We’ve reached the end of another season of Hoozuki no Reitetsu, which is always a sad thing.  All the more so in this case, as it’s likely to be the final one – we may get another OVA or two, but I sincerely doubt there will be any more Hoozuki TV anime.  When the first season ended (in 2014 if my memory is not mistaken) I was sure there’d be more, because that season was a huge commercial hit.  But Hoozuki no Reitetsu suffered the same fate as another “Titanic” Wit Studio series that waited too long to have its sequel – a big drop in sales.  “Strike while the iron’s hot” was a lesson seemingly lost on these two production committees.

Hoozuki no Reitetsu, of course, eventually was passed to Deen, which presumably means the explanation for the inexplicable delay was due to Wit’s limited production capacity.  Deen did a fine job with the production side of things – Yoneda Kazuhiro is a terrific director too, and the transition was basically seamless.  But while the first of these split-cours was right on par with the first season, for me at least the second was definitely a notch or two below it.

Why was that?  If I was to hazard a guess, I think the reason is one that was highlighted by the finale – ironically, one of the best eps of the cour.  It seems to me that the series burned through most of it’s “canon” chapters in the first season and first cour of the second, leaving the rest of that second cour to be filled with more one-off type stories which featured second-tier characters.  Hoozuki no Reitetsu has a big and varied cast of characters, which is obviously a strength, but it needed the anchor of the core group – Nasubi and Karauri, Enma-sama, the Zashiki Warashi – to keep the momentum of the story flowing.  Absent that (and those characters were almost absent in this cour) it became more of a gag comedy than the cohesive whole it was before.  A good one, yes – but a lesser product, on the whole.

I haven’t read enough of the manga to know for sure if that’s actually the case, but the impression is certainly that Yoneda saved one last big round for the final shot – and this last episode returned its focus to the core elements and characters that make Hoozuki no Reitetsu tick.  I actually got a little verklempt when the first chapter opened with Hoouzki-sama, Karauri and Nasubi and the twins together – it’s been so long since we’ve had that happen, and every moment of this sequence just felt right.  It was like going home again, after a long absence.

There were some great bits here that were funny basically because we know these characters so well – Hoozuki reading (at their insistence) a book about the Marquis de Sade and Masoch to the Zashiki Warashi for starters.  Karauri has a particular interest in this subject, as it happens – and he weighs in with an opinion that Ichiko and Niko ought to loosen up and smile a little more.  Because, you know, that’s when “girls are best”.  Of course as Hoozuki points out, being expressionless is pretty much the stock and trade of a zashiki warashi’s existence.  And, as they point out by using Ayanami Rei as an example, expressionless girls can be cute too.

The payoff for this bit is a great one, too.  After a very effective demonstration of the power of creepy impassivity using the trial of a deceased smart-ass, even Karauri has to admit that the twins are just fine as they are.  And ironically, this actually gets them to break expression – maybe even smile, just a little?  This is the kind of next-level character engagement that Hoozuki just couldn’t provide with its cavalcade of strange animals and one-off mythological guest stars, as funny as they could sometimes be.

Next up is a running battle between Hageido-san and Uzu (Hoozuki’s adolescent running mate, now in the engineering department) over the latter’s extremely imprecise use of the Japanese language.  Simply put, this is a very common narrative (often generational) in modern Japan, especially as handwriting (especially the precise writing of Kanji) has degraded due to the use of computer and smartphone keyboards.  Not using a Kanji-driven written language the depth of this issue is a bit hard for Westerners to grasp, but it’s a big deal when auto-completion takes care of most of the Kanji – the result of which being that younger Japanese are increasingly unable to write Kanji freehand.

What’s especially amusing in this segment is how Hoozuki’s decision to take a poll on the subject reveals the true nature of all the regulars, starting with Nasubi (pro-Uzu) and Karauri (pro-Hageido).  Enma-sama is on Team Uzu, naturally, but while Hoozuki claims to be “100% pro-Hageido” of course, Yomogi makes quite a compelling argument (so much so that Hoouzki can’t refute it) that he’s Uzu by nature, and only environment has made him otherwise.  Eventually it all comes down to a conservative-liberal split, with Hoouzki noting that while 60% were pro-Hageido, a disproportionate number of those in positions of power are Team Uzu…

And just like that, it’s over – not with an especially definitive closure (Hoozuki’s epilogue monologue notwithstanding) but in a way that’s completely Hoozuki no Reitetsu-rashi.  I’m glad the series was able to end on such a note, because it deserves to – and I’m glad that Yoneda decided to save these chapters for that reason, if indeed he did.  Very few anime comedies over the years have felt as finely-tuned to my sensibilities as Hoozuki no Reitetsu – I missed that terribly when it was gone, and I’m acutely aware of how much I’m going to miss it going forward.  This was literate, smart, silly and generally brilliant stuff – the classic mix of highbrow and lowbrow that’s proved one of comedy’s most powerful recipes over the decades.  It was also one of the most visually beautiful anime comedies ever.  In short, this series was a classic – and it truly got the finale it deserved.

Epilogue: