Yeah… just yeah…
So Toru finally gives up on being a saboteur. Why? Because Chaika has lost her will to live. As a result, Toru wants to kill Gaz. Unfortunately, Gaz is overpowered so…
Hey, why don’t we just form that contract with Frederica that we’ve been hinting at all season long! But what gets me is that this doesn’t even accomplish anything. Yes, Toru gets stronger, but it’s only good for taking out Shin:
What bothers me here is that Shin’s death comes with practically no fanfare. He just dies. Hell, the duel between them wasn’t even good. And as he slumps to the ground, he’s all like, “Heh, I knew you weren’t cut out to be a saboteur anyway!” What should’ve been an emotional moment for Toru boils down to a throwaway line. And that’s because we must hurry. Hurry, hurry, let’s move onto the next scene already! Huh? You want to know why Shin was working for Gaz? You want more closure with the guy who had a hand in raising Toru? You want some meaningful lesson for Toru to take away from this incident? Sorry, but we have no time! Even so, we’re getting ahead of ourselves. Let’s rewind a bit. Let’s rewind back to the part where Gaz has multiple satellites orbiting the planet:
Cool, huh? They’re all Guys or something. I don’t really know, and I don’t really care. How did he get these satellites up there? Magic, duh! And you know how it goes. The only reason why Toru can even get inside one of Gaz’s impenetrable floating castles is because the guy lets him in. It’s so stupid and lazy. How more cliche can you get?
Meanwhile, Chaika continues to take pointless potshots at the castle with her dinky gun. C’mon, why are you just wasting precious ammo? Keep this bit of information in mind. Anyway, we already know what Gaz is after. He wants to absorb everyone’s feelings and memories, because magic owns or something. And then what? What is he going to do later with all that magic and an empty planet? Nah, we don’t have an answer for you. Just don’t even worry about it!
So we have a multi-front battle. Akari, Vivi, and Red Chaika get to battle Black Chaika, but it’s only to give them something to do. The outcome here makes no difference in the grand scheme of things. As such, who cares if Black Chaika is defeated? I certainly don’t.
We cut back to Toru who has finally reached Gaz. The old man thus prattles on and on about human nature. Here’s what a 500-year-old mind has to say:
“…I have reached a conclusion. Humans forever seek war. Humans kill other humans for anger, for hatred, and for love. A hundred, even two hundred years later, humans will kill one another for the most trivial of reasons.”
Hoo boy! Half a millennium on this goddamn planet, and this is the best that he can come up with. Some humans have killed out of anger, hatred, love, blah blah blah. As a result, you assholes all want war! Trust me, I have a Ph.D in behavioral science. Anyway, he does that cliche villain thing where he asks Toru to join his side. Naturally, Toru turns him down, so the battle begins in earnest… eh, not exactly.
As you can see here, he starts off by chopping Frederica up into little pieces. But it’s not like it matters anyway. She’s recovered from so many “near-death moments” that the effect is lost on us. You just know that she’ll survive this somehow. You have to be willfully dumb or naive if you think Frederica is actually in any danger.
As for Toru, he takes a beating, because again, Gaz is overpowered. So what are we going to do, guys? What are we going to do?! That’s easy! You just have to wait for the villain to make a critical mistake! They always make boneheaded decisions like that! And here, we have Gaz opening up his castle for no reason whatsoever.
Why? Whyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy? In any case, this allows Chaika to save both Toru and Frederica. As a result, Gaz wants to eliminate Chaika no. 357 once and for all. All of a sudden, Niva Lada refuses to follow Gaz’s orders. Instead, she floats to Chaika’s side. Why? Uh…
I guess Chaika is her friend or something. But they’ve barely spent any time together, so it’s hard to see why Niva Lada would not only care so much about Chaika, she even helps the girl defeat her own master. Oh well! Time to transform into a gun again!
Gaze upon my butthole, Chaika! But ah… there’s just one small problem. Chaika is out of ammo. Gosh, if only someone hadn’t wasted all their ammo shooting at nothing… Anyway, Chaika uses the next best thing: her memories.
The big blast kills Gaz, Chaika screams out in pain, Toru holds her lifeless body and cries… and… that’s it? That’s it. The big bad Gaz is defeated just like that. Well, um, good show, everyone? Wait, wait, he’s not really dead just like that, is he? C’mon! Help me out, Alveric! Fill me in on the details! I mean, there’s nothing quite like listening to exposition about the big, bad villain’s demise, right?
“Five years after war’s end, after continuing to threaten the continent even following his death, the taboo emperor, Gaz, used the remains gathered by the Chaikas to return to life using magic, but destroyed himself shortly after. He and the floating fortresses vanished completely.”
In other words…
Well, what about our heroes? After all, there are interesting implications to consider. How did Toru, for instance, recover from all of his injuries? And Chaika used her memories, so maybe she is dea–… nah, if they wouldn’t kill Frederica, there’s no way they’d kill Chaika. Okay, maybe she’ll have forgotten all about Toru!
Eh, if she has, I don’t see it. Nope, no bittersweet ending here. Just happy fun times for everyone! Well… what about Red Chaika! What will she do now?! Her mission was to get revenge, right? So how she’s adapting?
Uh, I guess she’s now joined Toru’s harem. As for her previous partners… shrug. They’ve just disappeared like a fart in the wind. You don’t even need to ask what Akari as been up to–…
…yeah. Wait, wait, how ’bout Frederica! Are there troubling implications with regards to Toru forming a contract with the dragoon?
