Rewrite Episode 12: Song of Destruction

It didn’t work.

Impression

Shit, this came out a lot later than I wanted it to. I’m writing this without having watched the final episode though. And I mean, we all know salvation is going to happen, right? Unless for some strange reason you’ve made it all the way to the end of the season without having touched the visual novel. It was always unlikely that salvation would have been wholly avoided – and from a promotional perspective, it’s supposed to be the climax of most of the character routes and so it’d have been a bad incentive to get people to try out the game. At any rate, like with every other route except Terra, the branch representing this timeline on Moon Kagari’s blueprint is a dead end one. I’m not sure what the purpose of escaping to the City of Stone was (other than it being a subtle way of trying to explain some of the weirder events that occurred during the common route) but as with previous episodes, there were references everywhere in this one.

In a weird way, Midou was probably the MVP of the episode. I still think it shouldn’t have been possible for him to control the Earth Dragon alone – he didn’t even team up with Tenma and Tenjin like I speculated he would last week. He did it all by himself, and on top of that he was using Fuego at the same time. It’s bizarre. I have no idea what Romeo was thinking when he came up with this, especially since he should be perfectly aware of what it means to run the Earth Dragon and what should and shouldn’t be possible – even Pani was asking how he was still alive by controlling two familiars that powerful. Even if Midou’s life force eventually did run out during the fight against the Bayern Knights, he lasted a good while longer than I thought he would. Maybe he didn’t use it to its full potential? I say that because it felt like the Earth Dragon was nerfed a little – it might just have been the awkward CG, but it didn’t seem as imposing as it did the first time we saw it (whilst it was still being prepared by Gaia). I almost expected Chibimoth to be instantly killed when it tried a rolling tackle.

It was particularly sad to see that scene from Kotori’s route play out again – the one where her parents seemingly regain consciousness right before their (second) deaths and sacrifice themselves to protect Kotori. The irony of it all is that Midou ended up helping Kotarou and Kagari escape from Guardian, right after having tried his very best to kill him – Midou in general has been really weird. He wanted to kill Lucia as soon as possible, but it almost felt like he was trying his best to make Kotarou suffer since he was clearly weaker even where mere physical combat was concerned. If he had gone all out with Fuego, the current Kotarou wouldn’t have stood a chance. There’s also an even greater irony in that Kotarou really has despaired, even though he doesn’t remember it. Midou talks about him being a peace-addled fool, but in reality Kotarou (as Bond) fought in the very same Middle Eastern conflict that Midou himself was caught up in as a kid. They were in the exact same environment! It was kind of nice to have him pull through for Kotarou in the end though, it reminded me of what he did for him at the end of the Chihaya route after spending so much time as its primary antagonist.

Right, I plan to get the post for the final episode out by this time tomorrow, latest – not least of all because I’ve heard about the second season announcement. As you know, I initially didn’t believe it was a possibility, but all the signs were there in retrospect. Even Jasmine made it into the anime! What a qt.