I mad.
Endless Eighth (but not really)
For the vast majority of the series, Chuu2 was a happy-go-lucky, feel-good anime about youngsters rebelling against social norms and expressing their individuality in an entertaining fashion. And it did this with excellent visuals, enjoyable fight scenes, and fantastic character interactions.
Yeah, there was drama thrown in every now and then to make it look deep, but we all knew what we were watching was anything but.
Vapid, stupid, brainless, and entirely lovable. I ate it up and it’s safe to say many of you did too.
But Chuu2 strayed from this formula for a bit, starting at the end of episode 10. It switched its tone from “sugoi kawaii desu” to “introspective”. And when that happens, it’s not something you can easily pedal back from.
Now don’t get me wrong, I absolutely loved the change in tone. It made me more invested in the characters than I was before, and I was earnestly hoping that Chuu2 could pull off something interesting. But Chuu2 couldn’t hack it, and that’s why we’re here.
How the series ended
Look Ma, I’m an anime blogger now! (Episode 12 recap)
Here’s what happened, in case your memory’s fucked more than your average child prostitute:
Yuuta goes to school and discovers no one knows where Rikka is. Heading over to the club room, he meets up with Deko who decided to become a normal schoolgirl.
They walk on over to the clubroom and meet up with Kumin, who’s playing the role of Rikka in a stupid anime attempt to get Yuuta to renounce his straight-man ways.
After that fails, Slutmeat (honestly, the best character in the show) lays a decent “so, like, we all have eighth-grade syndrome” argument on Yuuta.
Recoiling from the shock of getting served, Yuuta goes back home and learns that Rikka moved out without him knowing.
This results in your typical “overreact and then ride to your lover on a bike, regardless of how far away they are” shit that romcom protagonists pull in every fucking series ever.
He then meets up with Rikka, showing her the “Unseen Horizon”…
…and then rides off into night with Rikka by his side.
Cute, right? Heh, sure. We’ll be coming back to this.
The final message
Here’s the narrator’s speech, which is the final thing we’re left with as Rikka and Yuuta ride into the sun(set), and what we’re supposed to use to determine the “meaning” – or less pretentiously, the moral – of the show.
URW:
“Eighth-grade syndrome is embarrassing.”
Anyone would tell you that.
“I don’t want to remember my past.”
“I’d erase it if I could.”
But would the part of you that caused the whole affair really disappear?
The part of you that imagines you’re being watched,
the part that pretends to be a made-up character…
Could that disappear?
Sometimes people say certain things,
imagine a world different from our own,
think of the distant future,
and write epics of love in their minds.
From the moment they’re born to the moment they die,
people will repeat this, time and again,
without any hope of stopping.
Something sad and embarrassing, yet charming.
A disease called self-consciousness.
An unavoidable part of life called being true to yourself.
Indeed, everyone has eighth-grade syndrome all their lives.
But at any rate…
Eighth-grade syndrome is still embarrassing.
gg (yes, gg had a better script here):
People always say they feel awkward about having eighth-grader syndrome.
They say that they don’t want to talk about it, that they want to forget about it for good.
But does that really get rid of our crazy old selves and their wild fantasies…
back when we thought we were special, when we thought something greater watched over us?
People sometimes tell lies, imagine a completely different fantasy world, dream about the distant future,
or invent a lover’s relationship that only exists inside their heads.
This process repeats from the day we are born until the day we die. Forever and ever.
It is depressing.
It is shameful.
But it is dear to us.
It is an illness known as self-consciousness.
It is something we must all face known as “ourselves.”
Indeed, we carry our eighth-grader syndrome throughout all of our lives.
But to be honest, it’s an embarrassing thing to have.
I hate literature analyses, so I’m gonna spare you the line-by-line breakdown, but essentially what this boils down to is:
“Our imaginations can never disappear even though they sometimes result in things which we consider embarrassing.”
That breakdown reads like shit, but you get the gist. However you wanna interpret it, it’s a generic “imagination is good” message.
While that’s fine in itself, and while it’s definitely what I got out of the show from the first ten episodes, I don’t think that’s all Chuu2 could have said here.
Chuu2 was going somewhere once
The end of episode 10, all of episode 11, and part of episode 12 gave a glimpse into a Chuu2 that few people were expecting KyoAni would have the balls to show us. Yes, Chuu2 turned the happy lights off and went into dark mode.
And I don’t mean “dark” in the sense of brooding characters who angst over every little thing they can while the camera spins around a dirty city, screaming “this is so fucking deep”.
No, I mean the show narrows its vision and starts to point toward a little thing called “the real world”.
In the real world, you have to grow up.
