girls is okay. No, let me fucking stop you there. Do not create this double standard. Male or female, it’s gross and creepy for anyone to do this type of stuff. You shouldn’t dismiss it just because Eruna is a girl. It’s still not acceptable. IT’S NOT. Now, Eruna can also be impulsive, arrogant, and just plain dumb. And after like…two episodes with her I just got annoyed and never found her funny. She just made me sigh a lot. But I know Eruna has a good heart, because there have been times in the show where she’s been great. Like for one thing, she really cares about people. She’s very friendly. Like the time she helped out Minatogawa’s festival stand, accepted Akama, and became friends with Otone. She really has good in her, but unfortunately she’s just…tiring most of the time. And I say this because she’s the main character and she’s in the show all the time, so if you don’t like her it’ll be hard to enjoy the show.

Mikagura Gakuen Kumikyoku is based from a vocaloid song series. It only has a few songs out, but some songs delved deep into some characters like Himi, Akama, Asuhi, and Kuzuryu. I enjoyed their songs because you really got to know them, and in the end of the songs they would be saved from their insecurities because of Eruna’s help. And I really liked that side of Eruna which we have seen before, but we didn’t really get that in the anime. We only did for Akama, which I thought was really well done. But we had great opportunities for Asuhi and Kuzuryu, but they were completely ignored and we were given small minutes of their story which wasn’t very deep at all. So that made a lack of character development for most of the cast and made them static. Eruna herself I think was static. The characters that got development were mainly Akama, I guess Otone and Seisa even though I wasn’t really feeling hers. There were a lot of missed opportunities when it came to the characters, because, again, Eruna got most of the screentime. It’s a freaking Eruna party.

I always take into account the audio and animation, and both were mediocre. With the music, I can’t really say anything about the OST because I can barely remember it. Whenever a pretty piece in a show plays I always mention it but not for this show. Though I did enjoy Juri Kimura’s (Eruna) cover of Houkago Stride, as I really like that song.

I have to mention the animation, because when fighting is a central part of the show, you expect great animation. Well you definitely won’t get that here. It’s so bad. Really bad. The fight scenes are really choppy and nothing impressive. You could tell that the budget was low for this show as the quality for the show went down when the fight scenes came into play. Also, this show never really looked that great. It was pretty ugly most times. For the background characters, they didn’t even bother making them look nice either. They would just be colored white, as they were insignificant. But it was just really lazy.

Over the course of my coverage, people familiar with the novels and manga explained to me differences that the anime made, with some things being explained. While that’s nice and all, I have to take account only what the anime has done and it did not really deliver. I felt like there was no direction to this show, and when good opportunities came to make characters shine, they were given the boot. I watched this show all the way through, it entertained me for awhile, but it wasn’t like it was good entertainment. Plot is everywhere, characters are one-note, sound is blah, and animation sucks. There are good qualities with this show, but the anime team didn’t bring it out. I’d give this show a 5/10, it’s just…mmmm nope. I’d skip out on this one.