I’m going to repeat what I said last week: it really feels like they were just checking off boxes. The Sakuya thing was like the worst reveal ever. Random giant monster -> “Sakuya?” -> back to your weekly scheduled feecof jokes. Seriously, why even bother if that’s the extent of your explanation? Oh right because gotta check off that Sakuya box. Anyway, whatever, the season’s over thank goodness.
Season 2 is…exactly what I said would happen. No surprise there.
That was episode I probably enjoyed the most, even though overally anime was big no-no. I like how they showed destroying the world. Reminded me of Komm Susser Tod lol. I even cried a little cuz of Chibimoth (but that was really bland in comparison to VN, well every scene was bland tbh), but I don’t expect that from someone, who doesn’t know VN.
What Gil and Pani did? Did they just replace Kagari’s aurora?
Why didn’t Sakuya turn to tree? I thought transformation was activated when he fully rewrited himself.
Why were they still pushing these unfunny jokes even on last episode?
Why didn’t they just make 1 route, instead of spoiling every main heroine’s routes?
Salvation was probably the best ending considering Moon&Terra anime season.
So, (Terra)goodbye aurora weapons, welcome blood weapons.
I’m still not sure what to say about this episode or the series as a whole but I’ll give my overall opinion so far. Salvation was really terrifying just looking at the images of people getting killed left and right, everything was going downhill which I would have expected at least. The fight scene between Kotarou and Esaka was interesting to watch too but in Terra route it was more interesting to see how both their viewpoints had differed where Kotarou was going to protect Kagari with his life and it was much more of a great battle scene. He learned so much from Esaka that he had to use those very same tactics that he taught him while training at Guardian. It was hard for me to see why Sakuya was in that form which doesn’t explain how he got to that point while things were getting ugly. The emotional buildup almost got to me a little though I was sad about Kotori and Chibimoth as everything looked hopeless during the end of the world.
I agree with @RyuuTamotsu about many things were unexplained and it would only confuse anime viewers how they should piece this altogether. This is why the Moon and Terra routes are very important to adapt as there are many questions to be answered as to how the situation might change for the better.
I probably might have continued to watch it but I would be confused where everything was going at the beginning of the series. It’s hard for me to say since reading the VN had more in-depth knowledge and things would have been easier to understand to say the least. I might have cried at some scenes but not to generate emotional attachment to the characters to say if their backstories weren’t rushed.
Overall, for the anime itself, I think it was enjoyable to watch as an adaptation and I’m glad I got to see it. There were some issues here and there, especially with the CGI and some characters details but that goes without saying. Anyway, I can’t wait for 2nd Season with the Moon and Terra routes.
Praying for Salvation was a mistake… they butchered even that…
I’m so scared over Moon and Terra. Hope they just ban feecof and boob jokes because it’s gonna give me a damn breakdown and I’m gonna end up watching something horrible to drown my sorrows. I’m gonna end up watching the first Higurashi anime season. The dub, actually.
Sakuya is my favorite Rewrite character so it was particularly hard for me to give a shit in this episode since they just went up and butchered absolutely everything about his character (and it’s not like they should be touching much on it in Moon/Terra (spoilers) since he’s not going to be around for 2/3 of it anyway). There was just… a lot of wasted potential there. Same as with that, I feel like all the heroines were just afterthoughts and they just threw them in there like “oh yeah you all exist… now die.” The only one who got a big last moment of coolness was Shizuru and to a smaller degree Kotori.
Speaking of Kotori, (Kotori’s route) they didn’t even touch on Kotarou having been her half-familiar all along even after touching on the ribbon… which is like. Listen, I wanted them to trim the heroines’ routes out of the anime, but I feel like it’d have added more emotional impact to Kotori being there at all (not to mention that all the foreshadowing from before on the matter has been wasted).
Also Salvation being this wonderful thing where everyone smiles as they die and stuff like that… well, it might be other people’s cup of tea, I guess. Didn’t care about it much. Particularly the Akane part.
