For viewers, this means a lot of bouncing around between the Ayanokojis and lots of pointless fights and screaming. And sort-of love scenes. And talking. God, do they all talk.
Everything comes to a kind of climax when the missing Ayanokoji, Kazuya, returns, with his own Angel (voiced by Ogata Megumi, using her UFO Princess Valkyrie Val voice.) Everything Kyoshiro believed in is crushed under Kazuya’s heel in a scene I love with all my heart. I absolutely, genuinely believe that the scene that makes me love this series best is the moment Kyoshiro greets his long-lost, thought-to-be-dead brother Kazuya once again…and has his head pounded into the ground for his efforts.
Kazuya turns out to indeed be as crazy as Mika and Sojiro had been saying from the beginning, as he co-opts the Angels for his own use. The climax is full of a lot of talking and we’re still unclear as to what, exactly, Kazuya was going to do when he destroyed everything, but as there really was never any chance of him doing it, we weren’t all that worried.
Kyoshiro and Setsuna head off into the sunset to find thought-to-be-dead-but-hey-we-have-to-look,right Kuu, Kaon and Himiko live happily every after, Sojiro and Tarlotte continue to annoy the piss out of one another and the series comes to a confusing, but less-unsatisfying than usual, end.
I watched this all with Bruce and spent a lot of time watching his reactions, because I already knew what mine were going to be. The fact that he laughed as Kazuya slammed Kyoshiro into the pavement sort of puts the period on that for me – it’s a really funny scene.
My only complaint, really, is the lack of Kaon and Himiko extras. Guess I can’t give up that one ADV disk after all…
Shattered Angels
Ratings:
Art – 7
Story – 7
Characters – 7, except for Mika, Kaon and Himiko, who are all 8
Yuri – 7
Service – 7
Overall – 7
Once more, thanks go to Okazu Superhero Amanda M. for her sponsorship of today’s review!
It’s funny because…that scene with Kyoshiro getting beat down by Kazuya is exactly the reason why I consider KyoSora/Shattered Angels to be a major writing failure. Not because it happened, but because it happened exactly one episode…heck, one scene too late. I’d been aching for exactly that to occur since, oh, Kyoshiro’s first appearance on screen, but no, Kaishaku just has to wait until after Kyoshiro realizes what a complete jerkass he’s been to everyone to have Kazuya demonstrate the point, ruining my ability to savor every otherwise delicious moment.
That said, Kazuya’s dialogue is so over the top as to be constantly hilarious, and there’s something generally awesome about watching Soujiro and Himiko pull off a Back to Back Badasses moment…while Himiko is wielding a cello.
(Seriously, though, the lack of the extra segments is annoying about this release. One thing I remember about watching ADV’s release of ep. 1-4 was that the Kyoshiro/Setsuna extra backed off a lot of the hate I felt for Kyoshiro by revealing that Setsuna was fully aware of and willingly going along with the “and then she’ll die too” part of the plan.)
Were the ‘specials’ included in the ADV releases?
I was really disappointed not to get them in this set.
@shanejayell – On the one disk ADV released, there were two extras.