With the unfortunate and unforseen departure of the other half of the writing force here at AniAri I find it my duty to take time out of my busy schedule to tie up some loose ends. While my time management skills tell me I have no time to write individual episode reviews to the series that Soda was covering, I’ll at least do an overall impression post. Technically I’m supposed to be doing linear algebra…but eh, you readers deserve closure!

First up is Zero no Tsukaima, this anime started out really roughly. It had a really fragmented storyline, the episodes were fine individually, but nothing was tying it all together. However, the last arc brought everything together nicely, starting from about episode 9 or 10 the plot became coherent and relevant. Episodes were no longer just excuses to parade Louise around in all her tsundere glory (not that they didn’t anyways).

The ending was really well done, though very predictible, Soda saw it coming a mile away, and actually predicted it a few posts back. Ward Pedo-sama turned out to be a bad guy after all, as hinted many times before. Hoping to marry Louise only for her void-magic powers. Of course Louise won’t stand for that, as a loyal subject and best friend to the princess, she cannot betray her. Backup plan! Use uber powerful ring to hypnotize her and force her into marriage. This of course fails horribly when Saito shows up, breaks the spell and pwns Pedo-sama in melee combat.

The rest of the anime was standard fanfare for the genre. Lame plot device threatens to separate hero/heroine, plot device turns into opportunity to bring them closer, hero saves heroine or vice versa…then Shana gets her clothes torn to shreds and the two share a loving embrace then Louise saves the country and the two share a loving embrace. I thought it was hilarious when she passed off the kiss as a renewal of contract XD

Closing thoughts:
- Saito is by far the best harem lead, evar
- Siesta > Jessica > Louise > Tabitha > Kirche
- Guiche fails at life
- Second season, nao!
- And finally, @ JCStaff: where was the fanservice T_T?

Ah, Higurashi, second maybe only to Yuri Panic, had the most inconsistent quality this season. The arcs ranged from undeniably awesome (first and last) to incredibly lame and sometmes downright creepy (Shion torture arc *shudders*). Although all in all I think it succeeded in doing what it set out to do…which I personally think is confuse the crap out of the watchers. By doing so they will go buy the manga and game in a feeble attempt to understand plot and confirm outrageous storyline theories. Absolutely brilliant.

The ending arc of the series was, in many ways, a mirror of the first arc. This time, instead of k1 going apeshit berserk and killing his friends, it was Rena. As mentioned in my H&C II review, I love stories that come full circle, it’s such a nice way to show how the story has advanced yet draws parallels between beginning and end. Instead of Rena going completely berserk, as k1 did, we see some retribution on her part. After a foiled attempt to kill her friends, she realizes her mistakes and repents for them. I really liked the Rena arc because it revealed quite a few things, first off that the arcs are not completely separate. Some, if not all, the characters appear to be, on some level, conscious of the fact that they have lived the same summer multiple times. While this confused the hell out of me, those theorists out there must have lightbulbs exploding in their brains.

The ending fight was a little dragged on, and the way they turned it into a batsu game made it sort of anticlimactic. Knowing of k1’s prowess with the bat and likewise on Rena’s part with the cleaver, I thought we were watching a fight to the death, but apparently their intents were not murderous. *shrugs* I thought it would have been a more dramatic ending were their lives at stake, but maybe that’s just me.

The final scene seems to imply that this loop is eternal, the endless stories of death, betrayal and the oyashiro-sama curse seemingly have no end in sight. I don’t really like cliffhanger endings, however, after being put through the same time period about 6 times I don’t care about the specifics anymore, point taken. Not a spectacular finale, but it did the job and I think continuing any further would cause my brain to implode and eat itself, so all is well.

Closing thoughts:
- k1’s voice got increasingly annoying as the series progressed
- Rika > Rena > Mion > Shion > Satoko
- Needs more loli, lol
- Game translation, nao!
- Otakus getting mugged in Akihabara need to take a page out of k1’s playbook, buy a bat
So there you have it! My half assed attmpt to provide the readers out there with some sort of closure for the summer season. I believe that takes care of all series EXCEPT Utaware, which I’m still on the fence about. I watched most of it, so I’d like to see it through, but the quality decline in the last few eps as well as the lack of releases from yesy have hindered my progress. I may just drop it, we’ll see.

And so we charge ahead to the fall season, I’ll be covering Kanon and Otome wa Boku ni Koishiteru (if it doesn’t suck) for sure. If time permits I’ll also try to blog Negima!? and Lovedol ~ Lovey Idol ~. I decided against blogging Death Note because there will most likely be many out there who will cover it already.

~ Shirukii ~