Despite this episode coming out days and days ago, I only just finished watching it. Hong Kong seems to eat up an exorbitant amount of my time, despite there not being much to do. That's almost how I feel about this episode.
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| Are we sure she's not crazy too? |
The final episode wrapped things up nicely. Regardless, it disappointed heavily. Haneda (as in, Takashi) showed up almost not at all this entire episode and Youji took over permanently. This meant that he was seen in Chitose and Narita's shoes, as well as his own - the school (which, theoretically, was what Haneda was doing all this time). As an ending, it was solid. As an ending to a story, it sucked...a lot.
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| Kids draw the darndest things. |
The big reveal behind the cause of Youji's DID came quickly from the very beginning of the episode, first in the form of emotional pleas with strange picture backings and then in the form of painful emo in a church. Basically, Youji's mother was emotionally unstable, leading to a divorce from his father...and, somehow, full custody of Youji. Kobato, the daughter of Youji's father's brother (so, his
cousin and not true little sister), either lived with Youji and his unstable mother full-time or visited quite often. Youji's mother was unable to see them being so close together and freaked out, taking out her rage on not only Youji but also Kobato.
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| What a poignant headline. |
The reason Youji went away was not only due to the mental stress of dealing with his mother but also because, apparently, during a particularly bad attack on Kobato, he went nuts and attacked his mother back...leading to her death.
Or so it seemed, because it turned out that his mother actually committed suicide. Seriously, wouldn't that be something to tell the DID-afflicted Youji
before he got all better, instead of letting him do his thing for 10 years? That's not the only curiosity of the entire thing; how did his mother, who was so unstable, get full custody of a kid? I mean, Japan's laws aren't made so that the child goes with the mother, even; most typically, the mother is removed from the father's family registry and the child never meets her again. So...?
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| The doors never got explained, despite it all. |
At least
some questions were answered. The reason that Haneda seemed to know the entire story right after Asuka beat him up was because he
did meet the other personalities - namely, Chitose and Narita - who told him about the situation. He was created in order to take Youji's place, which is why he's so similar, but then he was unable to do it properly and he, too, retreated into a corner of his mind, causing Chitose and Narita to be created to handle the situation. Nice failing. I also liked how Karura wasn't mentioned
at all, as if he didn't even matter. Sigh.
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| At least it was hinted that Youji was a siscon. |
While it sounds like a whole lot was revealed, making this episode a very important one, all of the above happened in the time span of the first 8 minutes. During that entire time, I was thinking about how ridiculously out-of-place it seemed, given the light-hearted nature of
all the episodes that came before it. They really just threw the viewer into the middle of it, revealed everything they were going to, and then devoted the rest of the episode to the same kind of humorous fun as the rest of the season. It was almost like a hit-and-run.
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| If only this were true...! |
Supposedly, the "solution" was that Youji would return to the helm, "swallowing" all of the personalities. In effect, it created the biggest harem possible
. His decision - although, technically, it was the decision of all of the personalities - was to tell the people that had taken care of him/them all of those years about the situation. This adventure pretty much took up the remainder of the episode.
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| That's how I felt the entire episode. |
At Alexander, Youji decided to stay on as a part-time worker since he wouldn't be going to the hospital for treatment until he graduated from school. At the crepe stand, he was told to stay working as a "handyman", as he still had debts to repay. The worst part of these scenes was how pathetically they tried to run smoothly; there was obviously a
huge chunk of the story that was being missed. It was always obvious that the other two part-timers at Alexander had stories too, but I could overlook that much. Narita's back story made me very curious, though. What debts does he have? What work does he do as a "handyman"? How does he really know Alice? It angered me to see snippets with no hope, since this was the last episode.
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| I would have loved to see more of Morisato after this scene. |
This person named Morisato Kazuma is/was apparently Youji's best friend. I don't even know if that's true. For that matter, who is Kakeru, really? Anyway, Youji worked hard to rebuild the bridges that Haneda had burnt down (he really was the most fail of them all...), and inadvertently revealed
more plot that we probably would have wanted to know. For one thing, Morisato seemed like a pretty fun guy. The little bit of a scene we had, discussing his long hair, was pretty funny. He also seemed to know about the DID from long ago. How come he was introduced at the beginning (he was in ep01) but then never really showed up again?
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| ...right. |
The episode ended just like ep01 began so long ago. That boy
had been Youji, and all the girls were after him due to their relationships with the various personalities. It was a slightly funny final scene, with all the girls attempting to get their preferred one out with various actions. I did like how they didn't give extra preference to Asuka even though she had been the girlfriend (more or less) of Haneda, the "main" personality. I didn't like how they didn't give extra preference to Kobato, who is obviously Youji's main interest.
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| Yamashina was my favourite of this episode. |
So, this anime finally came to a terrible, terrible close. I feel shafted just like I did with Hourou Musuko; there was
obviously so much story that I didn't get to see. It was a really stupid idea to take what was obviously at least 4 different storylines in the game and condense it into a 12ep anime; I knew this from a long time ago. This last episode was the worst of them all; it sucks to know that this is the end after seeing
so many hints of interesting stories. Was this an extended ad of sorts for the game? I'm sure they could have removed a lot of the things that weren't going to be touched up on, but they didn't.
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| Why were there introductions during the entire episode?! |
The total review will come in a few days as I attempt to be a little more objective. Right now, I'd most likely be extremely unfair to it. Even objectively-speaking, though, I don't think the story of OreTsuba was bad - it was the storytelling. This last episode finished the series well enough, but it really wasn't a good way to end this kind of story.
~Aaro
