There are times, I’ve found, where you just have to accept that your opinion is going to be swimming against the current.  I’ve had many of them in my anime writing career, so I’m certainly used to it.  Mars Red is such a case – modestly successful in Japan (where the playwright Bun-O Fujisawa is quite a literati favourite) but almost ignored in my own language (apart from here, bless your hearts).  The key is just to accept that your feelings are legitimate and not contingent on anyone else’s for validation.  Mars Red was a great series and its finale was an abject masterpiece, and it doesn’t really matter who believes that and who doesn’t.

I said the other day (about Nomad) that “Anime is so well-served when it goes outside the usual suspects for writers, styles, and themes”.  That’s a recurring pattern this season.  It applies to Odd Taxi too, and certainly to Mars Red.  By Jeebus, does it apply to Mars Red.  This is magnificent theatre, grandiose and elegant and stylized to the hilt.  It’s a brilliantly written and directed piece of work but not the sort of series that could soar without the right actors – actors who know how to transcend the expectations of an anime seiyuu.  Ishida Akira, Yamadera Kouichi (it’s no coincidence to see the divine pairing from Shouwa Genroku reunited here), Sawashiro Miyuki – they were born to perform material like this.  If only they could do it more often.

Given the sort of story it is, Mars Red always seemed likely to return to Maeda for the finale.  It started with him, after all – did a good job of convincing us he was going to be the protagonist.  The elements of tragedy that pervaded the entire story for most of its run ended up being focused directly on Maeda in the end.  This was a man who lost so much – a man who died many times, in effect.  He was gone before Defrott ever found him in that bunker and brought him back – undead even while still alive.

Maeda’s “dream” was pretty heartbreaking – because of course, his nightmare was his reality.  He truly was alone in the world.  Nakajima had sold him out, Misaki was gone, Yamagami (and it’s clear that he was someone Maeda genuinely loved like a brother) had chosen to leave this world.  It’s no wonder Maeda reverted to an almost bestial form in the end – though Shutaro never stopped trying to reach him.  Shutaro is indeed soft, but he’s right to embrace it – it’s who he is.  It’s that which allowed him to retain all of his humanity even when he was no longer human.

The choices Bun-O and directors Sadamitsu and Hatano make here are fascinating.  The entire finale plays out almost like an opera, Muranaka Toshiyuki’s soaring classical score gently accompanying the narrative virtually non-stop.  Defrott frames the action through two works, William Blake’s “Little Girl Lost” (a condemnation of Christian moralization) and – as a capstone – the Bard’s most famous lines from As You Like It.  “All the World’s a Stage”, et al…  But “We are apart from all that…  Frailty, thy name is vampire.” (mixing in a little Hamlet).  If one were ever to summarize what makes Mars Red’s take on vampires unique, it would be that.  It leads with what makes vampires weak and vulnerable, not what makes them terrifying creatures of our nightmares.

Shutaro was always fated to face off against Maeda, it seems.  The others appear to be making their getaway relatively unmolested (thanks to the children’s “mikan” ability), but Shutaro has to face Maeda with his beloved close by his side.  It’s Shutaro’s fate that’s the biggest mystery of this final episode.  The others make their escape (Suwa and his new lover across the sea), but of Shutato we see nothing after watching him stride off into the retreating shadows to face off against the vampire units.  Having just consumed Aoi’s blood and thus become a true vampire, it’s hard to imagine they would be any match for him.  But the wreath Aoi lays at Tokyo Station certainly makes his fate an open question.

In my view, Shutaro inherited Maeda’s mantle as a fighter for peace and justice – as Shutaro saw Maeda, anyway.  “I fight because I want to keep my humanity”, he tells her – and I suspect he stays to fight the battles which must be fought in Tokyo.  But does he do so with Aoi at his side?  Of Maeda’s fate, there can be no question.  For him, this story was indeed the tragedy it always seemed.  If Shutaro could do nothing else for him, he at least allowed Maeda to stand down in full possession of himself – to die as a human in the only way he could, in the very spot where Misaki did the same.

Mars Red hit squarely in my sweet spot, there’s no question about it.  It embraced theatricality and drama in a way that perhaps only a story penned by a playwright truly can.  Once more this theme of series thriving by ignoring the stifling creative limitations anime self-imposes asserts itself.  This is a medium capable of so much variety, so much creative diversity, but it’s becomes its own worst enemy.  I fervently hope that series like Mars Red somehow continue to find ways to put little rips in that creative straightjacket – to remind us of everything anime can be when it celebrates art for art’s sake.