I don’t know why I’m writing at all. I have more things to say but I’m beyond sad about this anime and it’d be too long so I guess I’ll hope for the best for Moon/Terra.
Literally this ENTIRE time 8bit has still failed to grasp the concept of “show, don’t tell.” This was a shitty finale on top of a shitty anime all around, perhaps the worst anime I’ve ever watched, and it’s left me with a sour taste in my mouth that Moon and Terra are already confirmed if only because I don’t want to ever watch 8bit touch anything ever again after all this.
Sighs. Let’s go into this again, I guess.
We open the episode with so much confusion (and god-awful animation) that I honestly wondered what was even the point of having 21 minutes in the episode to spare if hours and hours of events already happened off camera when they began. How did everyone get split up? How did the confrontation between Akane, Kashima Sakura, and Tsukuno go? Why was Sakuya in his huge-ass familiar form all of a sudden? Well gee, I don’t know! Don’t bother asking 8bit because I don’t think they know either!
Again, I stand by my point from last week: the entire point of an anime is to show a story visually. Leaving out literally everything that happened and expecting the viewers (especially viewers who haven’t read the visual novel) to understand from a two-second brief hammer-over-the-head of “the club members are split up now,” “Kashima Sakura and Tsukuno are dead,” and “oh by the way, you haven’t actually seen Sakuya do A N Y T H I N G of importance in this anime, but the giant monster vaguely resembling Zekrom over there is him” is NOT the way to tell a story.
I could give the club members getting split up a free pass if only because during the confusion and chaos of a stampede of people running for their lives, getting separated is at least a logical conclusion for any viewer to make after the end of the last episode. But both of the other points were things that warranted visuals, and animating either of those scenes would have been considerably more interesting than anything that actually got animated in this episode.
How did Chihaya even GET up there on Sakuya? We saw absolutely nothing of her whereabouts, nothing of her development or backstory or character, nothing about either of them really. At least Kotori, Shizuru, Lucia, and Akane all got their backstories vaguely touched on, even if they were handled horribly. This anime somehow tried to follow half the events in Chihaya’s own route without even giving her five minutes of time to shine on her own.
Call me picky for continuing to rant about the Sakuya thing, but the anime’s implication seems to be that he was literally pushed to his limits by fighting Gennady. Gaia’s Strongest Familiar Ever was literally pushed to the brink by the Bayern Knights, even though we know for a fact that no one in Guardian even stands a remote chance against him except Shizuru, and even then only when she knows who he is and how to target him with her gases. The implication that the Bayern Knights are anywhere near strong enough to force Sakuya to go all monster-form is…well, it’s flat-out bullshit.
(Rewrite, Chihaya’s route) Technically, he shouldn’t even be in that form unless he’s been thrown into a power spot and willfully manipulated into it. But since we know Akane was up in the sky this time around and well away from any power spots, then we’re left with literally no guesses about how it happened. Sakuya doesn’t just go all monster-familiar when he runs out of energy. Someone has to push him into it, otherwise he just reverts back into a tree. He can’t “rewrite himself past his limits” into that monster because that’s literally already what happened when he rewrote himself into a familiar the first time around.
As per usual, nothing in this scene had any emotional impact where it was supposed to. The Kotori reveal about Kotarou’s injury and her using Kagari’s ribbons to heal him fell just as flat as the reveal about her parents the last time. Esaka’s standoff with Kotarou was half-assed at best, and Kotarou “having a feeling he would show up” made just as little sense as anything else, considering he and Esaka haven’t said two words to each other since he and Shizuru met at his shop however many episodes back. The weak attempts at tear jerkers in the last few minutes of the episode were pathetic.
Why should we care about Pani and Gil in this adaptation? We know next to nothing about them, Kotarou paid them absolutely no attention, and all they really did was sell out the location of Kotori’s secret hideout to Sakuya. Doesn’t really matter that they’re gone. And who’s Pero, you ask? Well that’s a good question! Maybe if we’d actually been shown something about Kotori’s dog named Pero everyone would understand a bit more–but hey, at least we got to see magically shrinking Chibimoth in Kotori’s arms even though he was normal-sized in the next scene, so that’s something.
