CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR THOSE WHO HAVEN'T SEEN ALL OF THİS ANİME
Original Post Date: Feb 8, 2014.
Its first 7 episodes were more or less MASTERPIECE. It went into idiotic calculations in 8-12 and nonsensical things such as time travel. In the rest of it, it couldn't get back to its former level.
Hakaze's escape from the island was completely unneccesary. How many more fantasy have time travel? Obviously not in most. How about when it turns out Aika is the Exodus mage? Hakaze became an unbearable character the second she escaped the island. Attitudes and mimics which felt sympathical when on island, turned into an unlikeable romantic comedy main character. I wanted to kill herself, several times. I have to mention Aika also was unbearable at times. But with her the problem was more about the screenplay than her character. The story wasn't connected to a strong foundations in the first place. Because with its names coming from Christianity and Judaism, there are Exodus and Genesis trees, but despite all the explaining attempts it's not able to explain anything. How did the names come up in the world of the story is another question. Because there are no any religious comments in the show other than these two names. Let alone the fact that they went completely stupid with the depiction of Exodus and Genesis as TREES, I'd understand the Genesis tree (Tree of Life and all) how on earth are explaning the Exodus ACT as a g*ddamn TREE?
There's also the theory of "Civilization Blaster" theory which our female agent character mentions, I can't help but have a big laugh! Then I realized this "statement" was also next to "Zetsuen no Tempest" name, on some places. Which also is written in the middle in the ad breaks of episodes. I'm still not sure I understood Exodus and Genesis trees, but apparently Genesis tree is truly a thing that tries to limit civilizations by "blasting" them. And even tough they haven't get back to it before the show ended, there is a real possibility that all of this was made by aliens. Now I don't know what to say. Such unnatural stuff in a fantasy... Plus when there's another work that's not an anime that dealt with this theme in sci-fi, as it should be, in an infinitely better way, why would you want to add this to a fantasy story? You already have a tree in your hand, you can easily create a plot out of it, a better one, why make all this so silly instead? Sometimes it is best to know where to stop for a story to be good.
Anyway I'll make this short. I'll explain how it should've been in a list.
- Aika shouldn't have been Exodus mage.
- Time travel should have never been a part of the story.
- There should've been one single tree, Exodus tree (even if the name is silly)
- Hakaze shouldn't have escaped the island, it doesn't matter whether she dies or not as long as she's there.
- Hanemura should've never been part of the story.
- Characters such as Samon's charisma shouldn't have dropped down underground.
- Yoshino turned out a stupid character after 7th episode, initial Yoshino should've been preserved.
- Drama out of Black Iron Syndrome and the duo's progress on the isolated world should've continued.
There are many things I can write. Even if the show was always a contemporary fantasy, it lost most of its touch after 7th and 12th episodes gradually. Both, characters started talking to themselves and the script couldn't preserved the good story themes of the story. I can almost say that in terms of storytelling quality, not a single positive thing happened after 7th episode. Aika's death was first a drama element I liked, they even managed to over-use it. They could keep the story's central drama element alive, work the story in an increasingly beautiful way by without breaking Mahiro's and Yoshino's characters -even tough Mahiro wasn't much affected- but unfortunately none of this happened. I haven't read Hamlet but there should be a reason for it to be more famous than the Tempest. There seem to be things I would dislike in Hamlet as well, but choosing an ending where everybody is happy just to not a let tragedy happen when you can be a serious story by being a tragedy or at least a drama isn't much logical. I too am not a fan of bad endings but I would worry more about the story than a bad ending. Actually there's no need to nitpick, how much more tragic can you get than the death of 2 billions of people? What more are you trying to prove? The main trouble tv show couldn't simply "tell itself" after a certain point.
In short, it was a show I really loved at first and gave a 10/10 rating in its first 7 episodes, but it couldn't maintain its masterpiece quality. So it upset me, I can even say that watching last 5-6 episodes was hard for me. Still, I really love the Yoshino and Mahiro duo -despite Yoshino's unsuccessful development-, there were good dramatic moments, the music was very beautiful, so despite everything it isn't a bad anime. My rating is 8 out of 10.
PS: If you want you can question a lot more, Aika was characterless from the beginning by knowing that she's Exodus mage all along. And it could be claimed that Yoshino is a bastard to be hated by the things he keeps as secret -despite my tendancy to like him-, but there's no need to go that deep into it, because flaws in the story is more important. You also think that when you complete this show, you really think that this is a shounen. And that kind of ties your hands. Because shounens are shounens... If this was a seinen maybe most of the things I mentioned would automatically be fixed.
Oh, music, right? Tell your ears I said hi.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j4I339TjeZk&list=PL-76djaHFMnL6fB9_BK-_UrWlQJCnIdmo
Watch out for Emergency, Deal, Zetsuen, Collapse, Unexpected, Suspicion.
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