©YAM
“Conclusion”
What They Say:
Yamishibai is a picture-story style of animation whose motif is surrounded by and based on the rumors and urban legends throughout the history of Japan.
The Review: (Please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
The season finale for the show goes a slight bit meta with this episode, which is certainly amusing to watch. Here, we get a kid who is all excited for the end of an anime series he likes, which is set against the nature of the kids feeling like everyone is talking about the end of the world. It’s like a big jumble of conspiracy theories that are playing out, and there’s amusement about how this show is coming to a close in an almost prophetic way. All the adults around him are psychologically losing it, thinking it’s the end times, and even the city feels empty of things like rats and other animals. It’s like a psychosis has hit everyone, but this kid can’t believe it and is feeling even crazier for it. While he ends up crashing out, he wakes up in time to watch the 3 am finale of his show, but it basically mirrors life in aw ay with everything coming to an end in the show. It’s like the culmination of the sixteen seasons presenting themselves across it, and the true end is here.
In Summary:
If this is the end of the franchise, something that each season has felt like for some time, it’s certainly one way to go out on things. There’s a lot to like here with the kind of large scale group social collapse that people are feeling and how it draws them into it even more. It feels a little chaotic at times to really follow, which a second viewing definitely smooths out, but I just like the way it feels so oppressive and you just have this one kid who wants to enjoy his show even as everyone else is slowly becoming unhinged. This was a pretty strong season overall, I think, with some great creative episodes and some welcome changes to animation style to shake it up from time to time. Definitely a good one for the long-time fans.
Grade: B+
Streamed By: Crunchyroll
Chris Beveridge
http://www.fandompost.com
Chris has been writing about anime, manga, movies and comics for well on twenty years now. He began AnimeOnDVD.com back in 1998 and has covered nearly every anime release that’s come out in the US ever since.
He likes to write a lot, as you can see.
