Boy, it sure gets ugly when manga readers and non-manga readers square off over an anime adaptation. Especially when it comes to ending and big, climactic battle sequences.

I happen to have not read the manga for Sora no Otoshimono. In addition, while I enjoy the anime for the most part it’s not one of my absolute favorites, so I think I go into it without a lot of emotional baggage. So what did I think of the big, emotional battle sequence that closed out the penultimate episode?

Pretty good.

As expected, this was an almost humorless episode. Chaos returned from the bottom of the sea, surrounding herself with a reverse-rotating typhoon. Sugata realized what was happening and sent Tomoki off to the world of dreams to meet with Daedalus, who gave him some sort of magic pill to take out Chaos. Ikaros, having wiped her memories of Tomoki to preserve her overheating reactor, is weakened but forces herself into battle to back up the over-matched Nymph and Astraea. There’s a battle, with now grown-up Chaos generally kicking ass and acting insane, but a surprise power-up by Nymph starts to turn the tide. Once the three angeloids have subdued Chaos, Tomo steps in and deploys the device Daedalus gave him. As usual, Tomoki takes mercy on a former enemy and it looks as if Chaos will be joining the Sakurai household.

I admit, Tomoki’s role in the battle was pretty anti-climactic. But the battle itself was pretty good, I thought, and I enjoyed seeing Nymph step up when she appeared the weakest of the lot, and even appear to grow new wings in the process. We didn’t really settle the question of what was going to happen with Ikaros’ memories of Tomoki – maybe that will fall out in the finale. Of course, what I long to see is Tomoki formally choose Ikaros but in this type of series, especially with an OAD and movie to follow, I don’t expect any such resolution. For now, I expect a mostly ecchi-driven finale with too-many chibis and too much Mikako, and a lot of moaning from the manga readers about the anime-original ending…