Dawn of the Final Day.
Impression
If you’d asked me, before the anime aired, exactly what sort of original scenes I wanted to see coming out of it, a brainwashed Akane talking to Midou would not have been one of them. I ended up enjoying that talk though, as strange as it was – I’ve found it really nice getting to explore all these possibilities beyond the character routes of the original game, as unfitting as the Kagari route label has turned out to be. I wonder if Romeo made it a point to include lots more Midou – he was kind of underused I guess. This Midou also feels far more affiliated to Gaia than the Midou of the Chihaya route, who was only ever loosely linked to Gaia and mostly did whatever he wanted. I’m a little uncertain about Akane deciding to give the Earth Dragon to Midou, however. Not least of all from a technical perspective, because from what I can recall the Earth Dragon needs a hell of a lot of Gaians to power it. It was made a particular point in the game. Whilst it was fighting Kotarou in both the Akane route and in Terra, I distinctly remember its summoners repeatedly dying and getting replaced so as to enable it to continue fighting. I know Midou isn’t an ordinary summoner (and neither are Tenjin and Tenma) but are the three of them really enough to run the Earth Dragon alone? As for his life span, it looked like Midou had already half-killed himself by reviving Fuego.
At any rate, it’s a terrible time to be an Akane worshipper. I really liked the holy woman flashback at the start of the episode, along with the memories of Kashima Sakura slowly taking over her – it was mentioned in her route, but it’s amazing how similar Kotarou was to Suzaki in terms of the role they played to the holy woman vessel they loved. Makes you feel for Suzaki a bit more, and perhaps explains why he spent so much of the Akane route being so antagonistic towards Kotarou. Given that Kashima Sakura looks pretty dead, I don’t think we’re going to get to see that scene in the OP where Akane faces off against her – and not least of all, it seems like she’s already been taken over anyway. As much as I want to see her breaking out of it (and it seems like she’s trying) is that even possible? I’d actually rather see her not break out of it than break out of it because of the power of friendship. There are just some canonically established things that friendship shouldn’t be able to rewrite. See what I did there?
I guess Lucia is also guilty of this to an extent. I certainly felt the irony in Kagari saving Lucia with her ribbons. My first reaction when Chihaya brought Lucia to Kotarou and Kotori was that it could be really unsafe for Kagari. Lucci (isn’t that the cutest nickname) isn’t a bad girl by any means, but I’ve always gotten the impression that she and Shizuru are far more loyal to their organisation than, say, Chihaya has been to Gaia. Even if Kagari had saved her life, I was worried that Lucia would turn around and attempt to kill her for the sake of humanity or something. Then again, she’s already melted before from Kotarou’s overwhelming display of friendship, so it’s not implausible. Maybe that episode had an effect on events after all! Interestingly, when Kagari offered Kotori her ribbons I also had the fleeting thought that Kotori would implant them into Lucia to heal her, and so Lucia would end up just like Kotarou. That moment of hesitation Kotori felt when the ribbons were put in front of her must have been picked up by anyone who’s read the VN. While we’re on that note, more references include Kotori talking about making familiars out of corpses while a shot of Chibimoth was on the screen.
As I mentioned last week, this is literally the first and only route where so many of the occult club members band together whilst the main conflict is still going on – it’s really weird, and all the slice-of-life scenes and occasional fanservice shots really makes me want a happy end. The unfortunate reality is that a happy end for humanity (and thus our characters) implies that either Kagari is killed, or that salvation is somehow stopped, averted or doesn’t affect too many people – and it’s got to be the latter this time, right? It’s the Kagari-chan route and all. She definitely won’t survive whatever the outcome, but killing her in cold blood is a little harsh for her own route. I’m also wondering whether salvation is mutually exclusive with a happy end. I’d hesitate to call something like Terra happy, you know? The way I’m thinking of it is that if Kotarou and whichever girl he’s with end up living together happily (and not too many people end up dying, not least of all the other girls) it’s a happy end. Chihaya’s route would be the best fit for those criteria, as would Kotori’s route and to a lesser extent Akane’s. I don’t know, maybe the contaminated power spot will have an effect in stopping Kagari from singing along to the song of destruction or something. Imagine the irony in that. Lucia’s poison actually saving the world.
Isn’t Lucia actually more loyal to her mad scientists aka mainly her main purpose than Guardian?
This episode was weird and in a way fascinating, on one hand every things is still bright and sunny, Koutarou is still weak, Kotori is still running from her problem, Lucia is still alive, Chihaya and Sakuya is still the same as ever, Kagari-chan is still awesome. I suppose all of that is a side effect of Kagari becoming instantly human (Kotori hides most of her secrets and keeps a happy face) and Sakuya guarding them (No hints of danger at all). Yet behind all those things the world is dying even faster without anyone being aware,
I doubt the poisoned power spot (which is like a poisoned life stream) will do good things for kagari and the world, not to mention Akane being swallowed by memories and Shizuru worrying herself to death.
I really hope this situation doesn’t end up as Shizuru shooting Kagari and Kotori or others taking the bullet.
Oh yeah, she had those scientists. I just feel like she and Shizuru have a lot of loyalty to go with their morally conscious stance. It’s like how Shizuru shot Kagari in Kotori’s route, looking really sad as she did so, but still doing it anyway because that’s what her allegiance to Guardian demanded of her.
Kotarou is still weak, that’s a good point. Maybe we’ll end up getting more Sakuya route in the finale when Sakuya fights Midou and the Earth Dragon. Will Midou go to the forest, by the way? Kotarou needs to be at Gaia HQ to stop the song of destruction, and that’s where he normally encounters the Earth Dragon, but Midou was heading out at the end of the episode.
I don’t know whether the poison is causing Kagari to revert into her former self, or whether that’s just happening because the Harvest Festa is almost over and so it’s about time for her to judge humanity. What’s the point of Moon Kagari going to all that trouble if Earth Kagari forgets everything she’s been through with Kotarou when she reverts? I was under the assumption that the amnesia was an attempt to fill her up with good memories.
Wasn’t ‘Good memories’ not defined by human terms, I remember it being sort of like “A way to achieve future for humanity” in Terra. Also I noticed Kagari revert back to her former self when she was looking at the Moon this episode, last episode it was after biting Koutarou arms.
My assumption of the amnesia as unintentional side effect of Moon kagari trying to accelerate Terra Kagari growth and trying to make significant changes to a branch of her theory might be right. Unfortunately everything became so peaceful due to that and both Koutarou and Kagari ended up unprepared.
Seriously how is this going to end in two episode?
I have absolutely no idea, but when it all ends in failure (because it will) I want the world to zoom out and for it to be revealed that everything was just one branch of Moon Kagari’s blueprint. It’d end with Kotarou approaching Kagari on the hill one more time, and that would be a perfect setup for an S2 of Moon and Terra.
I haven’t been paying attention to how well the Rewrite anime has been selling though, so it might depend on that too.