Now, I’m not saying that’s the show’s only message. To do so would be forgetting everything that happened up until this point, and I don’t feel those first ten episodes meant nothing. But for Chuu2 to not even address this aspect of the show in the ending of the series is an absurdly idiotic decision and one that calls into question just why they bothered to show us these scenes in the first place.
It’s the same as writing a research paper and then neglecting to include any mention of your results in the conclusion. Dumb, dumb, dumb.
Why this was a poor ending
Contrive me a plot
Bitching about plot holes in anime is like bitching that water is wet. But goddamn do I hate how wet it is.
Rikka moving into her grandparents’ house without letting anyone know is probably the biggest issue I had with this episode’s plot.
Why does Rikka have to move away? Her mother just moved into the apartment with her, and she has a support base of people at the school. Fuck, she has a boyfriend who was the primary factor behind her “recovery”. Leaving this all behind, Rikka moves in with her grandparents and prepares to attend another school, all without telling anyone.
Why? The anime does not offer a single valid reason for this to happen. It’s drama for the sake of having drama. It’s complete bullshit and bad writing even by KyoAni’s standards.
And hold up. Why the fuck is Kumin hanging out on the side of a road at night? What, she just knew that Yuuta was gonna be riding his bike over to Rikka’s? And how exactly does she know Rikka’s entire backstory?
You have to make some really weird leaps for this to make any sense. Yeah, I get it, this is anime. I’ll stop.
But seriously, why was she hanging out by the road? Shit’s dangerous.
Resolution? Is that the name of a band?
Let’s take a look at the final scene.
Here we see Yuuta and Rikka riding off into the sunset, and with this the anime supposedly ends on a good note.
But I say “What good note?” What exactly has been resolved? So Yuuta takes Rikka back to his place, they hook up, and then… Well, uhh… Rikka goes back to her grandparents’ house, forgets about her friends and her lover, and adjusts to life in a new school.
How the fuck can this end well at all? What, you think Rikka’s mother is going to move them back into the apartment above Yuuta’s? That the transfer paperwork is gonna get canceled? That Rikka’s mother is going to rearrange her whole life again just so that Rikka can lock lips with her high school fuckbuddy? She obviously didn’t think much of Rikka’s social life when they moved in the first place.
There’s no reason at all to think everyone’s lives will be filled with sunshine and rainbows as the credits roll.
This is a resolution-less ending that couldn’t leave anyone happy. There’s nothing satisfying about imagining what comes next.
I’d compare this to one of the old Batman episodes where the episode ends with Batman being trapped in some ridiculous situation (like being locked in a steel cage and thrown into an ocean to be eaten by sharks), but instead of ending the episode, that was the series end. And instead of ending on a suspenseful note, there are clouds with smiley faces flying about in the distance and you get a laugh track.
I want to make this absolutely clear for the people who still don’t get it: the ending did not portray any of the more serious aspects it showed us in the past few episodes, nor did it properly handle making a good ending. By both standards, it was ineffective in its goal of providing a satisfactory conclusion to the series.
What a better ending would have been
You want a happy ending? Throw in something – anything – that would lead a reasonable viewer to conclude this story ends well. One frame of “transfer request: canceled” would be the easy mode method, and probably acceptable to most viewers.
I would much prefer something more concrete than that, something which integrates the negative aspects of what happened after Rikka faced the facts. All in all, I don’t want what Chuu2 started going for to be completely ignored.
Throw in a line to the narrator’s moralistic ramblings at the end — have him tell us that embracing reality may be difficult but is something that we have to do. Make your conclusion encompass everything that you’ve fucking shown us and then give us a knowing wink that lets us know it’s all good. That’s how you make an ending that’s satisfactory.
But you know what? I would have loved a darker ending — one where Chuu2 threw it in our face that reality can suck.
Hammer it in that Rikka’s severely depressed from having lost every bit of moral support she ever had (her sister, Yuuta, and her friends). Let Yuuta agonize over completely fucking up his relationship with Rikka in the aim of being a “nice guy”. Show the club members drift apart from one another now that they don’t have an excuse to meet anymore.
In essence, give us something with impact. Something that makes us think “Yes, this show was special. It did something meaningful and I’m glad I watched it.”
I would have loved for this series to take a gamble on the ending. Instead, it folded before it even had a full hand.
Who’s to blame?
While I’d like to say “We’re all to blame!” that’s simply not true. Japan doesn’t give a damn about what anyone whose race isn’t their own thinks. Rather, we should blame the Japanese otaku. Those needy NEETy fuck-ups whose desires dictate the direction of anime. The idiots who throw money hand over fist at tripe like Girls und Panzer, causing it to rocket to the top of sales charts. We can blame them.
