Episode 21

With the finale right around the corner, I was intrigued to find out what would happen.  Needless to say, this episode didn’t disappoint.  The episode kicks off with a minor flashback to when Gai was first reawakened and Yuu is sitting there, informing him that he has been chosen as the new Adam since Shu  has renounced the title.  Yuu goes on to explain that it is the will of the human race to evolve and neither Gai nor Mana can stop it; Gai accepts the title only after stating that his battle isn’t allowed to end as soon as he had hoped.  Back in the current timeline, Gai is being informed that the U.N. is making contact with Ward 24 once again.  As he gets ready to launch a counter attack, Inori asks Gai if he’s saddened by what happened (she says she feels as if his heart touched hers briefly) but Gai denies being sad.  In fact, he tells her that he has nothing to be sad about because his wish is about to come true.  Meanwhile, the remaining Undertakers and their support groups are preparing to launch an attack on Gai with the help of the U.N.  Turns out, Gai was bluffing when it came to the satellites and several of the group members are frustrated that they sat back and didn’t do anything the whole time.  Ignoring their frustration, they forge on ahead with their plan to take down Gai, stop the apocalypse and save Inori.  Shu is busy taking some supplies into a truck while the others prepare for their entrance and he spots Ayase trying to get into the piloting chamber for her Endlave.  She willingly asks him for help to get her into the seat and he obliges; Ayase confesses that she’s worried about him and makes him promise that he’ll make it out of there alive.  Shu promises, though he doesn’t seem to be confident in his promise.  Not too long after that, everyone is preparing for their invasion of GHQ.  Shu is, as expected, in the lead with Tsumugi, Haruka and the others behind him as backup.  However, as they’re preparing to leave, Gai is already in position to stop the forces from the U.N.  He melds together three Voids and fires what looks like a huge, elaborate bow, which sends several hundred “arrows” shooting into the U.N. ships.  As expected, these arrows then erupt with the virus and cause everyone in close proximity to become affected by it.

Shu and the others quickly launch their attack, with Shu opening the way to GHQ all while Tsumugi is busy hacking their networks to bring down their security.  While they’re infiltrating the building, we see Daryl sitting in one of the piloting seats, except that he has this weird, glowing thing on his chest (it made me think of Iron Man) and we find out that he’s testing this new system that relies on genomic resonance.  He’s warned not to go too far, but he doesn’t seem to care what happens to him at this point and waves off all of the concerns.  Meanwhile, Gai has retreated back to his room where Inori is being held and he pulls out something from within her.  She’s encased in crystallized flowers and Gai informs her that as the flowers die, so will her memories and emotions so that Mana can finally take over her body.  Inori doesn’t fight against it, but instead tells Gai that she’ll never forget him or Shu because they both helped her learn new things and experience new feelings that were foreign to her.  While Inori’s memories fade away, Shu and the others are busy fighting their way towards Inori, though no one really knows where they’re going.  Shu suddenly hears Inori’s singing – though no one else does – and leads everyone towards where she’s being captured.  They’re ambushed by some Endlaves and Argo shouts at Shu to hurry to Inori while they hold off the enemies and Shu quickly makes his way to the room.  On the way there, he finds himself face to face with Yuu and Yuu explains what’s going on now that Shu has renounced his title as King.  The two end up fighting and Shu wins, albeit barely, and he finally finds the room where Gai and Inori are hiding.  Unfortunately, he’s too late and Inori is already gone.  Crystals start encasing her body and just as Shu is realizing what’s going on, Mana is reawakened from her slumber.