The scenes of everyone dying were so…eh. Like, “oh, well, I guess that happened!” The characters are fading away left and right, but 1.) they looked so peaceful and relatively okay with it when every time Salvation occurs in the vn, their reactions are nothing but horror and regret, and 2.) we have no reason to care about them in this adaptation anyway considering they were all about as flat as cardboard.
And oh, hey, on the offchance you did manage to feel anything for the characters…guess what? Lame-ass boob groping and feecof attempts at comic relief are back and worse than ever in this episode to give you some more mood whiplash! Ah. Brings back memories of old times when I actually tried to give this anime the benefit of the doubt on the off-chance that they’d stop and that it’d get better.
The animation was beyond substandard and god-awful for a season finale, but that really goes without saying so I’m not going to dwell on it too much. Shrinking Chibimoth was almost worth it.
I will say the scene at the very end with (Rewrite, Moon route) Moon Kagari was decent, but only because there was no talking. And not much movement. And not much of anything, actually, so it would be hard to mess up in the first place.
As someone who has suffered through several Studio DEEN adaptations and thought no vn-to-anime adaptation could ever be worse, I have to say, 8bit actually came through and disappointed me even more. DEEN almost looks like a godsend in comparison, and that’s just sad. The Umineko anime was hardly even confusing compared to this mess.
Tl;dr: This episode was horrible and this entire anime was horrible and it amounted to none of the potential that it could have had. I’m done ranting and I can’t say I’m excited for Moon and Terra. I suppose I’ll give it a watch just to see if literally anything improves, but my hopes are officially at rock bottom.
I thought this cour adaptation would be worse, actually.
Until Episode 7, I was surprised how things were going, despite all that rush.
However, I’d have changed lots of things after Episode 10, going mainly with Kotori route, with some glances over Chihaya and Akane routes. I’d be fine with Lucia dying from her wounds, Gaia and Guardian battling at the forest, Kotarou finishing Midou (making his “training” worth something), Sakuya protecting Chihaya, and Kotori, Kotarou and Kagari escaping from the forest, finishing with Shizuru putting a bullet in the head of the latter after finding her dead comrades.
For the sake of the VN stories, I would have hoped that Kotarou “remembered” some alternate lines of his moments with everybody from the club. One episode for each, with the exception of Kotori. That way, we could see more about Sakuya-Chihaya relationship (and Sakuyazord, of course), the “Dark Side” of Guardian (and the cutest date ever), Gaia’s point of view, Salvation and a more mature Kotarou. All these “lines” would be important to justify S1 Prologue. I think these “glances”, Moon and Terra would be viable in 13 episodes (with some episodes probably rushed).
Well, seeing that’s not happening, I’ll try to continue to not expect much, enjoying every little detail I can.
Yes, it’s a pity many of us couldn’t have the adaptation this work deserved, but I think this is better than getting no adaptation at all.
Now, imagine if S1 could’ve had 23-26 episodes like other key adaptations? Maybe we will have some OVA’s with all those club moments we didn’t see yet?
It was alright. Both the episode and the series. I wouldn’t recommend watching it to anyone I know (if only because I know they wouldn’t enjoy it) but well, it is what it is and although there was a lot of meh it still had its good points.
In this episode in particular, when everything started dissolving I got shivers. It was quite beautiful just seeing everything fade away after Kotarou made his choice. Like yes, these are the consequences of the decision he made. And there’s no beautifying it… they’re all just fading out of existence.
Also I think this series overall did a pretty ok job at subtly hinting towards Terra events without putting too much focus on them. For anime-only peeps I can imagine it being a pleasant surprise to go back to the first season eventually and have a bunch of plot points make a lot more sense in hindsight.
I don’t think there’s much of a point in pointing towards things that don’t make sense in the context of VN Rewrite, like Big Ass Sakuya randomly showing up, because those rules do not exist in the anime. Of course it’s still a weird choice to have him show up at all since it means nothing to anime-only consumers. That seems to have been a common problem in this anime. A lot of elements that don’t matter to the events at hand showing up. @Kaze put it best; it’s like they were just checking off things to include.
