(L) Kotetsujo no Kabaneri (Knocking on the Walls of the Armored Fortress)

[orion]

Originally Posted by Marcus H.

Heh, zombie butterflies.
Well, after mind control rodents and child-exploiting bears, I'm not that surprised.

Maybe that's Mumei's version of Black Smoke. She is associated with butterflies.

[scififan]

Originally Posted by orion

Maybe that's Mumei's version of Black Smoke. She is associated with butterflies.

The association could be butterflies gathered around blood for extracting H2O. In this case, the shape of this giant creature doesn't look like a butterfly.

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[moncikoma]

Originally Posted by scififan

The association could be butterflies gathered around blood for extracting H2O. In this case, the shape of this giant creature doesn't look like a butterfly.

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dat is PEGASUS!

[Stark700]

Episode 12:

Spoiler:

Hmm, I thought the finale was pretty wild imo but also rushed.

Apparently, Ikoma's powers have grown so OP to the point that he can stop a train with his hands lol. I found the whole segments of Mumei trying to find her place in the world be really weird. Kinda expected Ikoma to fight Biba one-on-one and for once, that Biba bastard actually got beat up a bit. The action was good. Fast paced but solid.

Mumei returned to her normal self and I find it pretty predictable that she would attack someone she once trusted: Biba. About time. Happy Mumei is back but I really wish the show was 24 episodes. Oh well, it ended today.

[Kusaja]

Spoiler:

I definitely appreciate that this ending absolutely breaks the Guilty Crown comparisons that were being so carelessly thrown around. Nothing like that happened after all. Thankfully the staff wasn't that foolish this time around.

Other than that, it's nothing special and the show remained stereotypical and contrived/convenient to the end. Ikoma and Mumei are happy, Biba seems to be dead and that's it. Time to move on to better shows.

[Stark700]

I just noticed something as well..they are planning to premiere the series in movie form (not a new movie continuation or story but will be shown in theaters)

[AB079]

Episode 12 just confirmed what everyone knows from long time, this series ended on a massive waste of potential and is nothing but another Akari trainwreck. Biba went from a cartoonish villain to almost a jobber, Ikoma's powerups make no sense, at least Mumei is finally happy and did what she need to do.

Aside from the music and animation Kotetsujo no Kabaneri ended on being the disappointment of the season.

[Kusaja]

Originally Posted by AB079

Episode 12 just confirmed what everyone knows from long time, this series ended on a massive waste of potential and is nothing but another Akari trainwreck.

By doing almost the opposite of what people around here expected from the ending? Well, that's a counterintuitive claim.

You can definitely call it a disappointment if that matches your views, but the ending was too normal (even stereotypical) to be any sort of "trainwreck" in the strict sense.

[endarion88]

ending was just...mediocre.....didn't even actualy try to be good to have the possibility to fail and being bad, so just mediocre

[serenade_beta]

Spoiler for final thoughts:

Well, I don't think I really need to say anything about the 2nd half of the season... Because, well, we all know how bad it is. And we've all complained about it already. So I'm not even going to bother with Biba and the entire... crap that involved him.

But frankly, the story wasn't that great before he appeared either. For instance, one of the biggest problems was the mob characters switching opinions in split seconds.
One episode, they're like "Oh, zombies suck! We don't trust zombies!"
Then, "Oh, they are actually good! We friends now!"
Then, "Oh, she insulted my dog! Zombies suck after all!"
Then, "Oh nevermind, zombies are our friends after all!"
I mean... What? You could say that maybe the mob characters are all complete idiots that have such tendencies, but then you have the guy who forcibly took the key and killed a whole lot of people with his genius plan. Not only does NO ONE blame him or attempt to punishment, he is still opening his fat mouth episodes later. Why? It's pretty incredible really. You end up killing a whole bunch of people with your plan, and you somehow have the nerve to act like a "good" person later in the series with no scene of redemption.

Yes, the visuals were great.
No, random songs with people singing does not negate the hideousness of the plot, and no, the viewers are not so simple to be fooled by it.
Yes, the story simply sucked. Black hole suction-level terribly. How did they not learn from Guilty Crown is beyond me.
No, stop giving your zombies sudden magical powers. No, Hyper Beam is not cool. No, there is no STAB, so Psychic isn't a good move either.
Oh, and it's clear Crus is not human or at least super-human, but no plot development on his true identity either.

Terrible.
Mumei's cute and the animators deserve some praise, but everything else is................................................ ..............

2/10

[BoyTitan]

I actually feel worse about this than everyone else. Episode 11 and 12 went full shonnen completely full shonen.

Biba heel face turn was straight out a shonnen. Ikoma never gives up even though there is so much fear in the world. I have let fear rule my life but Ikoma hasn't I must let my people free because my ways are wrong. Fights ikoma then saves him again because Ikoma ignores fear and revenge. Full blown fucking shonen. Lets not forget the stupid magical rock thats not magical at all snapping him out his trance and saving him because shonnen hi jinks.