No. She’s just a cute kitty chasing after a butterfly! Woo! As for Niva Lada, a.k.a. Miss “I have personality,” here she is…
…showing off all that personality. Good stuff, you guys. Good stuff. I sure am glad Bones took their time to make this anime! But now that the show has ended early, what am I going to do with my Wednesday nights? Well, that Princess Kaguya thing just got subbed…
Moe Sucks 
Meh. I prefer this show while it plays out like a JRPG. The plot was never its strong point. That said, considering how much they rush through things, I’m glad it’s not a total disaster. Final score: 5.5/10.
Gaz just stood there and let himself be obliterated. Did he manage to get a look at how much time was left in the episode and decide it was time to wrap up? Only meta-logic can justify something that lame.
So being a saboteur and a dragon knight-thingy are mutually exclusive apparently? is toru’s whole saboteur identity crisis the reason(even though they never mentioned it).
I also dont get why he didn’t form a contract earlier, it wouldve made things ALOT easier, but I guess the writer didnt want them to abuse the deus ex machina dragon(that’s why she’s always getting shot down in important fights).
a rushed finale in every way, a few more episodes may have had some better clossure but it’d still be rushed regardless. jin’s battle was lame and his death was just cheap(why didnt he go iron blood mode) and gaz’s death was just weird, I know that they were rushing and all but still, what a lame way to go. I at least expected some reaction of being betrayed and taken down.
maybe it’s because I have super low expectations for novel adaptations and alrwady predicted the worst end is why it didnt bother me, I just enjoyed the ride for what it was.
Pretty terrible ride.
Nah man, that ride is (not) fine as it is. I reckon that cliche villain thing of asking the hero to join said side, is not really an act of desperation/or a character test but more an exercise in perhaps experiencing a different perspective. Even if said perspective makes no sense.
A good example on how to write shit story.
I said it last time. Jesus will do some epic stupidity, just like all previous villains.
Dude, Jesus, why did you open your dome? You can chop him into pieces, like what you do to Frederica. No, wait, why did you let him in to begin with? All kind of attacks can’t scratch your golden rod.
I know someone who treated this as comedy. But how is it a comedy, I didn’t even smiled once?
It leaves a bitter taste instead. Final score 3/10.
Honestly I had high hopes for this after watching the first season a while ago, and… I’m not actually sure why. Ten episodes for the whole rest of the story should have been a pretty big red flag, but I guess I figured they would pace it properly? And, I mean, the pacing would have been decent for any other series. But here’s it’s like they just kept taking their sweet time all the way to the end, and then realized “wait we only have one episode left, fuck it, we’ll just do whatever”
I think a lot of what initially drew me into this story was the mystery, but the answers to pretty much every question here turned out to be disappointing at best. Gaz’s ultimate plan was nothing more than the most obvious answer – come back to life stronger than before. The Chaikas were just random orphans or whatever with fake memories. Guy was just… something I guess, I don’t know, I don’t feel like that one was even coherently explained.
I think the worst part though is how, looking back, literally none of the big stuff that happened in the last season’s finale mattered at all. Like, I knew Alveric had a decent chance of not really being dead, but I still figured whenever he turned back up it would be important. But what did he actually contribute to the story?? He was evil for a while, but never directly harmed or impeded our heroes, and then he just magically turned back into his old self and did literally nothing worthwhile afterward. Same thing with Vivi turning into a Chaika, actually – it was a big twist at the time with interesting implications, but it really kind of went nowhere. In the end, that particular group of characters finished pretty much exactly where the started, and all the twists involving them were completely pointless.
Similarly, Toru never bothered to make a contract with Frederica until the very end, and it still accomplished nothing. Even knowing full well that they were probably just helping the big bad guy out, the heroes never stopped gathering the remains until it was too late. Even the Toru/Chaika romance subplot was basically forgotten until the very end, not that I particularly mind that one.
This is just, like, every way NOT to end something. I kind of want to read the LNs now just to see if it benefits from not being horribly rushed, but at the same time I probably won’t because suddenly I find it really hard to have any interest in this story.
So that’s all that Gaz saw in humanity for that long? guess this is a very solid example of how experience doesn’t necessarily equal wisdom. While this was not an amazing series,I did liked the first season a bit. Here though, everything was damn rushed and it kinda ruined the story, two extra episodes would had fleshed out things a bit better, so why would they do 10 episodes it’s beyond me. The “I have personality” quote was hilarious as hell, a girl who does nothing but stand with a blank expression all the time claims to have what hundreds of generic characters wished they had.
The ninth episode’s animation was absolutely terrible. Like embarrassingly terrible. They basically put their eggs into the tenth episode and called it a series.
This ending was pretty much the anime version of an erectile dysfunction case. Trying so hard to be dramatic and hard in the paint, but wow, greeeat results.
To be fair, a lot of anime simply don’t have good endings. They mostly range from donkey-ass fails to “I guess”. Not that that’s an excuse or anything; a good ending is what ties everything together, and if it fails to do that then a lot of the substance before loses its steam.
This ending just screams “Can we just get this shit over with?” But not that I care that much since both the characters and story has been really subpar for quite a while now.
This ending basically screams, “I started with nothing, but the premise, then I had to hurry to wrap up the story.” Sure, some people can do this, but not everyone.
I don’t even know what to think. Well it wasn’t terrible. The last two episodes were the only bad ones for me. What an ending though….