What’s the show? Seven Senses of the Re’Union, Episode 12.
And what happens in this, the series finale? I… I’m kinda struggling to see what the point of all this was…
Oh dear, that bad, huh? No, I’d never call this series outright “bad” it’s got way too much going for it, not only on a technical level but the characters and general ~plot~ too makes it more than passable.
So then what’s got you questioning “the point” of it all then? The series began with a pretty clear and intriguing premise—bunch of elementary school kids are playing a VR MMORPG, one of them dies in the game and ends up dying in real life—something that’s not supposed to happen. Then 6 years later the one “responsible” for her death in the game re-enters its sequel and finds that the dead girl isn’t dead but rather her mind is alive in the game.
Yep, spare us the synopsis—anyone who’s reading this review presumably knows that much… I only reiterate it because this ending not only doesn’t answer the how of any of that it decides to add more questions on top of it, and then has the nerve to give us a 3 minute montage of all the ‘happy’ things that happened in the show and end like everything’s fine and nothing’s wrong in the world—you know aside from the fact that there’s an organisation who wants to “worship” Asahi as a goddess oh and that she’s still freaking dead in real life!
Well you gotta have a happy ending though, right? There’s ‘have a happy ending’ then there’s ‘forget your plot and just shrug it all off’ which is exactly what this felt like. Whatever little urgency they previously had in finding out the “truth” behind Asahi’s condition is completely gone. This isn’t your run-of-the-mill forgetting about the plot to temporarily focus on something else, this is dropping it entirely and hoping the audience doesn’t remember why they started watching in the first place. This show was actually good at conveying a sense of melancholy and leaning into that could have worked with this final episode to show that even though things are happy ‘in-game’ there’s still shit to be done to figure out what happened to Asahi. But nope, here’s your happy montage, thanks for watching, idiots!
You seem mad, are you mad? I wasn’t before I started writing this review! Like I don’t regret watching any anime, even the worst, dumbest crap anime still at least allows me to have benchmarks for ‘bad anime’ to compare others too. But this was just ruined potential and an adaptation that clearly wasn’t intending to adapt what it started. I don’t know, maybe there will be a second season and then my fervent teeth gnashing here will all seem reactionary and premature but when it comes to the world of anime you have to expect each season finale to be a series finale and that there will never be a conclusion short of reading the source material.
So overall thoughts on the finale of Seven Senses of the Re’Union? You’ll notice if you read my reviews back (or just remember them well enough) that my enthusiasm diminishes with each passing episode. It’s easy to say that this was the worst episode of the series and even if the show is given another season I still think that stands. It wasn’t satisfying, it asked more questions than it answered, it was unintentionally funny when it was trying to be serious and it was eye-rolling when trying to be sincere. There’s a scene half-way through the episode that perfectly encapsulates my feelings of the show, a villain is defeated, we cut to him in the real world in front of his computer and he simply turns it off without as much as a second thought. It’s unfortunate that we weren’t afforded any significant answers for the main plot but that’s just how things are sometimes.
Previous Seven Senses of the Re’Union Reviews:
Haruto and Asahi’s High School Re’Union – Episode 1 Review
Ghost In The Machine – Episode 2 Review
Promises Beyond The Grave – Episode 3 Review
The Shape of Love – Episode 4 Review
Reviving The Past – Episode 5 Review
Easy Mode – Episode 6 Review
Unjust Desserts – Episode 7 Review
Prophets and Losses – Episode 8 Review
Under The Influence – Episode 9 Review
Bad Girls Have The Best Outfits – Episode 10 Review
Senseless Violence – Episode 11 Review
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Anime QandA 
Huh. I haven’t watched the show (yet) as I wasn’t really interested in Anohana: The SAO Edition. But I’ve been following the reviews and I’m almost relieved that’s not what this was. Yet at the same time, it still sounds like a bit of a mess XD
Your whole emphasis on endings is actually pretty interesting too. I’ve been thinking a lot about that subject. Happy Endings are all good and well, but they should at least be satisfying, yeah? And not leave so much just… unresolved.
Great work!
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Thank you so much, glad you enjoyed my reviews! I haven’t seen Anohana or SAO so didn’t have much basis for comparison but yeah at the end of the day a satisfying ending or even an ending at all is better than a forced happy one!
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