See my “Hourou Musuko” post – time is lacking, so I’ll hold off till tomorrow for the series wrap. But as for the finale…
Well – let the long knives come out for Yamakan, no doubt. While I enjoyed this series very much as a whole, there’s no doubt the finale suffered from content overload and a desire to wrap everything up neatly. Blame Mari Okada more than Yamakan if you ask me – it was an issue of writing, not direction. She clearly poured her heart and soul into the spectacular “Wandering Son” but maybe two NotaminA shows at once was too much to ask.
The Sunda death flags turned out to be accurate, of course. I admit the Phryne/Nessa wrap was a bit surprising. It looked for all the world that it would be Phryne, not Nessa, who sacrificed herself – but then in the end it looks like we have a sort of Phrynessa hybrid, giving Clain two girls in one. Anybody got some Doublemint gum?
The major issue I had with this, really, was in the handling of the exposition. It felt very forced and artificial – though the explanations themselves weren’t too bad. But where, in the end, was Clain’s father – if that was who he was? We sort of had a moral abdication when it came to choosing sides, as well, both from Clain and the writer. There’s even some doubt that Lost Millennium was in the Fractale-destroying business at all, based on the old man’s words to Enri and Dias’ actions at the temple.Bottom line – it was a good series full of big ideas, but it deserved a better finale. Happy endings are nice, but this was tied up a little too neatly. Like all NoitaminA shows of recent vintage this one suffered from a lack of time to really tell it’s story.
