What's with Japan's fetish of girls clasping their hands together like that? Save for praying, I've never in my life seen anyone do that. This episode concludes the short and forgettable Leiji Matsumoto series. If you thought that the poor quality art in the earlier episodes were bad because they were saving the budget for the finale, you're wrong. Unfortunately, the final installment was plagued with plenty of off-model shots as well. They did, however, step up their game in the music department.
So this must be what netorare feels like. I kept up with this show because it was relatively short, but I really found the first couple episodes to be boring and uninteresting. It got much better to watch when they introduced all this Ideal Children stuff, because some interesting things were said. The whole idea of Ideal Children is flawed. What they probably created was a genome that was optimal for survival at that current time and environment. The flaw is that they use cloning to perpetuate the population. Without genetic variation, their "perfect" genome is no longer perfect when the environment changes. It should be no surprise that the Ideal Children weakened as time passed by. No wonder they had to resort to catching unsuspecting Dicks and using their bodies to perpetuate themselves. Charles Darwin could teach these Theseus guys a thing or two.
Another interesting idea that was brought was humans being on top of the ecosystem. At first glance, I would definitely agree with that statement. There is no organism on Earth that humans wouldn't be able to kill. Then upon closer and perhaps microscopic examination, humans are whittled down by various strains of bacteria and viruses everyday. To take it a step further, after humans die, their bodies are eaten by decomposers. It really all depends on the confines of how one wants to define the classification. Nowadays, people are applauded for being able to come up with medicine and other methods for extending human life. Interestingly enough, it's sort of fighting against natural selection, assuming people with "unfavorable" genes are able to pass on their genes to the next generation.
Oh wow, this scene really reminded of Lance's Dragonite using Hyper Beam back in the older Pokemon versions. Except Ozma can fire off multiple beams at once, doesn't have to recharge, and Theseus couldn't shut off the Gameboy to restart. We finally got more of a full body shot of Ozma this episode, and it really did look like a giant mechanical sperm whale. Unfortunately, other than it creating the life that lives in the Zone right now, we know nothing new about this titular being. Maybe it's the god and Maya is the goddess after all.
It's raining. . . . It turns out that what looked to be a fatal fall was all part of Dick's elaborate plan to regain consciousness of his own body, stowaway on Bainas' ship, and save the world all in one go. This was probably my favorite scene of the show because Dick and Bainas were more interesting characters than all the others combined. And if Ozma knew how to Hyper Beam, Dick's move was definitely Explosion. He pretty much had to sacrifice himself to stop Ozma's rampage because the Monokeros was genetically exclusive to Dick. Pretty convenient for him to be alive, eh?
This really is the takeaway message of the series. Just live your life out with the people you love and let nature takes its course. The ending really felt anti-climatic though. I expected some sort of crazy battle under the sand, but Theseus keeled over pretty quickly. Now all the creatures of the Zone will spread out to the hot sand-filled world and die because of their heavy dependence on water. I wouldn't say the ending was rushed, but a little more information about what happens in the end would have been nice. I'm especially disappointed that Sam barely did anything the entire show, despite being the main character. Overall, Ozma was rough, unpolished, and not very interesting. Even the thought-provoking bit on genetics didn't save this show. It was watchable, but I wouldn't recommend it to anyone. 4/10
-Bern
