Izetta The Last Witch / Shuumatsu no Izetta

^Yeah, exactly. In most cases, stories where people make tragic mistakes are then averted by their descendants.

I feel like things may still be tense with Atlanta, though if Eylstadt manages to take itself back from Germania I expect that will be the end of things for right now. If Izetta does it in a way that cripples her casting ability, then Atlanta will have no reason to attack them, either - though I expect they may want to get their hands on that bomb design, even if it takes magic crystals right now instead of nuclear material.

@Black Yakuzu 94 : Regarding our getting a kiss .. I think they may have gone further than that already. Consider this — what exactly did they do that melted all the ice on that mountain top?

I personally don't think they're in an official relationship just yet, though it's pretty clear to anyone looking that they're basically married already. I say so because I want their first kiss on-screen to be their first kiss overall.

However, I would also accept a 'we have been in a relationship all this time, time to kiss and finally not care who sees' kiss as well.

I'm guessing that Izetta defeats Sophie, so they wake up all the Sophie clones at once in an attempt to overwhelm her, which fails. Then while the Emperor is reeling from this, Berkman somehow manages to teleport into his throne room and assassinate him, ending the war and causing him to be declared a hero.

Normally I'd say something like 'but no one in Germania has expressed discontent with the Kaiser or his plans, so Berkman killing him would probably be punished as treason even if he wasn't already a wanted man', but it's Berkman and he'll be back in Germania by that point, so his plans will absolutely work out.

Caught up with a few hours until the last episode comes out.

Put me down for a prediction that Izetta will either lose her magic, or destroy the magic in the land somehow and end up living together with Fine.

Also Berkman is probably going to end up coming out of this on the winning side somehow.

BTW, go check the Izetta of the Weekend, an official parody manga, with cute chibi art that shows all the ways the characters could die each episode. It's only 11 pages long (one for each episode) so it's a three minutes read.

So this is the end… And there was no kiss. :'( Izetta didn't die though, thankfully. Sieg dies a very ironic death, and Berkman makes it out alive, somehow.

…So in the end, I'm a bit frustrated about this show. Not just because of the lack of kiss, though there's that too, but… it never really surprised me outside of the first episode. It just ticked all the boxes, and there was nothing fundamentally wrong with it, but nothing that would make it particularly stand out either (except the fantastic score, maybe). I wished it had been a 26 episode series, because as is, it just leaves me hungry.

With that said, it's rather a good sign that a show like this can be considered "just average".

…Well that was stupid.

edited 17th Dec '16 9:42:52 AM by Lyendith

Fuck. Now I don't want to watch it if there's no payoff.

Yea, it's an incredibly "meh" ending. It's not terrible, but no real sense of closure either. I feel like it just scratched the surface of an interesting premise

6-7/10, it was ok.

Well, no kiss, but I'm satisfied with this ending, honestly. I would have liked to see more focus given to the characters instead of the logistics of the war, though; in the last few episodes we really didn't get anything between Izetta and Fine that wasn't tangentially related to the war.

Well, I'm very disappointed by the ending.

I actually started rooting for Sophie, because honestly her seething hatred after being used and betrayed at the king convenience is more sympathetic and relatable than Izzeta's suicidal devotion to Fine that frankly became just creepy at this point.

Oh and sucking up all the magic in the world is just a super convenient resolution to all the interesting problems the series posed about the consequences of using magic in war. A cop out really.

Aside of that, all the other parts felt rushed and unsatisfying, from Sieg death via guilt-hallucinations, to Emperor reacting to the failure of his plan with what amounts to "lol, well just do it the old fashioned way!" and then getting defeated off-screen, to Berkman basically achieving his goal and escaping alive basically scott-free, even when the other guy had to reason not to kill him.

Oh and Izzeta somehow survived using the life eating stone to an unprecedented extent and then falling from several kilometers high into the middle of the ocean, through the use of the most powerful magic of "If it happens off-screen it doesn't have to make sense".

So yeah, an all around disappointing ending to anime that started out great. 3/10

I'd have liked to see a more character-based resolution, true. As cool as the train whips were, it would have been nice to get a bit of closure for Sophie (with a bit more depth, too) and some more tender scenes between Fine and Izetta.

