It was Earth all along! They’ve made monkeys out of all of us! But before we get to the truth behind everything, let’s deal with Dmitrie first.

— This feels more like the start of a Castlevania game than Record of Grancrest War.

— Like I said last week, Dmitrie would probably have an easier time of this if he didn’t insist on teleporting Theo’s entire crew along with the hero.

— Look at all these flower petals, though. How dramatic! Is Dmitrie going to try and win with flower power? I hope so!

— Why hello there, Mr. Underdeveloped Villain!

— So Dmitrie doesn’t want the Age of Chaos to end because he would lose all his powers (and thus his immortality). Likewise, a lot of greedy Lords and Mages wouldn’t want to give up their Crests and magic for peace. Theo, however, will fight for the people! Yeah, we need the Age of Cosmos so that the commoners will no longer have to suffer! But if you consider the death toll in this anime, the number of commoners who have had to die for Theo’s cause is probably immeasurable. I just find that amusing.

— The final battle kicks off, and all of a sudden, we’ve been transported to a cave-like area full of human skulls. Hm, okay.

— All of a sudden, Aeon shows up with what is supposedly Dmitrie’s actual body. If this seems random, it’s because it is random. You’ll see why in a second. Let’s just say, however, that I hate Aeon’s inclusion in this battle.

— Don’t like caves full of human skulls? How about space?! Space with rainbow colors!

— Aeon rips the heart out of Dmitrie’s real body, so the body begins to disintegrate. Unfortunately, this doesn’t stop Dmitrie’s shadows from continuing to attack our heroes. Plus, if this could actually work, why didn’t Aeon just do this right from the start? As soon as he found the damn coffin, he should’ve just killed the guy. But noooo, let’s drag the coffin all the way to the final battle just to make a big show of it. Ooops, didn’t work! So there’s problem number one with Aeon’s inclusion in this scene. We’ll get to problem number two a little later.

— The animation is oh-so-hot. Also, Theo continues to look really weak and useless compared to the rest of his crew. The only other person who doesn’t seem to be doing anything either is his dear fiancee.

— Eventually, our heroes slowly succumb to Dmitrie’s shadows, because just their mere touch alone will weaken you.

— This looks hilarious.

— I’m curious, however, as to why Aeon doesn’t transform into a wolf like his sisters.

— I don’t know what the fuck this is.

— Oh no, don’t hurt the poor loli wolf!

— With the werewolves subdued, it’s time to change the battlefield again. This time, Dmitrie turns the ground into blood. The shifting battlefield makes this all very video game-y. Nevertheless, our heroes slowly sink through the iron-rich fluid to their… deep, dark tentacle-y deaths?

— But alas, love conquers all!

— Not really. All of a sudden, Dmitrie gets vampire AIDS. But seriously, it’s just the Holy Grail. Theo can’t do anything. He only wins this battle by pulling Priscilla out of his ass and shoving her bright light into Dmitrie’s face. Priscilla’s light is so goddamn awesome that it’s even hurting the werewolves. Nevertheless, the vampire king is weakened enough that the werewolves can pounce on him. This time, we see Aeon in his wolf form. Nothing like a family effort.

— With the werewolves keeping Dmitrie down, Theo can somehow turn his sword bluish-green and strike the vampire king down for good.

— Unfortunately, not all of the good guys can make it out of here alive. Aeon bites it in the end, sacrificing everything he had to help save the day. Basically, the story needed someone to die, but it didn’t have the heart to kill anyone in Theo’s crew. We’ll just include this random fuck in the scene and have him die. The result of this, however, is that neither Irvin nor Aishela got to do anything cool. They were taken along for the ride, but other than the girl saying how she’s going to mamoru the hell out of Siluca, both of them got the spotlight stolen from them. I guess the author thought we’d be bummed if either of them died.

— There’s still one shadow left, but apparently, it’s harmless now. Okay, sure.

— And just like that, we’re back in Eramu. Alright, time to finish the job.

— Theo and Siluca end up entering the Mage Academy alone to confront Hubertus, another villain we really know little about. Our hero wants answers. Why preserve the Age of Chaos, why go to such lengths, blah blah blah. The old man simply directs them to the floating globe of darkness or whatever. When Theo and Siluca touch the thing, their minds are immediately whisked away to have a talk with Pandora.