Episode 22 [Final]

With Mana reawakened, everything seems as if it’s going down the tube at a fairly fast rate.  Mana greets Gai before noticing Shu – who looks both bewildered and furious – and flouncing over to him.  She throws her arms around him, going on about how glad she is to see him and how she knew he’d come back for her.  Shu shoves her away, saying that he never came for a monster like her but he came to rescue Inori.  As expected, this pisses off Mana and Gai hurries to her side and pulls her up before guiding her over to this massive map of the globe.  She then proceeds to do this weird ballet dance (who knew she knew how to dance?) across the map before focusing on a certain area of Europe.  We then go to that area – which happens to be some place in France – and a giant beam of pink light hits the ground with Earth shattering force and people start turning into crystals left and right.  While Mana is busy dancing, Gai and Shu start fighting for control of the room.  Shu continues to plead with Gai, but Gai doesn’t seem to want to give up his position as King to Shu.  Meanwhile, we see Ayase and the others fighting against the GHQ soldiers but something seems a bit different this time around.  Tsumugi is having a hard time re-hacking into the security system because Kenji is one step ahead of her in hacking into her system.  Shibungi tells Tsumugi to hold off the other hacker for as long as she can until he gives her a signal to forge head.  Ayase begins fighting against Daryl, who is furious at the Undertakers and blames them for “changing” him.  He claims that he used to be unfeeling and because of them (I’m sure he is particularly talking about Tsumugi) he can’t go back to how he used to be.  Unfortunately, because of the high frequency of genomic resonance being emitted due to Mana, all of the Endlaves except for Daryl’s quit working and leaves everyone as sitting ducks.  Tsumugi tells Ayase to manually connect her piloting thing to the Endlave and the transport vehicle bursts open and Ayase comes rushing out, piloting thing and all.  Before she can reach her Endlave, Daryl attacks her and sends her crashing into a wall.  Meanwhile, Gai and Shu are duking it out and Gai appears to be winning.

He has Shu on the ground and is about to deal the finishing blow when Shu notices a small, crystal-like flower blooming where Inori was being held.  He sees Inori in his mind’s eye and she asks him to use her powers and save their friends; Shu does so and these strange red strings attach themselves around the flower and retract back into his right arm.  He’s somehow able to withdraw Inori’s Void (which is also the same as Mana’s) and one of Inori’s songs begins to fill the air.  Mana appears to be frozen in place, which also stops the apocalypse so that Shu has time to save the world.  Shu and Gai begin fighting again, except that Shu is able to deal the finishing blow this time.  Meanwhile, Haruka has finally found Keido and she confronts him about what’s going on and why he’s starting the apocalypse.  Instead of answering, Keido injects himself with the virus and dies, but not before saying that neither he nor Kurosu won their debate/battle.  Back on the battle field, thanks to Inori blocking the genomic resonance, the servers go back up and after Shibungi finds and kills Kenji, Tsumugi is able to hack back into the systems and override everything, which allows Ayase to defeat Daryl.  Shu holds Gai as he’s dying and he finds out the truth behind everything that happened; Gai only wanted what was best for Mana and if that meant allowing her to carry out the apocalypse so that she could finally die and be at peace, that’s what he was willing to do.  Shu seems to be moved by Gai’s dedication, but it’s still hard to tell.  The building begins to collapse and it turns out that Inori’s will and Shu slaying Gai were the right ingredients to stop the apocalypse and finally kill Mana once and for all.  Inori regains control of her body, though she’s now almost entirely encased in crystals and she hobbles out to find Shu.  Shu embraces her and he accepts every single person’s Void into his body from across the world (because that’s apparently needed in order to save the world) and the two are enveloped in crystals as the building collapses around them.  A few years later, everyone gathers to celebrate Hare’s birthday and we find out that Shu is actually alive!  The only problem, is that his crystal arm is now replaced with a robotic one and he’s now blind.  A small price to pay for saving the world, I’m sure.  As the series ends, we see our protagonist and his friends celebrating another friend’s life and Shu reminiscing in his memories of Inori.

Opinions:  Overall, this was a decent finale for a decent show.  Episode 21 really left us on a cliffhanger, what with Mana finally being resurrected and all that jazz.  Unfortunately, episode 22 didn’t fully live up to my expectations.  Not to say it wasn’t a good movie, but it almost seemed to end on a cliched, over-used happy ending where nearly everyone survives and moves on to forget everything that’s happened.  I’m happy that Shu survived, but it also might have made a more emotional ending if he hadn’t survived.  Either way, it was a decent ending and that’s all I was hoping for.  Most of the strings were tied up and I guess that’s really all that matters.

Score: B/A+