Last Waltz
What a beautiful ending to conclude such an immersive, enthralling, and insight sci-fi drama.
The use of long pauses and silence, coupled with cinematographic shots made me to feel very personally Sara's loss and painful tears at the conclusion of the climax.
I do also like to commend the use of the soundtrack for the set up, the last battle, and the epilogue. The animators treated us first with the string-guitar rendition to Last Waltz, and then with the jukebox rendition of the same song, it was very enchanting.
However, I also disagree with the choice of music they inserted when the reparations on the RAMDASS were made. I felt that particular music track did not fit with the scene or went off timing. It is the kind of music that plays when a leader of hero(ine) makes long speech of encouragement for the crew or once victory is achieved.
Anyways, this episode was a solid finish to tie all loose knots around the story of Sara, Emily, and Ralph. Everything else about the everlasting war among Union and Deague is out of consequence, and I do not mind of all.
The theme of the plot was for Sara to recover back her desire for friendship, to care for another person, to struggle against any let downs to reunite with Ralph again and bring him back home.
Spoiler:
Sara and Ralph did fulfill their part of that promise to each other, although the outcome was already settled with a bittersweet tone.
They could not say to each other that they were forgiven, but during that pause of deep silence hearing Ralph calling Sara with a tender whisper and with those caring eyes, that very moment my heart melted and wished he shouldn't had died.
That scene alone was the climax and theme of the entire show. It was so emotionally involving and powerful, that I cried for both siblings and the sad mood was heightened while the song for Last Waltz was playing.
They also toned down the impact of Ralph's death in order to heighten the mourn and sorrow on the audience by not showing his physical death on screen. Instead, they chose to display the Gloire burning once it entered the planet's atmosphere, desintegrating into pieces while shielding the RAMDASS from damage.
This is an allegory to mean that figuratively Ralph became a shooting star. Once he return to his gentle self that Sara knew, he died to become part of Sara's memories.
As his last will, Ralph trusted Emily's care to Sara understanding that Sara will become an even better and gentleR elder sibling to Emily than he did for Sara.
I think that Ralph's death implies a double meaning of sacrifice. On Sara's part to prevent anymore needless deaths she resolved to sacrifice his brother while on Ralph's part he resolved to sacrifice himself as a means to apologize and to bring together forever both Sara and the Emilys.
Given my restricted knowledge of spoken Japanese, Sara's last lines meant that she was no longer alone because she has friends whom she can trust, she has both Emily that have become her new family, and she has now the memories of Ralph living within her.
I can say with proud that Strain was everything that I liked drama, personal introspectives, action, sci-fi mecha content, and a believable quasi-tragic heroine and tragic, redeemed antagonist.