This finale episode was definitely something. 

— Anyways, we pick up where we last left off. Juri intends to raise Sagawa, since they can’t just abandon a baby. Shiomi wants to just get rid of Sagawa. After all, what if the baby regains his evil memories?! No, Shiomi, murdering babies is wrong. Murdering is wrong.

— Both Juri and Majima offer some weak explanation on how Sagawa wouldn’t get his memories back, but whatever.

— Right before sending Majima back to the real world, Juri slaps the girl right across the face. It looks painful, too. Why did she do this? Because she wanted Majima to lift her spirits… yeah.

— These two suckers get sent back as well.

— In the meantime, Juri will have the baby and her grandpa to keep her busy, but that doesn’t last long. When they take a family trip to the amusement park, the girl correctly reasons that they need someone to explain everything to the family. Grandpa is the most reasonable candidate for that job. The old man wants to go back when he decides that he’s ready, but his granddaughter had other designs.

— And now, it’s just her and the baby. Y’know, she started off this series hoping to become an independent working woman. Now? She’s a single mother.

— Even with a child, Juri runs the risk of going insane. After all, babies aren’t exactly great conversationalists. Nevertheless, she knows she’ll have to send Sagawa back to the real world as well. She just has to wait for the kid to grow up enough that it can withstand one of her jellyfish-expelling moves. Months go by in a flash.

— Wait, would he still be Sagawa? Wouldn’t he now take on the Yukawa last name? Yukawa Junji? Again, whatever…

— By the way, doggy Tobino is still running around. I guess it doesn’t need food? Or maybe it does eat, but we just never get to see this in action.

— Eventually, Juri sends the baby back too. She tries to keep herself sane by visiting her family. Now that she’s all alone, she even decides to indulge in some “vices.” This only really amounts to, well, drinking shochu highball and reading manga. Hoo boy, this party’s starting to get wild!

— Y’know, it was easy to hand-wave away the minor inconsistencies when they were just spending a few hours in this world, but the logistics of Juri living in Stasis for months and months on end just don’t add up when you try to think about it. For instance, toilets wouldn’t work, so how is she getting rid of her own personal waste? Is she just picking random spots in nature to take a dump every single day? When time starts flowing in the real world, people will just randomly see excrement pop up out of thin air?

— Plus, there’s that whole thing about stopping photons completely, but let’s just ignore that too.

— Let’s instead focus on Juri going nuts.

— Juri finally decides to trim her long hair, because she’s decided to go on a trip. In anime, characters can always cut their own hair perfectly. I recently replayed Final Fantasy IX, and there’s a moment where Dagger takes a dagger (no, really) to her long hair. In one single motion, she gives herself a haircut that most women would probably have to pay 40 bucks for. Amazing. That’s the power of the Crystal for ya!

— On Juri’s trip, she messes around with a “live” baseball game, sleeps in her underwear in front of strangers, and munches on cotton candy that she somehow spun herself. Or maybe she just stole one from someone who had just bought it. In any case, none of this can sustain Juri for long. As despair slowly starts to creep in, she even begins to see strange, wonderful creatures.

— This is the only interesting moment in the episode. This is the only moment in the entire series that even remotely feels surreal.

— Basically, Juri is running the risk of becoming a Herald.

— For some reason, doggy Tobino shows up on the scene and knocks the girl out of her despair for just a brief moment. I guess he’s been following her.

— But as the girl begins to undergo the transformation process, she suddenly spots a light in the distance.

— It’s… it’s that woman from the very beginning of the first episode. Juri essentially pulls her into Stasis. Oh no, this is bad, right?

— Well, here comes to dumb part of the episode. The woman reveals herself to be the original, original Founder. She was born with Specters permanently in her body, and as a result, she can enter and exit Stasis out of her own free will. Not only that, she has existed for centuries. Centuries, dude. Why is this not bigger news? Why isn’t she more well-known and famous? She also confesses that she can’t die. She can’t age. Well, she must have been a baby at some point. How did she get to this age? Finally, there’s also the fact that her husband created the two Stones–… ah, who cares? This is all one dumb last minute explanation. All we need to know is that she can free Juri from Stasis… which is exactly what she does. Just as Juri is about to fall completely to despair, she happens to stumble across the one person out of the seven billion people on this planet that can save her. Yeah, great.

— So that’s that. Juri is back in her world, and she comes home a loving family.

— Also, she has son permanently now. Isn’t that also great?

Final thoughts: This show never really amounted to anything. There are no interesting character arcs to follow, no valuable lessons to learn, no heart-stopping action to enthrall us. It was just one flat ride from beginning to end. Not only that, the story took the laziest way out of every single possible scenario. Juri freeing herself from Stasis epitomizes exactly what I’m talking about. Some random, one-in-a-billion roll of the dice is what ends up saving the day. Weak. Maybe the show could’ve been saved itself by leaning more heavily on its supernatural or surreal elements. Maybe. Instead, it opted for flaccid family drama and the most uncharismatic villain I’ve ever seen.

Final grade: C-