So it turns out if you take a storyline that has major problems and try to use it while taking away almost all of the development and exposition, it doesn’t actually improve.  It gets worse.  Much, much, worse.  I mean I knew that, I may be dumb but I’m not stupid.  But some part of me was hoping some sort of miracle would occur and the mere act of change would somehow alchemically make things work.  But it didn’t.  Boy, did it didn’t.

I don’t want to minimize the problems I have with the manga, because they’re pretty serious.  The third act totally didn’t work for me, to the point where I on-and-off dropped the manga a mere few chapters from the finish because I was so exasperated.  But compared to this?  The manga ending may have been kind of idiotic, but at least it was a choice.  It was built up to (albeit clumsily), and things happened for reasons (albeit usually dumb ones).  This is just some random nonsense we’re looking at with the anime.

First of all, Norman.  I won’t give away what they changed from the manga but believe me, it’s just about everything.  From the moment he was rushed back into the narrative so quickly it robbed his return of all impact to the utter meaninglessness of his complete capitulation here (with no consequences) his arc this season has been a debacle.  But what of Ray?  Would any single event this season have been any different if Ray hadn’t been around at all?  He shot a wilding in the eye and saved Emma once, that’s about all I think of – the rest of time he really has no reason to be here.

Then there’s the plotting itself.  This ep alone had more Deus ex machina that a Deus ex machina shop.  We also get the second black character in the series turning out to be a traitor, just like the first one (in hindsight the way the anime butchered her character was the first warning sign that something was rotten in Denmark).  This whole tacked-on Vylk thing is baffling too – whether he’s actually supposed to be the Vylk from the manga (seemingly unrelated) I can’t even tell.

I’m at the point now where I have to fast-forward when things get really awful, to be honest (the last few moments after Vylk’s speech were especially bad).  But I’m obstinate enough to resist quitting altogether now with only a couple of episodes left, even if my main curiosity now is to see how badly the anime can screw this up.  I never thought anything would make me look back at the Yakusoku manga ending fondly, but this adaptation has managed to pull it off.