They’re the primary consumers of anime, and it’s to their beat that KyoAni marches. Sure, KyoAni could throw in a satisfying and sobering conclusion, but if the otaku saw the characters acting human… well they might not want their images enshrined in gaudy plastic to be displayed in glass cases as trophies of virginity.
Maybe some of you don’t remember the backlash that A-1 got when it came out that Nagi of Kannagi wasn’t actually a virgin, but I’m sure KyoAni does. And it’s likely for this reason that the ending Chuu2 should have had never materialized. Gotta minimize that risk of failing when you’re in a hit-driven business, after all.
Now, I’m obligated to mention that we can only blame the NEETs for Chuu2 not ending on a darker note. It’s completely KyoAni’s fault for making their “good ending” so… not. Maybe KyoAni didn’t want the good end to be all smiles, and that’s fine. But dammit, that doesn’t excuse the half-assed, resolutionless attempt we got.
tl;dr:
Chuunibyou’s ending completely ignored the somber developments of its prior episodes, leading to a bland, unsatisfying conclusion for anyone who was conscious throughout the series. By avoiding offense on the part of slobbering Japanese otaku, its resulting ending felt forced, awkward, and entirely noncomprehensive. It was a slap in the face to anyone who legitimately enjoyed the show and a good example of how pandering to trash can result in just that.
Fuck KyoAni.
tl;dr
Anime is for horny kids. Where’s my afk/eclipse review.
Uguu…
Sutai hi
hi there neto_rare
Hi there~
so then ur a horny kis
Why is that anime you say horny?
I like the anime
Thank you for writing this, it’s nice to see some criticism for the ending. Reading the forums, like reddit all I see is “10/10 perfect KyoAni anime!”.
Perfect KyoAni anime would be the next KyoAni anime.
Seeing as I have read D_S’s Steins:Gate and VLR reviews in the past, this rating really should not have surprised me. But it did somehow anyways.
Wouldn’t her coming down at the end be enough to infer that she moved back?
Doesn’t make the ending much better, though.
It could have just as easily been a flashback, which is how I saw it.
^Pretty sure this more or less confirms the “move back” happy ending.
I know that it would be far more interesting if KyoAni decided to actually go deeper into the dark and depressing side at the end of Chuu2, but I’m not disappointed that they only pointed out those potential paths but ended up sticking to a slightly cliche but happy end. And as a general trend, it seems that KyoAni is getting closer and closer to real romantic drama. I’m looking forward to Tamako Market next season.
“Maybe some of you don’t remember the backlash that KyoAni got when it came out that Nagi of Kannagi wasn’t actually a virgin, but I’m sure KyoAni does.”
Eri Takenashi–now KyoAni. Also, manga artists–now entire anime studios.
Hyouka was better IMO.
>Maybe some of you don’t remember the backlash that KyoAni got when it came out that Nagi of Kannagi wasn’t actually a virgin
They didn’t make it. A1 did.
Same thing~ (fixed)
Still wrong. The backlash came about from the manga, as my previous comment alluded to. A1 had nothing to do with it.
http://i.imgur.com/PLVQ5.jpg
I was under the impression it affected A-1 as well. Or am I supposed to believe that only the manga was affected by the backlash?
From this topic http://www.nihonreview.com/forum/index.php?PHPSESSID=255399e9375bc08a2f3f229cb6c132af&topic=1206.msg14300#msg14300 it seems the issue appeared as the anime aired. I’m sure A-1 lost a lot from DVD (and BD?) pre-sales.
You should blog anime more often.
Also.
Chu2Koi – 6/10.
TL;DR Wait for Aura if you want to see anime about Chuu2 with plot and dark moments.
I think AURA will be too clever for most people.
Haven’t watched the series, but the darker last three episodes sounds a bit like Fruits Basket. I’m not entirely sure that ended on a good note, though – I can’t remember – I just remember everything in those last three eps having a depressing tint of grey to it.
Fruits Basket didn’t really end; it was merely a moment of transition.
The manga did end though.
But the Fruits Basket anime sucked.
“Rikka jumping to the rails” ending was a better alternative
That would’ve been something.
thx for tl;dr D_S
u mad i mad too
>epics of love
Oh ye gods…
Also, dropped this show at the first episode, seeing it as just another cute-girls-doing-cute-things-because-they-are-half-retarded otaku panderfest, so I got nothing else to say.
>dropped chuu2 at the first episode
>has translated sword art online every week for nearly six months
wat
My god, people with preferences that don’t match mine! Who permits these heathens to walk the same Earth as do I?