Looking forward to Season 2.
I actually quite liked the episode, there was alot of info missing for those who didn’t read the VN but I enjoyed iy non the less. The last five mintues of showing everyone actually got me, I am glad they went with this ending and really looking forward to the adaptation of Moon and Terra. Overall the anime was a good watch for me. I love the VN and because of it the anime was more understandable and I can get some sort of feels just from scenes that were miniscully shown in the anime. For anime only watchers it would be hard to follow but I think it doesn’t fail in trying to get the viewers attention.
I think 8bit did a fantastic job with this. You know how Animes are produced to promote original source such as manga,LN,VN and etc? This episode (well Rewrite anime in general) was so god fucking awful that viewers are FORCED to read VN in order to get a sense of what happend!
Seriously though, I could go on and on what was wrong with this episode but I see that user POTATO had already done so.
I cringed so hard when they kept the ‘feecof’ joke going, and especially when Kotarou grabbing Kagari’s chest snapped her out of it. It just felt so stupid.
The Esaka fight, cheesy as it was, was actually really interesting. Poked a lot of references at Terra/Terra’s bad end, which I thought was nice. Though using Shizuru to take him out of the scene was pretty stupid.
Gil and Pani served no purpose in this episode or any episode previous. They straight up sacrificed them just to remove them from the scene.
It felt like the strongest parts of this episode, and the anime as whole, were the grim bits. Kashima Sakura and Tsukuno’s corpses post-suicide laying around while Akane descended into a maniacal fit of laughter was a pretty impactful scene. Shizuru becoming delusional, as well as Chihaya carrying Sakuya’s corpse were also pretty rough. Not quite as messed up as Jasmine’s execution from the previous episode though.
I still don’t quite understand why they even bothered with Sakuya’s final form. They’re going to have to bring it back Moon and now it’s not going to be surprising for anime-only viewers. Instead they just have a random giant familiar that Kotarou somehow recognizes as Sakuya. It was so poorly done that in one frame he just straight up disappeared from the background, like they forgot to put him in for that bit.
Pretty much every problem that plagued the anime as a whole was still in this episode, but it was alright compared to the rest. I have some faith for Moon/Terra though. I really hope they address the point where the story of Terra would have turned into the common route had Kotarou not made a different choice this time.
What to say that hasn’t already been said…
The episode was a letdown, but so was pretty much the entire anime, in my eyes. It wasn’t the worst episode, and it wasn’t the least painful. Some moments, like the bit with Chibimoth, and the slow version of End of The World, were actually alright. Others, like Kagari’s cringey screaming, or the entirety of the Kotarou vs. Esaka scene, were awful to sit through. The only thing it accomplished was setting up for Moon and Terra, in a way that on paper, would’ve worked really well. Sadly, it still managed to take a that concept and screw it up. I really felt that “checklist” others mentioned, because so much of it felt forced or irrelevant.
I’ll probably post my thoughts on the series as a whole in the general topic at some point, but for now, let’s just hope that Moon and Terra are enough to revive this adaptation.
If anyone here hasn’t read the VN, I highly reccomend you do so. This just, well, wasn’t Rewrite, at least to me.
If you don’t play game, you maybe don’t know what happaned in this epsiode. So bad.
Hmm to me the new route is not that bad. It’s the execution that they need to work on really hard. With such short period of time before season 2, I am very pessimistic that they can make an improvement. Still hype for terra moon tho
Can’t forgive how they treat Kotori here…
Completely forgot there was a new episode, and now that I watched it I wish I never remembered.
This episode has a lot of flaws. For example, the fact that it feels as if we skipped over 3 episodes since episode 11. The fact that we didn’t see Guardian vs. Gaia. The fact that we didn’t see the build up, or the actual events, that led up to the final moments of each Occult member (considering that they were all big moments).
There’s also the flaw of putting Kotori’s last lines in her final scene down, since anime-only’s wouldn’t understand.
