Gabriel DropOut Episode 12: Gabriel DropOut! [Final Impression]

I did not see this coming.

Impression

W-what did Raphi see Satania do?

Zelel is cute! I would have been happy if she was nothing more than an onee-chan voiced by Sawashiro Miyuki, but giving her so much gap moe should be illegal. The best thing about sensible and strict characters is getting to see them all flustered and acting out of character. I’m not sure how much of a role she plays in the manga chapters after this point, but it’s such a shame that she was only introduced at the very end of the anime as the final boss.

I have to say, I actually did think that Gab might successfully fool her. She clearly just procrastinated until the last minute if all her trash was just stuffed into bags in the closet, as opposed to actually disposing of them (and Satania), but she actually tried during the visit itself. I wasn’t particularly impressed by her doting imouto act, but the coffee was a good effort! Even if it wasn’t brewed by her, and even if she only works twice a week, it’s still the truth that she works part-time. To pay for micro-transactions, maybe, but not everything she said was made up. Vigne and Raphi were also good friend choices to have on display, although I thought Vigne would pull through more easily. I guess she was a little too nervous around her future sister-in-law. Given that Zelel never found out about her during New Year’s (she would have tried to discipline her if she had) I thought Gab had a genuine chance before Satania woke up and broke out.

I also fell for the ruse that Gab was actually rehabilitated. My idea was that Zelel really had reverted her, but that it’d all be in vain because an MMO would cause Gab to become a useless NEET again, and then the episode would end. Coming to think of it, if she grew up with Zelel I kind of understand how Gab started off as being so perfect in Heaven. Gab’s own imouto probably just hasn’t been put through the paces yet. Despite being so powerful and clever, I can’t believe Zelel lost her composure to the point that she didn’t realise the dog was actually Satania’s and not Gab’s. It wouldn’t be living with her at all, and I’m sure she’s capable enough to forbid Satania from turning up with the dog. But she ran immediately. That was super cute.

Overall Thoughts

This was good. I really enjoyed it. I have my doubts as to whether a second season will happen, but there’s an OVA out, so if you’re despairing over the permanent absence of Gabriel DropOut from your life, you can postpone that for another 30 minutes. It’s even subbed by Mori, so you can kiss those terrible meme subs goodbye. More than anything, I’m surprised I managed to keep covering it to the end, as that hardly ever happens with a comedy or slice-of-life. Even I wasn’t optimistic at the start of the season. I suppose I managed to do the first season or two of Yuru Yuri quite a few years ago, but I’ve hardly ever managed to sustain both the motivation and substance to write about any show within this genre, for various reasons. One would be that it’s much harder to find things to say. Another is that I really dislike watching them at an inopportune time, often if they’re good and especially if they’re an iyashikei. In other words, unless it’s necessary I’d rather not make them a regular fix, as it’s a wonderful genre to relax with and I personally feel like it’s a ‘waste’ if I burn through them when I don’t ‘need’ to. So often I stockpile them on purpose and use them as required. It’s just a bad habit I’ve developed. I haven’t finished Amanchu from last summer, for example, which is something I didn’t even attempt blogging because I knew I’d never be okay with watching it weekly. So it’s to my surprise that I managed to get through Gabriel DropOut. In fact, I’ve made it to the end of both this and Maid Dragon, and both fall within that grey area between comedy and slice-of-life.

This season in general ended up being a lot better than many projected, so given the fierce competition it’s difficult to say that Gabriel DropOut was the best of what was on offer, even within the range of its genre. But its characters are one of its strongest points, I think. It introduced a premise, which was the irony that the angels weren’t angelic and the demons failed to be demonic, and managed to run with that in a school setting for an entire season. What really contributed to keeping things fresh was that there wasn’t any more pigeon-holing than that. Sometimes their roles were even subverted, like that episode where Satania found Tapris to bully and had lots of fun coming out on top for once, or when Raphi the S let it slip that she was terrified of frogs. I remember thinking from the initial synopsis that there would be lots of focus on Gab becoming addicted to MMOs, and was anticipating a lot of gameplay screen-time and stuff similar to what Umaru was about, but that’s not what happened at all. The show sort of extrapolated from Gab’s status as a useless NEET and instead placed her in lots of situations where that useless NEET personality still shone through, with the angelic Vigne as a foil. Satania, meanwhile, was probably the best thing to come out of Gabriel DropOut from an objective perspective. She’s not best girl, perhaps only by a thin margin I’ll admit, but if there’s anything I’ll remember from this in ten years it will most likely be Satania. And Raphi got better and better despite starting off with relatively little screen time and without much of a role other than to cause Satania more suffering. In fact, other than Gab, I think can sympathise with Raphi the most. Please don’t think ill of me.