Well, I can't watch this for a while...

Needs some time to shake off this mental deterrent.

I'm probably just not going to watch the last couple of episodes. I was in this mainly for the yuri since everything else was merely okay at best. Since it doesn't deliver on that, there's just no point in it.

I have to agree with Shulgo on Sophie being a lot more sympathetic considering her backstory. Too bad the story never actually treats her as such beyond a generic evil witch.

Ironically, despite being titlur character, Izetta is probably the weakest part of the whole show lol.

It's pretty telling that I can relate and sympathize a lot easier to the villain who spent most of her limited screen-time chewing the scenery, than to the freaking main character.

It tells me that they kind of dropped the ball on characterization front.

To think this all started so well, too. So much promise and none of it was really delivered. If Fine and Izetta had some closure, it would have at least been a bit acceptable.

@Zelenal: To be honest, the series (and Fine and Izetta) never act as though they aren't already together, pretty much. There's no big kiss scene, true, but there's plenty there that already says it just as well.

In opinionated eyes, would that kiss have done anything?

I'm not gonna lie, it would have been nice to have it (as well as an actual, indisputable proof of relationship). That's definitely something Japan could stand to do more of, and I'm not arguing that the series is better without one. That said, the only way someone could watch a scene like the flight scene and mountaintop cuddling from Episode 11, or the way Fine broke into tears while addressing the peace treaty delegates, or collapsed at the sight of the pillar of light, and not see a romantic relationship, is if they were either stunningly unobservant or deliberately obtuse. There's plenty there if you're looking, even on the surface level.

edited 17th Dec '16 4:46:42 PM by RedSavant

Ah, so they did go with the "Iron Giant" style ending, i.e. Heroic Sacrifice except The Stinger reveals it wasn't fatal after all.

But yeah, it doesn't really make any sense because how could she possibly survive a giant magical explosion, followed by falling into the ocean from cloud-height, with no one around to save her from drowning if she magically survived the fall (which apparently caused permanent disability? seriously, how did she not drown?), That's in addition to the life-draining properties of the stone being greatly exaggerated, and it seems far-fetched that it can absorb all the magic on the entire planet whenever you want it to. Going with Only Mostly Dead in such an implausible way despite countless hints that Izetta would die in the end, combined with the least interesting way of resolving the "what do we do with all this magic that can be used for evil" problem... this felt like a cop-out ending.

And Berkman survived and is still up to shady crap? For fuck's sake...

It's not really the lack of Big Damn Kiss in itself that's the problem, it's the strong tendency of anime to use some combination of But Not Too Gay and Hide Your Lesbians to skirt around the issue. Subtext will be thrown around like there's no tomorrow, but it's rare for them to directly admit what it means (which is why if an anime does want to have an actual gay relationship they need to be very upfront about it to avoid the assumption that it's just another subtext-fest). They want to have their subtly homophobic cake and eat it too, because it's (supposedly) harder to attract male viewers with girls that are actually unambiguously gay. This series did nothing out of the ordinary in that respect—or in any other respect—so I'm not condemning it specifically, but it's an important distinction. People are raving about Yuri On Ice largely because it's a rare exception to this pattern.

edited 17th Dec '16 4:55:38 PM by Kotomikun

I remember an interview from yuri author Canno where she basically said that when this kind of scene happens between a boy and a girl, everyone immediately assumes it's love, but when it's two girls (or two guys) they can see it in a more ambiguous way.

So yeah, without a kiss or a full-blown confession, people will still suspect that it might not be a completely romantic relationship, even though it blatantly is in Izetta and Finé's case. Like the authors didn't assume their choice completely.

Although I still prefer that to the Cross Ange way − "We kissed and had sex, and love each other, but we're totally FRIENDS!"

Erf

edited 17th Dec '16 5:06:22 PM by Lyendith

@Kotomi: That's a very good point, and one that's important to make. As a story/in-universe, I think Fine and Izetta's relationship was handled very well; as a piece of media, it absolutely should have included a kiss and an outright statement of a relationship, because there ARE people who are deliberately obtuse on such things.

Well, I suppose I could always read Sakura Trick if I want more of that specifically. I already watched the anime but I know the manga goes further. Or the Valkyrie Drive: Mermaid.