— To make a long story short — which is pretty much this adaptation’s downfall, but let’s just roll with it — Record of Grancrest War basically takes place on Earth. Civilization was whizbang awesome, but as always, foolish scientists had to develop some crazy “energy” that ended up wiping out the planet! Yeah, there are parallels to nuclear energy here, but hey, to our credit, we haven’t blown ourselves up yet! Anyways, the Age of Chaos is kind of like self-imposed stagnancy. If humanity constantly has to fend off demons and demonic monsters, then it can never rest long enough to develop awesome technology. And without awesome technology, it can never create a bomb that can blow itself up. Great. I just think it’s kinda stupid, though. First, this is all a bit unoriginal, but that’s not the part that bothers me the most. Second, all of the magic in this show seems pretty fucking impressive to me. Why do we draw the distinction between tech-based powers and magic-based powers? Can you really convince me that someone can’t one day create a magic spell strong enough to destroy the world? C’mon. Third, what’s… what’s with the whole God bullshit? And the Holy Grail? And demons. Technology is a double-edged sword, so we just pulled a bunch of supernatural shit out of our asses to combat it? What? There’s just so much about Record of Grancrest War that remains unexplained. And sure, I could read supplementary material, but I shouldn’t have to do that in order to understand the basic crux of the story’s central conflict.

— Anyways, Pandora is not a real person. What we’re listening to here is nothing more than a recording. When Theo and Siluca return to the real world, our hero reiterates his desire to free people from the tyranny of Chaos. Hubertus probably already knew that Theo wouldn’t be swayed, so he had already consumed poison in order to commit suicide.

— Afterwards, Theo emerges from the Mage Academy to deliver a speech about his platform and policies. He insists that he will rule justly, and should any emperor ever fail to fulfill their obligations, the people have the right to overthrow them. Instead of doing that, maybe you could just have a representative government where people can vote in leaders and whatnot… I dunno, just a thought. Quick, someone research democracy! 36 more turns? We need to increase our science funding!

— All of the Lords in attendance pledge their loyalty to Theo, but he needs all of the Crests in order to forge the Grancrest… I assume. After all, we suddenly take a massive time skip. Three whole years later, we see Siluca being late to her own damn wedding. Yep, she and Theo don’t get married for another three fucking years. Not only that, Alexis and Marrine have also waited to tie the knot. It’s crazy! I guess all four of them collectively decided that they wouldn’t get married until they had collected each and every single Crest.

— I like how Marrine is not wearing white. She knows the score.

— Why a joint wedding though? Wouldn’t you want your own special day? Wouldn’t you want to two special occasions?

— Siluca is a bit awkward…

— The years have not treated Lady Edokia well.

— And after all these years, it looks like Aishela still doesn’t approve of Theo marrying her imouto.

— Afterwards, the Grancrest is finally forged. With that, Chaos also disappears from the world along with magic. This includes Cait Sith, who is now in Siluca’s arms. We barely know him, but he must have been important to the ex-mage as we see her shed a single tear.

— And for some reason, we get to see Priscilla once more, but this time, she’s completely in the nude. That’s a bit lewd for a holy woman.

— All across the continent, demonic beings disappear. And true to his word, Theo relinquishes the throne to Alexis. This way, he can retire to Sistina where he’s… uh, picking grapes. Yeah, he’s bringing happiness to his people by running a vineyard. I like how bright and colorful Theo and Siluca are, but the peasants are still in drab grey. They don’t even look like they belong in the same scene.

— We also see that the loli werewolf maids are still alive, but with Chaos out of the picture, are they just loli maids now? Eh, whatever.

— After all these years and all that they’ve been through, Siluca still refers to Theo as Theo-sama. Bruh.

— Hey, look at that rainbow! See? Anime is getting into pride month, too! Just kidding. The episode — and the entire series — ends with a kiss between Theo and Siluca. Welp, at least we have one happy couple in the books. Let’s see who else can survive their finales. Looking at you guys, HiroxZeroTwo,  MitsuyoshixTeresa, and JoexYuri. I’m probably forgetting another couple…

— This is a pretty bad adaptation. The animation is weak, but the story is even worse. Maybe the original source isn’t much better, but even so, A-1 Pictures tore massive holes out of it in order to fit the whole thing into a 24-episode schedule. Record of Grancrest War probably needs another full two-cour season to really say what it wants to say. Maybe even two. But this is what we get, and outside of Theo and Siluca’s extremely sparse romance — I was kinda surprised they hooked up so early in the series — there wasn’t much here for me to enjoy.

Final grade: D+