I know, right?
THANK YOU. Listen, I am an unabashed KyoAni fanboy and overall I still enjoyed the show but this ending was by far the weakest part of the whole thing. The message in the end appeared to be that you don’t have to grow up, fantasy can solve everything. Also, stalking: pretty acceptable? This ending blew.
KyoAni is over. Shaft will take its place.
Once again, I disagree with D_S’s opinions on anime. The ending was totally fine. It could have been better, but I’m still going with a 10/10. One of the funniest shows I’ve ever seen, and the return of the Dark Flame Master plus the revelation that Rikka became “afflicted” because of said Master completely made the ending. It was a fun show, and it had a fun ending. I assume she moved back and they’re together again. Why did she move? Because her whole reality was shattered; I thought that was obvious. Her boyfriend let her down by forcing her to face reality when he originally saved her from that very reality.
And after all that complaining, still a 9/10? You made it sound like you despised the whole thing.
Disagreeing with me on something? Hey, it’s okay, nobody can be perfect. <3
If you look to my previous articles, you'll see other examples of times when I spend an entire post criticizing something and then reveal that I still liked it. And I think it's fair to do that. We can still dislike certain aspects of a show and criticize its failings, even if we liked it as a whole. And for all the venom I threw Chuu2's way, I still liked it enough to put in my top 3 shows of the season. Things aren't always black and white, and I feel that's important to recognize.
Also, I love trick endings and I'm certain others do too (even if they see them coming).
This anime really sucked from 6th episode. Gaah, where is my life?
“And hold up. Why the fuck is Kumin hanging out on the side of a road at night? What, she just knew that Yuuta was gonna be riding his bike over to Rikka’s? And how exactly does she know Rikka’s entire backstory?”
Remember how in episode 11, Kumin passes by Rikka and starts talking to her? I’m willing to bet Rikka told her how her whole Wicked Eye thing started, and that Kumin promised her she’d help her (given that she held onto Rikka’s eyepatch and shoes). She probably figured that Yuuta would try and get Rikka back once he knew the full story and decided to give him a bit of pep talk.
As to why Rikka left without saying anything: she probably thought she’d be better off alone, and that Yuuta couldn’t help her even if he wanted to (which is true).
Also, was it ever shown that her mother moved into Touka’s former apartment? I believe she merely stayed there so she could patch things up with Rikka, and that Rikka had to go back to her grandparents either way (probably because Touka payed the rent, and she left for Italy).
Fair assumptions. I probably should have taken another look at 11 before launching into this.
I was under the impression that her mother did move in because Rikka obviously couldn’t live alone. But I suppose it’s possible that Rikka moving back was planned out all along.
> “In the real world, you have to grow up.”
> Now, I’m not saying that’s the show’s only message.
I don’t think that was a message that was even conveyed in the show. The characters here let their imaginations run wild, but did not cast off reality. In this way, the characters are not true eccentrics (aka “denpas”). Dekomori, in particular, seemed aware of reality and appeared to be a well-adjusted person in school. Rikka’s problem was adjusting to her father’s death, something she had trouble with even before she started up her “delusions”. And she solves that dilemma within her imaginary world. So I don’t think “reality” is even a factor here.
Or maybe the message I got from your words is a bit different from what you had intended.
No, that was definitely a strong part of the show. Rikka played dress-up every day. She had no friends. All she did was recite her fucked-up fairy tale bullshit and everyone thought she was crazy because of it. She couldn’t adjust to her father’s death until Yuuta told her to take off her fucking eyepatch. How the hell do you not get that from the show?
She solves it within her imaginary world? Really? Because that sure worked great for her when she “fought” against her sister. That imaginary world shit sure worked great when Deko flipped out on Rikka and Yuuta. Nothing was ever resolved until they looked reality straight in the eye and accepted it. “Reality” has absolutely everything to do with the show.
> She couldn’t adjust to her father’s death until Yuuta told her to take off her fucking eyepatch.
Um, Rikka didn’t have an eyepatch in the first place when her dad died. So “reality” did her no favors there when the denial started. Rikka sure wasn’t helped by her grandfather, mother, and sister taking every opportunity to show their disapproval of Rikka’s non-conformity. Her imagination was only let loose after observing Yuuta repeatedly, and deciding that it was “cool”. “Reality” has adults that are relieved when their daughter/sister conforms to society’s values even if doing so makes the daughter/sister miserable. And I can’t see that being part of the show’s message.
But maybe we can just chalk this up to more bad writing.