[Marcus H.]

You know what's worse here? The movie will be their attempt to improve the impressions of the pacing of the last episode (since the ending will now be judged against a movie's worth of footage instead of 288 minutes' worth).

[dark998]

Best ending for the best show, it always should be this way and more often than not the studios always fail at that last push to make the whole journey truly satisfying. Fortunately it was not the case here and everything gets solved nicely, both Ikoma and Mumei played an equal part in Biba's defeat and the kabane threat is not over so there is always room to continue the story.

Kudos to WIT, Araki, Okouchi and the rest of the staff. This was one hell of a ride.

[blakstealth]

Biba, that sly bastard. When did he inject that white blood in Ikoma?

The last half felt so rushed. This whole Biba situation could've been its own season if done right. For an original series, it's not bad. I would love for another season focusing more on the Kabane.

[Harbinger]

An anime with such potential falls flat -_-

The "final" battle was not satisfying. The way Ikoma injected that white blood was underwhelming. Zombies were non-factor (there's something seriously wrong when "zombies" in a zombie Apocalypse aren't threatening).

The biggest problem I have, however, is the fact that the MC is NOT dead. I feel like this is Aldnoah Zero all over again --- great potential, poor execution.

In the end, it's an average Anime. 6/10 for me.

[Alf]

Although there's a lot of asspull, I've turned off my brain, laughed off all the absurd things they shown, and watch it for pure sensational enjoyment. So it's okay for me, at least MumeiHozumi returning to her cute self is somewhat healing, and Ikoma survived makes it feel hopeful if a bit cheap.

Overall it's a mixed series. It had plenty of enjoyable moments, great visual, music, and actions, but also a lot of suspension of disbelief. The story by itself is too rushed to present the idea behind it and this undermines the flow of events, plus a lot of asspull is quite hurting. I'd just enjoy what we got here but it's hard to recommend. Score 6/10 where 3 comes from Mumei/Hozumi.

[Justice Knight]

the ending is too normal, will there be a season 2? I doubt authors of this type of series doesnt even know how to end this just see "attack on titan" " high sch of the dead"

[Xander]

This felt like the ending of a season, rather than the last episode of an entire show. It's likely they might attempt to create a sequel to this story, sooner or later, depending on how sales turned out in the medium term. Not particularly intrigued by that, but it seems entirely plausible.

Given the above, what can I say? Well, I think the result was so-so this final week. There were rushed sequences and narrative conveniences but it was easy to follow the flow of events. Neither the best nor the worst episode of the series. They were waving that white blood in front of us too much and, sure enough, it was indeed the key to giving these people a semblance of a happy ending.

The rest was just how you'd more or less expect a random arc to end in a traditional shonen action/adventure saga. Predictable acts of bravery, courageous phrases from the heroes and so forth, with some token callbacks to Ikoma's and Mumei's earlier promises to give us a sense that things moved forward.

Did they really? Maybe on a personal level, since Ikoma didn't run away and saved the stand-in for his sister this time plus the two leads are ostensibly on the road to fulfilling their wishes, though the world or at least Japan is still screwed up when it comes to the Kabane threat. The show doesn't really focus on that last part, but it's presumed that the status quo will be maintained. We don't know how much of the rest of the country is in ruins or not. Ironically, now that the last minute human threat has ended and the blue liquid power-up is gone, they could make a more survival-oriented sequel on paper.

In the end, Biba's behavior felt very erratic, like the last gasp of a desperate nihilist. You could argue he had no reason to live after getting rid of his father and ended up feeling admiration or even envy for Ikoma, who faced him without being afraid of his own death, but it's still a rushed development. Which in practice meant providing an excuse for someone else to kill him rather than any act of kindness on Biba's part.

The earlier part of the final episode was good in terms of action and they had some alright animation moments later on, but you can already tell they'll want to cut and redraw scenes for the already announced recap movies. I don't think I'll stay around for that. Safe to say this was a 5 or 6/10 for me.

[Blonto]

I haven't watched the last episode yet, but they announced a manga I think when the series was starting. That's why any expectations of a proper conclusion or important character deaths (let alone a whole cast) never made sense. Also the fact that this series doesn't have the guts to do any of that.

Originally Posted by serenade_beta

But frankly, the story wasn't that great before he appeared either. For instance, one of the biggest problems was the mob characters switching opinions in split seconds.

Oh yeah, the series had so much crap like that even before Biba appeared, hell it had them already in the first episode. I don't think it was ever realistic to expect something amazing from this series, but I don't think anyone could've expected this level of full-on shounen garbage. Incompetent writing doesn't need to go hand in hand with a mountain of cliches, but the series had to take it a level further.

[Psyco Diver]

As I said before I never expected much from the anime so I was pleasantly pleased with it in the end.