Well, a lot of my final opinion of this show was riding on this episode. The final episode, being from a series written by Maeda, will end in the most predictable way, but fortunately I'm usually pleased by the way he ends things.
So. This episode. I had a lot of thoughts and theories going into this episode, and surprisingly, most of them were completely shot down. Maeda finally pulled a surprise act on me.
First of all, our culprit, Mr. Nameless. If you read any of my stuff from the previous episode's discussion, you'll know I was all but absolute that the idiot with the glasses, Takamatsu, was the person who was stealing the computers and shadowing the NPCs.
Well, I wrong.
The culprit instead, in a sense did not even exist anymore. He'd long since become a victim of his own emotions and program, the Angel Player. Whether or not this person was the strange NPC we saw in the room, that's debatable. What is true though, is that there was no longer a evil mastermind-just like there was no God. Yuri had been truly fighting against the afterlife itself the entire time.
I've also mentioned before that I was going to be very pissed at Maeda if he pulled a random person out of thin-air and made them the culprit. And when I first saw Mr. Nameless, I was. But despite his somewhat-confusing speech, I picked out that he was only an NPC, that there was no real culprit. This, while not living up to my expectations, satisfied me. Better no one than a random person.
More so, the one thing that I guessed at and did come true, the fact that some of the SSS, mainly the combat-useless ones, would ascend on ahead, and the others would go to back up Yuri; this was immensely well-pulled off.
Yuzuru assumed his leadership role that he had back when he was alive, Hinata and Naoi, faithful right and left-hand men to the end, followed him without hesitation, Noda showed up to prove his undying love for Yuri and show again that he can be bad-ass, Ooyama pitched in and handed some shadow ass with a sniper rifle, Fujimaki increased his rank from meaningless side character to a pretty cool fighter, with his katana-handgun combo, Matsuhita-godan showed up in the nick of time, and wowed everyone by becoming awesomely fit, TK showed up and completely stole the show, and Shiina, while a little late, took over shadow extermination and pushed Yuzuru to go help Yuri. The characters Maeda wrote once again showed me that while he has a tendency to focus on a small group, there's always a surprise or two to be expected from the sides.
Oh, and let's not forget Kanade, our own adorable mini-bomber. I personally found the scene where Yuzuru is helping Yuri out of her shadow-dreams and Kanade pokes her head out from behind her to be adorable.
The plot really picked it's ass up these last two episodes, and while we still don't know all of Yuri's past (which I'm hoping gets revealed in the final episode), we got a resolved sense of satisfaction from her, finally concluding her epic-length self-imprisonment in the afterlife. And in the sense of a conclusion, the plot came around in a full-circle. We began with Yuzuru waking up beside Yuri, now we end with Yuri waking up beside Yuzuru. Plot conclusion, ending imminent.
So, my opinion? While this episode fell short on some points, it soared in others, and gave me a satisfying conclusion to this short series. If he had tried to pull something like this if Angel Beats! was a twenty-four-six episode series, I doubt I could of had such positive opinion about it, but for the shortness which was this series, it works. So I give this episode a pass, maybe a 77% on good conclusion.
And so now I await the finale to this story.