I wouldn’t say she was “facing reality” even when she had the eyepatch off in the first place. She couldn’t accept it, and then she found an excuse to not accept it (that being her Tyrant’s Eye persona). The anime showed us that while reality may not be easy to deal with, you have to deal with it. Rikka couldn’t stay trapped in her delusions for the rest of her life — she had to grow up and move on, just like Yuuta and Shinka did.
I laughed, because all the shit Yuuta was shoving down people’s throats for eleven episodes, with episode eleven being absolutely terrible, he promptly about-faces in five minutes. This series should be subtitled ‘let’s troll Yuuta for being retarded’.
Ending was… disappointing. It lacked emotions. It’s neither good or bad, it’s not bittersweet either. Actually, it’s hard to say there even was an ending. Series ended, yes, but there was no closure to ANY of characters except maybe Touka.
Letter from DFM was terrible deus ex machina. Nap Society suddenly appearing at Rikka’s place made no sense, they could’ve given Yuuta a ride. if they had a car. I didn’t know what kind of ending I should expect but KyoAni didn’t deliver. After extremely powerful episode 11 I was ready to make Chuuni my first 10/10 this year. Now I’m not really sure if it deserves 9/10.
Well, in the first though, I thought this anime would be comedical series xD But yeah, and this what I’ve got =3=
the final message:
happiness (and love) = delusion
Elaborate.
I know I’m slowpoking here, but it really wasn’t that bad. I agree it wasn’t that good either because of some plot holes like the ones Progeusz mentioned as well as Rikka just moving without telling Yuuta. Some people have said that it was because she was abandoning Yuuta for shattering her reality, but then she would have at least tried to reject him in their reunion scene in episode 12 instead of just blindly jumping into her arms. As for the resolution, I think anon9 was right in saying that
> “In the real world, you have to grow up.”
wasn’t really the message. Throughout the series, they tried to show us that being a chuunibyou wasn’t really the problem. This was especially apparent in how they portrayed Dekomori as actually having friends in middle school and being in the top of her class even though she was a chuunibyou. Rikka on the other hand, didn’t have friends and was failing in school because her real problem was that she actually ignored reality all together. Then when Yuuta made her give up her Chuunibyou ways, she was forced to confront reality but abandoned her imagination. As a result though, She didn’t actually confront her father’s death and instead just went full-emo for a few episodes. It wasn’t until the “Unseen Horizon scene” in episode 12 that she actually accepted her father’s death because at that point she embraced reality without suppressing her imagination. So yeah, the ending was a little disappointing, but it wasn’t terrible.
I guess this ending didn’t suck after all, since season 2 has just been confirmed <3
I thought the ending was quite good, didn’t really care about the trifling matters of Rikka suddenly moving or Kumin hanging out in the middle of nowhere or how it would have carried out past the conclusion. The last couple of episodes became about Rikka And Yuuta’s character arcs, the conflict between Rikka’s eighth grade syndrome and Yuuta’s shame (and this is a tale I think a lot of anime fans can take with them). Once Rikka renounced her syndrome, Yuuta got what he was asking for in the start of the series and it sucked, Deko lost her playmate and also resigned. In the end, Yuuta turns around, he wants Rikka to be chuuni again because it lights up their lives, they can have fun even if others are ashamed of them (and seeing wise Kumin’s sincere embrace of the evil eye may have grounded that in a little more) and, re: your “In the real world you can’t play make believe forever,” it says you absolutely CAN play make believe if you want, just don’t use it to escape from your real problems, and if people are ashamed of you, then that’s their own syndrome.
The image of Rikka and Yuuta riding off into the sun(rise) was really striking to me, not when she held him but when Rikka was trying to cast something on the cop behind her. As you said before, “Chuu2 was a happy-go-lucky, feel-good anime about youngsters rebelling against social norms and expressing their individuality in an entertaining fashion,” It looked like Rikka was going “fuck the law,” as Yuuta supported her.
how the anime actually went, i would have prefered ep 11 as the finale. the ending you wanted i completely agree with and the movie, ova and s2 should have been yuuta fixing his relationship aswell as keeping her chuunibyou at bay (her bing rikka
They just released a movie called chuunibyou take one me! I swear you won’t be dissapointed ;)
A. I didn’t finish S2.
B. I don’t trust that smile.
After watching the end of season 2 I was not that satisfied but then after watching the movie I am now more satisfied. Now let’s hope for season 3 to came as soon as possible.
Honestly I disagree, that your fucking opinion. You didn’t like the ending? boo hoo deal with it because there’s nothing you can do. I was satisfied with the ending, so I don’t know what you’re talking about :)
This anime wasn’t bad at all. I just didn’t appreciate the fact that Yuuta ended up with Rikka instead of Satone.