Thank goodness there’s only one episode left, honestly. Takopii no Genzai is a good show, don’t get me wrong. Not nearly as good as its comically inflated aggregator scores, but still good. But it’s as I said after the first episode: I don’t think a Taizan series has ended with fans saying “that should have been longer”. If he ever learns the art of pacing and moderation this guy might have a true masterpiece in his pen. But then, he might just as easily lose that which makes him almost totally unique.

As you would expect things went from bad to worse here, because they only move in one direction in a Taizan series. Shizauka does indeed elect to go to Tokyo. From Hokkaido, no less – I hadn’t remembered this was set there. And let me tell you that’s a crazy long and convoluted trip if you go by land (and sea), which she apparently did. I guess it’s not impossible that a 4th-grader could pull that off but it certainly wouldn’t be easy. As an adult of course we can see the whole Chappy thing isn’t going to turn out as Shizuka expects, but it’s not unrealistic for a child that age to believe otherwise. Even a non-sociopathic one.

It’s not a question of the other shoe dropping here – it’s “which one”? The whole ceiling is lined with steel-toed boots suspended by gossamer. Turns out Dad has two kids (daughters, natch) in his new family. And to add insult to injury, a dog. Then he pretends he doesn’t know who Shizuka is rather than try and explain her presence, which leaves Shizuka under a bridge in the rain planning to kill the daughters and open their stomachs to see if Chappy is inside (it’s not clear what she expects to do if he is). When Takopii declines to go along with this line of reasoning she decides she’s had enough of him, and goes all Shizuka on his pink ass.

To be honest I’ve never fully understood exactly what was supposed to have happened next. It seems Takopii wakes up in another timeline – perhaps his original where Earth is concerned. In this one it’s Marina who finds him, and she’s only marginally less psychotic in this iteration. We get a better idea of just how horrific her mother was – she gave her a nasty physical scar at some point and perpetually inflicts new emotional ones. Marina treats Takopii like shit (which is what she names him), and blathers on about how she’s going to be a better mother. In a “from the mouths of babes” moment Takopii takes this to mean that she’s learning how to be a parent from her mom, and that this is how humans are supposed to raise their children.

Well – that’s not subtle, but certainly makes the central point of the series effectively. Now it seems as if where we joined the story was an offshoot from this branch, where Takopii uses the “Happy Clock” to go back and kill Shizuka in order to make Marina happy. Since he wasn’t there to enable her suicide attempt Shizuka survived it, and came back to NTR Naoki away from Marina. We’re also told that Takopii (whose real name appears to be “Nueinukf”) violated the most important rule of Happy Planet (though not specifically what that rule is), and his mother wiped his memories before sending him back. But that doesn’t quite add up – as I said I never quite got Taizan’s mechanics here.

What a colossal mess all this is. And there’s more than a fair share of blame to go around for everybody, with Nueinukf certainly not exempt from that. But this time around it’s Naoki who finds him, suggesting that he may be the one at the center of the final resolution. I’m always interested to get to the end of a series like this (not that there are a lot of series like this) and muse on whether there was a point to all of it. And whether there needs to have been – is it enough to be provocative for its own sake? But that’s a discussion to be had next week, not now.