Short Synopsis: Blah blah, Saji Louise, blah blah blah…
Episode Rating: 6/10 (Disappointing)
Oh, and I so hoped that this series’ finale wouldn’t go into this direction. This episode was just one big bad sign. It just consisted out of a bunch of people screaming and going emo, and in the end most of the parties simply ended up retreating without still not saving anything. I really hoped that the finale would be more like Gundam Wing, rather than Zeta Gundam, but right now all the signs are pointing to the fact that the creators are going for an emo-ending, rather than a political one.

Saji and Louise obviously were annoying yet again. This episode was supposed to be one of their big climaxes, and with the huge build-up they already had it still failed to capture me. Afterwards, Saji yelling of “Stop! Revenge isn’t going to solve anything!!!1!!” also felt so out of place in this series. I can only hope that Soma Pieres somehow listened to the guy.

And the ending of this episode only increased my fears. Wang Lui Ming had a great plan: give Veda’s location to the Celestial Beings. This would be something that completely shifted Ribbons’ plans and finally give the guy a bit of a challenge. But all of this was ruined when Nena went emo and killed her and her brother. Ribbons in the meantime still is the evil overlord he was twenty episodes ago, and Anew’s “big twist” was just shallow at best. One big problem with these innovators as well is that they’re hardly fleshed out. I mean, what do we really know about these people, other than that they’ve strange haircuts and weird names?

Oh god, I so hope that my fears are wrong with this. This series went on such a good path for it to be ruined by such a crappy finale. My only hope is the revelation of Aeolia Shenberg’s ultimate motives. It’d better be something really good and innovative.

Short Synopsis: A famous flower arranger calls Jigoku Tsuushin
Episode Rating: 8/10 (if only because of that awesome plot twist at the end)
Muahaha! Oh, this is going to be awesome! I guess that I should have seen it coming, but the end of this episode finally reveals the purpose of Yuzuki, something that the show has been building up for nineteen episodes so far: She’s going to be the next Jigoku Shoujo! Oh, this is going to mean two things:
- How the heck is she going to accept the revenges that she loathes? How the heck is she going to accept her job?
- If she’s going to take over Jigoku Shoujo’s role, then what the heck is going to happen to Ai!? Was she just brought back by the spider temporarily in order to find a replacement for her? Talk about cruel.

Oh, and here I thought that she was simply going to be the next Tsugumi. I guess that that now reveals that the final scene of the second season: it probably was a flash-forward (or whatever that’s called) to the future in which Yuzuki has taken up her role as Jigoku Shoujo. The finales of Jigoku Shoujo are always excellent due to the immense amount of build-up that goes into them, so I’m really looking forward to seeing how the creators are planning to instate her as the next Jigoku Shoujo.

Anyway, the rest of this episode was the standard though solid revenge. The theme is yet another one of the evils of society: heritages. Oh, those things can be real bitches if both parties can’t agree on what they want. If I understood correctly, in this episode two sisters try to respectively poison and send the other to hell because of it. The boyfriend was a bit crazy, though: why couldn’t he just point out that the drink was poisoned, rather than gobble everything up in order to prove his point?

Short Synopsis: The identity of the mysterious high school girl gets revealed and Rina invites Touya to his own recording session.
Episode Rating: 8/10 (Excellent)
So in the end, this remains a harem, though it also remains a damn good one. I’m not watching this series to see how many girls Touya can screw, and I don’t care whether this series ends with Touya ends up breaking up with Yuki, making up with her, or even if he ends up screwing everyone and his dog (not exactly the most appropriate figure of speech to use here, but you get the point). Right now, I’m satisfied enough with the show’s execution and how well it captured the different emotions of the different characters.

If School Days was blessed with the same execution, I bet that I wouldn’t have hated it as much as I did in the end. Especially in the harem genre, where it’s WAY too easy to throw a bunch of girls together near one protagonist, making them fall in love with him for the shallowest reasons, you NEED this good execution, otherwise you’ll just end up with a copy of all the fifty or so (how many are there anyway?) harems that are already out there.

Anyway, the mysterious high school girl turns out to be the girl that Touya was supposed to tutor. It turns out to be an easy job, since she seems to be a very good student and her mother simply hired him in an attempt do do her daughter a favour. She’s a typical girl whose parents are always out, and stands out the most in the surprisingly direct comments she makes towards Touya.

I think that this episode also showed that Touya doesn’t believe he’s cheating, but simply was helping out a friend in need. However later, he does behave a bit obsessive when Rina suddenly pops up, up to the point where Misaki just walks out of him. Haruka also turns out to have feelings for the guy. We really need to see a bit more about her.

One thing that I feel like is missing here is other males. True tears did this quite well, where the female characters also had feelings for other males apart from the lead character, but here Touya is the only one for the female characters to fall in love with. Are there no other childhood friends for both Haruka and Misaki? How come we never see Yuki hanging out with other boys? Ah well, it must have been a conscious decision from the creators to not make this into an overly convoluted soap opera love polygon, but it does feel a bit jarring at times.

Short Synopsis: In order to save Birdy, Senkawa needs to learn about her past.
Episode Rating: 7,5/10 (Good)
Ah, it’s finally time to reveal Birdy’s past. Something that the past five episodes kept hinting at. Since her story couldn’t be squeezed into one episode, this episode is mostly building up, and setting up the basics of how she grew up and met Natoru. Not the most exciting episode, but definitely a necessary one.

So as it turns out, Birdy was really raised as one of the elite. For her entire life, she was trained to become part of the intergalactic police. Natoru turns out to be an Aruta of a much lower class, which explains how the two former friends ended up on the opposite sides of the law: they just happened to meet each other, but they grew up in completely different environments.

Interestingly, this also forces Senkawa to reveal to Birdy’s superiors that Nataru and especially his father are on the planet earth (and subsequently that his father died). This probably is going to mean that the intergalactic police is going to involve itself heavily in the final part of this series.

Overall, albeit uneventful this was an adorable episode, and a bit sad, I guess: Birdy was hardly given the time to grow up like a normal girl, or choose what she wanted to be because she seemed to have been specifically bred to be a weapon. I’m interested in what the big secret of her past is. This episode, along with all the other flashbacks are building up to something… I just can’t put my finger to exactly what.