jace-rynearson

I love this show, I never really thought there would be another anime coming out where I could say that because I think the industry as a whole has gone downhill, but I'm glad to say it about this one. It's not secret that I never really bought into the fandom or supposed emotional weight of some other popular anime, examples being Demon Slayer and Frieren: Beyond the Journey's End, I didn't hate or love them like so many others. But with this one, I absolutely buy into the emotional weight, especially because it's something that hits so close to home for me personally, a devastating choice I got so close to making myself. On that note, I was a little concerned hearing that the show tackles those themes at first, because let's just say that a lot of anime don't handle them well, but this is thankfully an exception in that regard as well, it takes it seriously and feels like somebody there knows what they're talking about instead. It's quite a sly send up as well, as you might think it looks like it's for kids, but it just uses that style to pull the rug out from under your feet. All that aside, I truly can't count how many times this show made me cry actual tears, and that's not easy to do because I rarely cry at all, but don't worry, because some of those tears were of joy instead of sorrow. It's only six episodes and has much more character development and genuine emotion than I've seen in pretty much any other anime, and some of the saddest stories have the happiest endings. We really do need more anime like this and less like the pitiless hogwash we get that exploits these serious subjects for shock value.

Normally, I would side with the audience over critical because their opinion is what people generally think, but ever since the whole subject of Review Bombing came to light, I've been reconsidering that stance. With that, I've seen people be blatantly wrong about some stuff in the past few years, especially with something like The Last of Us Part II, just people getting super biased if not outright untruthful about their own opinion, even if it would thankfully get some of the praise it actually deserves, but this one isn't so lucky. I feel like a lot of people were just judging it based off of how bad the finale of the original series was, and I myself agree with them in that case fully, that one was bad, but this one isn't at all. In this case, I fully side with the critics who praised it, I think it did everything that should've been done in the first place and gave a genuinely satisfying conclusion for the most part. I say the most part because I'm not gonna say it's a perfect finale, I know how strange that sounds with me giving it a 10 out of 10 rating, but I think I'd give it a 9.5 out of 10 if I could.

In this case, Dexter is finally punished for what he did all the way, something that didn't happen before, and that works really well, it's even quite bittersweet towards the end. I do think they should've done something like this before instead of making us wait 8 years, I'm still pissed off that they killed Debra, but I also think it's better late than never. I also think that Angel's story could've used a little more development, but at least we get someone who finally gets on the right track to learning who Dexter really was, and I think the implication is better than the answer in this case. Some may also think the aforementioned punishment of Dexter could've been handled differently, but that's not to say that what they did was bad, just different.

I think my whole point with the audience is pretty telling that the rest of the episodes have a couple thousand reviews while this one has 20k, that's pretty textbook Review Bombing behavior to me. If you watched it and really don't like it, that's fine, but don't just hop on the bandwagon. In my completely unbiased, truthful, personal review, this is a much better finale and a pretty good one, if admittedly not perfect. I just don't think it deserves the hate that it gets.