Key Events:

Since entrusting Rea to Chihiro, he’s felt nothing but a huge weight on his shoulders.

As if reflecting his mood, a firework’s festival he and Rea planned to see was cancelled due to rain.

Ranko arranges a small personal fireworks show that night with Chihiro and family. During getting Rea changed into a yukata, Ranko and Rea have a nice heart to heart about their feelings for Chihiro.

Rea returns home to collect her belongings as she’s decided to restart school, to be a normal girl.

As Chihiro and Rea discuss school in the place they met, Rea loses her self-control and pounces on Chihiro for a bite.

Thoughts:

Well, that’s somewhat of a winding down from the previous episodes, a rather lackadaisical finish. Wasn’t really an ending, nothing particularly was resolved. Would’ve expected some revelations, but it’s practically another episode you could put in the middle of the series when this entire fiasco started. It was a relatively serious yet funny ending with that kiss/bite whatever it is at the end. It’s like they tried to make it serious but I just laughed at it. Either way, it felt very weak.

However, it’s obvious they’d make an open ending, too many loose ends to close the series, this was the next best thing. Possibility of a second season is fine and I do want to know what happens. It’s been a nice romance story, so I’m thinking about reading the manga, once I catch up on other manga I stopped reading during my exams. I wanna see what happens when she goes back to school, maybe some typical high school anime romcom school scenes. Although it’ll probably be very different here as the two schools are separate. So yeah, I may read the manga, and see how far it’s got.

Because I haven’t got much to say for the episode I decided to nitpick a bit, like how there was an entire sky of fireworks when Ranko only brought over a small packet of fireworks. And also, I find it strange how Ranko could come over to greet Chihiro in the morning on the boy’s side. Thought the two sexes stayed away and it’d take a long time to go all the way around, seems like wasted time to me. Lastly, I’m surprised Chihiro’s family didn’t find it odd how Rea was eating poisonous leaves, and instead how they found it odd that that’s all she ate. Yeah, that’s the small stuff done.

Review of the series:

Whilst I loved the unique setting and stoyline, the series didn’t do itself many favours. When you look back through the series there was barely any huge developments. Not many things happened, and they played 2 single character focused episodes in such a short anime. I don’t think that was a good idea, could’ve used the episodes to advance the story more. If it was a 20+ episode series then some character based episodes is good to connect with the characters better as you’re in it for the long run. But a 12 episode series really isn’t enough, you need to squeeze a decent story in there too. Although that said, thinking back, I did enjoy the Mero episode, thought it was a funny interlude. Still was irritated that they stopped the story at an important junction though.

However, what story that was there was very enjoyable. A rather ironic lively and comical story of a dead girl trying to escape her father’s overprotective grip. At least the father was ‘sorted’ out at the end, although I still find it hard to sympathise with him, I understood him but he was just too weird in the end.

One thing I didn’t like was that the romance side wasn’t really fleshed out as much as I wanted. Yes Rea liked Chihiro, and we could tell Ranko did too, but it’s not until the last episode did both of them say it to each other and declare rivalry. Rea didn’t really make any moves on Chihiro, and Chihiro was either too jokey about how it’s his fantasy come true or too concerned for Rea’s well being to do anything. The main focus of the story seemed to be Rea’s escape from her hardships and the reasons and solutions behind it all. So, for a romantic comedy, I think it was lacking in the romance department.

I also felt the story was slow all throughout. A development would occur and you think the story was picking up but then it slowed right down by either relaxing everything the next episode or show a back-story focused episode.

However, all that said, in the end I did enjoy this rather unique romantic comedy anime and if you’re into this genre I would highly recommend it. I found it to be a refreshing change from the usual typical high school romcom animes. The strange and intriguing setting it works from along with a slow but fun storyline is more than enough to keep me interested in what happens next.