Well, that was a kind of a snoozerville finale to be honest.  Shadows House has been pretty inconsistent right from the beginning (which is why it’s never not been on the bubble), but the overall trend lately has been modestly upwards.  A boring final episode doesn’t really change anything – I’m not sorry I picked it back up in the middle of a slow season.  Nevertheless it would have been nice to go out with something a little more on-point.

In fact, if one didn’t know this was the final episode I doubt they would have guessed.  It was one of those non-ending endings, a finale that just kind of stops in the middle of the story.  To be honest that’s always struck me as lazy writing, assuming the writers didn’t get the rug pulled out from under them (and no reason to suspect that here).  This is an anime, an adaptation – I think you owe the viewer some sort of attempt to cap the story even if it’s not a real ending plot-wise.

I never had any illusions we would get plot resolution of course.  It was patently obvious that what we’ve had up to now has basically been prologue, and the real story starts here.  As I noted last week the elephant in the room was the lack of explanation of Anthony’s fate.  And the “we haven’t seen a body” thing applies to MaryRoseMary too, and with the revelation that she and Kate had worked together in advance and the latter was going to try and provide a soot cushion, she probably survived too.  Anthony seems like he’s going to be the ringleader of the rebellion, and MaryRoseMary could easily be his guerrilla wreaking havoc from the shadows (pun intended).

The developments in the finale, such as they were, amount to Emilico having a dream and she and Kate getting promoted to team leader.  Independent thinking and decaf seem to lead to a slow re-awakening of these kids’ humanity (we already know Shaun has memories of the village).  Kate being in charge of a team gives her more avenues through which to foment dissent, though she’s going to have to be careful how she goes about it.  Most of the focus here is on Emilico though (which is rarely a good thing), and her adjustment to being a leader.  Which went pretty much how you would expect it to go.

I have no idea whether there will ever be a third season – I didn’t expect there to be a second – much less whether there’s any chance I’d blog it if there was.  It would have to be a pretty slow season or a pretty big improvement (or both), but those things can’t be totally ruled out.  I would kind of like to see how all this turns out, which is testament to the fact that the premise is on a higher level than most of the execution.  But that desire isn’t strong enough to push me to the manga, so it’s more anime or bust at this point…