Posts Tagged ‘liam o’brian’

The Story

In the final four episodes of this series, we start with a touching episode about Koyomi’s search for the father she never got to meet after seeing him on accident while watching television. With some help from her friends (some more than others) the search becomes a day long affair. Meanwhile, the mysterious woman introduced on the previous volume is putting a plan into action.

Miharu is taken back to Seiren by a special agent working for another with an agenda of her own and seals the gate between the two worlds. In the end, it will come down to one character finding a way to open the gate and everyone else to enter in order to save Miharu before it’s too late.

Good and the Bad

Wow.

Backwards and forward, inside and out; this volume shows the audience exactly what this series is truly capable of being. Touching, action filled, dramatic, funny; all of the things that this series should have been from the beginning are shown on this volume.

Finally moving past the filler episodes, audiences have little to complain about with this volume. Finally moving past the filler episodes that did little for the plot and stupid jokes that had no meaning beyond showing as much fan service as possible, the writing in this final volume came across wonderfully.

The comedy in the final four episodes maintains the same over the top physical theme that audience members have come to expect from this series for the most part. Fans who watch this series in its English format though are going to get an extra treat though as the writers really did a great job with the dialogue. While all of the lines retain the same feeling behind them, ADR Director/Writer Patrick Seitz, does a fabulous job of altering them just enough to give the punch lines some extra oomph. Many ADR writers have a very bad habit of adding in cursing just for the sake of having it there while Seitz does a great job of only adding them when they will actually do something for the line that wasn’t there previous. Giving Tomoko the best line in the volume during the final episode was the kicker though.

The ending for this series isn’t perfect naturally. While for the most part I was very entertained and pleased with how the final episode played out, there are some issues with the final confrontations and climaxes that had me rolling my eyes as an audience member. Moving past that though, the epilogue does a wonderful job of wrapping things up and creating an ending that doesn’t feel like a cop out. Best of all, NO loose ends!

Music

As with previous volumes, the music in this volume is well composed and placed. While fans are robbed of getting the full ending theme to go with the credits of the final episode, the series throws in some nice musical treats including a short off vocal version of the opening theme during the final episode and some wonderful soft piano pieces played early in the volume.

Dub vs. Sub

As mentioned earlier, the entire primary and supporting cast gets their chance to shine in this final volume and this extends to both vocal casts. On the dub side, Carrie Savage really gets to have some wonderful touching scenes in the first episode as Koyomi. Two other notable performances on this volume belong to Hunter MacKenzie Austin and Liam O’Brian as Lisa and Kazuhara Fukuyama respectively. Throughout the entire series, these two characters have been about as two dimensional as they get and have provided nothing but occasional comic relief. Finally though, these two really get a chance to break out of those roles and show emotions other than lust and greed. Perhaps if these two had been able to break out sooner this series would’ve taken a much more interesting turn but now we’re just getting into fan speculation I suppose.

Extras

Original US trailer and a production art gallery.

Overall

Seriously… why couldn’t the entire series have been as good as this final volume? While this statement starts to veer into speculation territory again, I can’t help but think that if this series had just trashed all of the stupid filler episodes (did we really need that many episodes about Miharu’s obsession with phallic shaped foods?) and shortened it to one season, this could have gone down as a great harem series that I would have gladly recommended to anyone. Instead though, we have a brilliant closing volume that audiences had to wait far too long to see. While there were more than a few times when I wanted to give up on this series, these final episodes make me glad that I didn’t. Action, tears, drama, heart break, comedy… everything that you want is here. There are plenty of times when this series is going to test your patience but seeing the series closed out so neatly and in a sweet fashion… almost makes it worth it. Recommended.

Final Grade: A