*SPOILERS FOR SHUUMATSU NO IZETTA*
I'm sure we all remember what happened with the spring 2016 anime known as Kabaneri. To recap, the series started off strongly and interestingly before divulging into a convoluted mess that made everyone remember this series as "the biggest disappointment of the year" rather than "the biggest blockbuster anime of the year". Something similar happened here. This when this series started, it had a fairly decent reception and many people interested, thinking that this could quite possibly be the dark horse of the season. Unfortunately, it lost all of its luster by the end, and now, it is up to us to bury this series and say our final goodbyes to this failed soldier. You may ask: "how did this series flop on us all?" Well, let's find out, shall we?
To be fair to this series, the premise is one of the most fascinating of its season. A witch gets summoned to fight for one of the many European countries (this one being Elystadt) oppressed by Germania's assault during World War II. Even the first episode managed to feel like it would turn out to be interesting, if not necessarily as grandiose as a war series tends to be. Unfortunately, some of the series's major problems come early, with one of the biggest being how the magic is explained. There are these things called "ley ines" (which no one can see, ever, so how were they recorded?) which are the lines of magic energy that allow witches to use their magic. However, they aren't everywhere, so Izetta has to be careful not to wander into an area in which she cannot use magic. This becomes a problem due to the fact that we can never truly know where they are and where they stop, meaning that the writers can, on a whim, make Izetta accidentally go off to a bad location without us knowing any better until she suddenly falls down and gets herself injured, which end us happening in episode 9, bit I'll get to that episode is the point in which the series jumped the shark, later.
While episode 9 is the point of no return, the part that first comes of major concern is episode 4, where they fake Izetta's power via theatrics to fool the world into thinking that she is a very powerful witch while beating the Germanians in another battle. However, this raises the question of "why didn't she just use her own magic when the world from this point on, will know of her magic anyway?'. Not only that, but it leads into one of the tritest setups that I ever have to see: the whole "this person I admire is secretly a fake" cliche". It turns out that there was a spy all along, and Jonas, the guy who found out the secret about Izetta, is blackmailed by the spy that he'll kill his family. Then, he gets shot by him before the guy runs away, and then Jonas is shot and "killed" by Sieg. This should really affect his family given how much they talked about it. However, we never see his family once. After a few meh episodes, one ship explosion that took one torpedo when they explicitly said it required 4 to do the job, and one ball later, we finally get to episode 9.
Turns out, in episode 6, there was a girl who kissed Izetta in order to make her bleed that way said girl could drink her blood (don't ask me how this makes sense, or how they manage to pull it off realistically; this show never bothered to make it work). Turns out, she was a copy of the real White Witch: a girl described in legend to be a noble and tragic witch. I won't even get into how many of the false versions of the story there are here, as only the one showed in the middle of the finale is right, which means the series has lied to us extremely often. Let's just say this: now, she is evil. Also, they are mass-producing clones of her via magic that they shouldn't understand thanks to how this works. After struggling against her, Izetta loses power, and crashes into the land below. How? They went out of their way to state that she is still on land where the ley lines are located. Apparently, they didn't care to explain this, as there is no indication that her powers were manually shut down. Then, she starts bleeding despite nothing indicating that she was badly wounded anywhere. You could assume the crash did this to her, but all it was, was her tumbling a lot with nothing harmful going into her. She is then captured. Episode 10 even explicitly states so. So why is she still with the good guys? It turns out, that in that same episode, they retrieved her. Since that's the case, why did the Germanians bother saying that they got her. Also, why did the SS try to kill Berckmann? They had no reason to fire him, let alone execute him.
Somehow things only get worse in the final set of episodes. In episode 11, they start moving to the area with Izetta seemingly getting ready after another yuri bait moment, but in the very first 5 second of episode 12, she is already at the fight with Sophie already hovering opposite of her. After about 8 minutes, we get this. Remember when Sieg shot Jonas in the head? Turns out, he's completely fine, with the Germanians, and then he shoots Sieg out of panic. This raises a multitude of questions that damn this series even more into absolute failure. Whatever. The day is saved, Sophie is stopped, the Germanian operation has been foiled, and peace roams the land. Also, despite the last few episodes making it out to be a heroic sacrifice for Izetta to fight, she is perfectly fine, and in a wheelchair. This is just like when Ikoma copped out in the finale as Kabaneri by also living after he was supposed to die. All's well that ends well, I guess. Either way, the script is dead, and I still don't think I've covered all that makes this plot so terrible. Why did Izetta's grandmother call Sophie a traitor? They explicitly showed that when Ozetta asked if her criticism of Sophie (interfering with humans) was the reason, she said no. How did Izetta get captured prior to episode 1? Issues like this further break this sorry excuse for a narrative.
The cast isn't great either. Izetta, while adorkable, and determined, isn't a compelling protagonist despite still being the best character here with a believable backstory. She was saved by Ortfine when they were young, as the locals were about to kill her. Speaking of Ortfine, she's your typical strong-willed leader pushed to her limits. Nothing much to her. Most of the cast is also pretty forgettable and unexplored, like Bianka, Sieg, Hans, Berckmann, etc. Also, Berckmann's son, Ricelt fits this bill too, getting a mostly useless episode 7 to himself before he and the spy both die.
It's the villains that are pathetic. Otto is just a lame tyrant interested in witches, and there's nothing else to him. I struggle to find any reason for Elliot to be here given how useless he is. Then we have Sophie. She is a generic antagonist introduced just to have an eventual final boss, in the same vein as Biba from Kabaneri (as if there weren't enough comparisons between the two shows already). After being betrayed, she wants revenge. In episode 6, she is presented as this mysterious figure. After that, she's just a vengeful maniac who cackles while doing evil things for the sake of it.
This series looks pretty good, despite the fact that the studio Aija-Do isn't well known. If this show stayed consistent, this might've put them on the map. Sure, the citizens of Elystadt have this generic light novel look to them, and many characters have those gaps in their mouths (meant to represent lips) that are way too big sometimes, but Izetta, and the styles for the Germanian characters look a lot more interesting and varied. The action looks nice too. Special mention goes to that section in the OP where Izetta is moving from bullet fire. They even went out of their way to not only get the looks of the weapons and cars right, but they even animated certain moments in the black and white box look reminiscent of that of the actual days of WWII. I wouldn't say the show looks great or amazing, but it's clear that there was some significant effort put into this show.
The music was composed by a newcomer named Michiru, who does a fine job. Many of the vocals are in German, and in certain scenes, they fit perfectly, even if none of the songs are ones I would go out of my way to listen to. Still, its experimental and it works rather well. The OP, "cross the line" by AKINO with bless4, is a satisfying and energetic OP with some tight build-up and several electrifying moments. As good as it is, I'm even more impressed by the ED, "Hikari Aru Basho e" by May'n, who, if you don't know, was the voice for the singing done by Sheryl Nome in Macross F. Here, she delivers a powerful, emotional, and slow-moving song that makes me wish this show was as gripping as its ED. Everything works rather well, except for the dub, which is comprised primarily of newcomers who do a mediocre job. That's the simuldub business for you, but hey, anything to give this show some kind of boost, right? It honest to God needs it.
I'm sure we, the people of this community, will cynically remember this in the same way we did with Kabaneri only 6 months before. Only this time, even less of us cared in the first place. In the fires of the show's train wreck path, we can only grieve at what could've been. An interesting first half that led into a stupid yet equally by the numbers second half that only served to make the first half's flaws more apparent. It mostly felt like a love letter to World War II, but that's all this show was good for. Even then, they stopped doing interesting things with that by the second half, so there's nothing I can latch onto in order to recommend this show to anyone.
