天下制覇

And somehow, it mostly works.

Impressions:

As much as it pains me to compliment this show in its eleventh hour, the scenes leading up to Lyuze and Ohji’s deaths were excellently done. Very subtle use of music and just open space to let their passings sink in without being heavy handed about it. Yes, something in this show was done without the use of a 500 ton cluebat, I’m as shocked as you. It was still a bit surreal to jump to them all growing flowers by the ocean, but I think if it had just ended there with some words from Casshern and/or Ringo about accepting death as a natural part of life and finding meaning while you’re alive… which were the central themes of the entire bloody show… it would have been just about as good of an ending as they could have salvaged. Unfortunately, they decided to have Casshern assault Luna’s home and fight Braiking Boss to change the world once again. And then he literally left with an "I’ll be back." Thanks, T-800.

It wasn’t really bad though. Rather it was undoubtedly one of the strongest episodes of the series, and easily the best of the entire second half of the show. The second half of the episode just felt like a bad coda and mostly an attempt to toss in some action just for the sake of having some action. Casshern just broke in, killed some grunts, fought Braiking for the sake of having a final villain, then let himself be stabbed to ‘change the world’ while delivering yet another pithy speech to Luna before wandering off into the sunset. Hasn’t Casshern spent most of the series bleeding on various things already? I’m pretty sure the answer is "it’s convenient for the plot." So much for the subtlety of the first half.

Final thoughts at the bottom.

Final Thoughts:

No matter how solid of an ending this actually somehow ended up being, the fact remains that the vast majority of the second half of this show was a disjointed, undirected mess. The first half was rather enjoyable, with a lot of action and the introduction of all the various ways people are still living on in the world of ruin. Unfortunately, they never really did a great job of bringing those together in the later going, instead getting more and more obtuse in the imagery and still never answering some of the central questions introduced at the start of the show.

Overall, if you average the first and second halves and the particularly strong ending, it’s a pretty decent show, but the later going can be pretty rough, especially when it becomes clear that they’re never really going to get around to clarifying some of the central mysteries of the series. Where did Luna go when Casshern ‘killed’ her? Where did Casshern go? What was the deal with Ringo? Why was Casshern’s brand of earth-draining immortality so different from everybody else? So long as you don’t care about those answers and treat this as just a particularly heavy handed 500 minute version of "It’s a Wonderful Life" with occasional Rock’em Sock’em Robots, then there’s a lot to love.

I can’t say that I’m overall pleased with the show, especially given the plunging production in the second half. 8 weeks of lingering bitterness have a way of coloring your opinion. Still, I’m very glad that I stuck with this to the end as it really was mostly a pretty satisfying ending… outside of I’LL BE BACK at any rate.