Noooooooooo Moe-chaaaaan! Please be safe! Stupid Hajii deserves to die for what he did to you my sweet blue spring flower! He even scared me out of my Steampunk outfit because I am so worried about you! .. Where last week I nearly dropped the show.. two episodes before the end of the show, which shows up how messed up it was, this week I absolutely am blown away…but if they make Masayoshi the actual villain here.. this entire review is null and void! In fact.. if they go the stupid route.. this might be the first post I will ever delete.
The Summary
Episode 21 begins at Masayoshi’s hotel, we see him contemplate killing himself so that Hajii stops. He now seems a bit more certain that the boy is not in his brain.. but if there is no one for him to torment his friends are safe. He calls Mari and warns her about Hajii. Mari does not seem worried but asks about Goto and if they have made up again.. this does not happen. Too worried about her love interest and not happy about him missing his friend she misses the time to drink her coffee and they have to go on stage. Mizuki and Moe collapse.. their eyes totally white.. big foam on their lips.. my heart drops and I am about to chuck my laptop out of the window.. No one hurts my Moe! Luckily the pair seems to have survived.. their stomachs get pumped and now we have to wait and see.. and no it isn’t resolved this episode so I am not sure of my darlings fate! While Masayoshi watches the news report about the attack on MMM in relative silence.. he gets a call from the hospital. Joji is finally awake and he wishes to talk to Masayoshi.
Masayoshi and him have a heart to heart and the Mentor tells his pupil he saw the boy just before he got hit by the truck..He said to him “Give Samurai Flamenco my regards”. Thank you show! At least you have given him a distraction. Jojii tells Masayoshi to find out about love as it is the only way to defeat this foe. However Masayoshi being obsessed with being a hero has never known or experienced love.. or so he thinks. He doesn’t understand what love is. Here I am a bit afraid that Jojii wanted to speak to Masayoshi and say he saw him.. and that if he finds love in his heart he can stop doing terrible things.. but I really hope it is my over imaginative mind. Masayoshi talks to his agent who gives him a nice speech about love and gives us their cutest interaction yet.. I finally like her as a character a bit.. then she goes back to Tsundere all over Kono again and the admiration drops a bit again. Meanwhile Goto loses his phone at work.. he finds a new one on the spot where his old one would be and gets a text from his girlfriend.. which turns out to be Hajii. Goto gets captured..which makes me afraid it is Masayoshi beating him.. because a young kid might not be able to do it.. although there is a taser. The two talk about Hajii wanting to evolve Samurai Flamenco.. he pulls out a gun on Goto.. tells him he will see him tomorrow aims .. and pulls the trigger. The screen goes black in a huge cliffhanger.
The Positives
These positives only apply if Masayoshi doesn’t turn out to be the bad guy.. but I really like it how this episode actually steers away from that idea! I don’t mind AS much if Masayoshi imagined the entire thing and the show ends with the guy from the first episode having knocked his lights out or something… but making him the bad guy would kill the show for me. So I do like that at least it SEEMS like Red Axe saw the guy as well.. it at least seems like Goto is captured by an actual guy and it seems unlikely that Masayoshi would steal Goto’s phone.. then replace it.. use the spelling of his probably dead girlfriend , then imagine himself being called with Goto’s phone to be baited for a final showdown.. that seems a bit much! So if we judge it as an actual chain of events.. like I said last episode! I do like the Joker vibes.. from Haijii, I do like that I am super eager to find out what happend at the cliffhanger and I am more than eager to explore more! i even like the idea that Masayoshi must learn to love to break that Super Hero cycle.. or a rivalry would never end.. that feels like a clever take on the genre. I like how they went with a concept where everyone is at danger.. so no matter who your favourite character in the show is.. you have stakes in this last episode. I must see that my Moe is safe.. and some might have to see if Goto survived. Others might have to check what the super angry Mari will do.
I weirdly kinda like that they left the door open to that stupid shitty ending that I really do not want to see. Goto never says “I should have believed him” , Jojii never confirms he saw Haji just that he saw who was standing behind him. It leaves options open.. but the same goes for Hajii being rule.. one might wonder how an 11 year old or however old he is survived by himself out there.. but right after his funeral his parents went missing, perhaps he killed them and took their money, perhaps they support his crazy goal someway somehow.. and went along with it out of their blind love. If Masayoshi is the one that poisoned Moe and Mizumi and pushed Kanede under a truck the show will be ruined for me.. because I feel it goes completely against the spirit of the show.. but at least I have a stake in this final episode. Kind of like seeing your favourite V-Tuber play russian roulette or something and if they fail.. they delete their channel. You will not like it if it goes bad.. but you sure have to be there to see that it doesn’t. I really want to watch this final episode badly!
The Negatives
I really felt nervous this episode and that is a super good thing, so my negatives are mostly hypothetical.. and I will not include those, but yes this was an amazing episode. I felt super engaged and excited so there is very little for me to complain about. However there was one scene that did not make ANY sense to me. At one point Lady Axe in the hospital waiting room asks if Green considered her offer to adopt him.. which he declines, Blue then gets upset and asks why he isn’t getting adopted and the answer he gets is.. You are too dumb.
Meanwhile Lady-Axe yells some petty things against Pink who suddenly holds a pair of divorce papers in her face. What the heck is up with that scene. If Masayoshi isn’t imagining what happens in the other room there.. this is just a really stupid scene. So either this is a very poor written scene or a sign on the wall that I will get a bad ending.. so it’s a negative alright.
There is also a lot of bad animation in this episode. Drawings that seem over-simplistic. Mostly around the hospital time. As long as a single character is in shot or two of them are in close up it is fine.. but if there are two or more full bodies it really shows in the animation. While I do not care for animation particularly this one feels so incidental and “not part of the same episode” as the rest that it REALLY took me out of the scene. When you look at the MMM concert you see a lot of love went into those shots. The shot from Mari laying there on the floor foaming from the mouth .. still haunts me.. and that scene in the ending with Hajii in Masyoshi’s apartment was done nice as well .. I truly felt the wind around that place. So it really felt as if the hospital bit did not matter. I am also kind of upset that Masayoshi did not visit Moe and Mizumi.. they helped him out on numerous occasions. The lackluster animation kind of carries over in the scene with Masayoshi being thought about love from his agent.. but not as bad. I don’t mind an episode with bad animation that much I guess.. I mind more when it’s fluctuating. It feels as if some parts lack love.
The Score
I adored this episode.. like it really is on Star Fruit level for me.. I was super invested, super entertained and besides that one throw away scene I really love what happened here. It was really good! Yet because the previous episode was SO bad .. I can’t fully enjoy it until I have seen the last episode! I will most likely not be able to wait a week before I watch this…. but never had a show been this high stakes going into the final episodes and it’s weirdly fantastical. I will either laugh or cry when it’s over.. maybe even both.
Knowing this show the final episode will be yet another surprise for me.. so the two endings I suspect to happen will probably not even come to pass .. but it has been a wild ride.. I am left with one big leap.. it is a scary one.. it can ruin a show I hold very dear..or it can make it even sweeter. This episode gave me hope again! Lots of it! Yet the show has also run its course it’s time for this to end.. but as a ramp up to the finale this is one of the best episodes a girl can wish for!
Pinkie's Paradise 