But in all honesty, I quite enjoyed this. Sure Rewrite needed 2-courses for the common-bits and the sixth route, and sure over 75% of the climax happened off-screen, and sure the Oppai joke was unnecessary and ruined the entire scene, but still, I think this episode was great.
The reason why, is mostly because of the later half. Ignoring the flaws in the first half and anime itself, the later half was beautiful. Salvation happening and everyone realizing this. Kagari stopping, telling Kotarou that she wouldn’t mind dying, to the hands of him, while smiling before she’s about to die, then Kotarou coming close to her, but to hug her instead of kill her. In that moment, “End Of The World” the piano version started playing while Kotarou started crying as Kagari was saying about how the life she had during her time in this world was good. And that was beautiful. I really did feel for the characters.
Then the scene shifts to Lucia and Shizuru, with Shizuru thinking that she’s with her mom, dad, and Shizuka, and Lucia coming to her and telling her that they aren’t alone anymore. Shifting to Akane laughing at salvation, while Shimako cries, and Akane gains her sanity again. Then shifting to Chihaya and Sakuya. I personally thought the Chihaya and Sakuya scene was beautiful. Chihaya telling Sakuya “From now on. I will carry you…” while they’re disappearing, was probably the thing that got to me the most. Anime-Only’s wouldn’t understand, but VN readers could understand why that scene was impactful (well, to at least some people to a certain degree). Then we switch over to Kotori and Chibimoth, as Chibimoth turns into ashes, and Kotori disappears. Then we see other characters disappearing, such as Yoshino and Esaka, as “End Of The World” is also about to be finished playing.
I think that was one of the most beautiful scenes in Key anime history.
The anime has probably the most flaws in any Key anime series, whether original or an adaption. Probably the most rushed Key anime series. Probably the worse scheduling for any Key anime series. Probably the worse art (better than Kanon 02) in any Key anime series. Probably the worse execution too. But does that mean it’s a total failure? No. The anime does have its flaws. Especially in episode 12, which was probably the worse episode in Rewrite, but it did deliver good things to us.
For me, it delivered things such as the final scenes in episode 7 with the confrontation, or the great Kagari comedic moments from episode 8 and 9, or/and definitely the characters during salvation in this episode.
The anime is very flawed. Probably one of the worse in Key, and in summer 2016. But it’s good enough to be something I’d probably rewatch. I didn’t go in with the mindset thinking the anime would be good. I wasn’t expecting the studio to do the Rewrite common story justice. I wasn’t expecting the most anticipated scenes (episode 7) to be good at all. I wasn’t expecting anything, but an adaption of the story I loved deeply.
Did it deliver the story well? Not at all. Did it have good art and animation? Lacking after the first few episodes. Did it have good music placement? Not really. Was it rushed? To the max. Did it need 24 episodes? Definitely. But was it horrible? No. Can I find things that I loved about the anime? Yes. There are many things to dislike about this adaption, and original content, but there are also good things that came out of it, whether it’s different reasonings or not.
Wow that was pretty painful to watch
The skip in between episodes was so big I thought I forgot to watch last weeks episode
I remember Sakuya being described to be much much MUCH bigger than that and the still shot of him moving was disappointing. I mean one of the coolest things about anime adaptions is seeing things in motion
Esaka…
How? How did Kotarou get to the part with his arm cut off and still be in the same timeline and go back to school?
Gil and Pani going into Kotarou felt like it was they’re lazy way of removing characters for the end
Feecof and boob jokes are wayyy to overuse at the wrong times. I enjoyed the feecof more probably cause of Kagari but jeez
The scenes fell flat for the most part trying to make me sad with to little information to explain them…
Plus thing Yoshino is a badass to still be intact against those raptors
About this, the chief director Tensho says that the gap is going to be filled in some ways.
It might mean they had not so much time to look again whole plot before making anime or even might make plot while they are broadcasting, which might explain why the episodes were scattered.
WAIT DID GEN-SAN JUST BEAT GIGA SAKUYA OFFSCREEN OH MY GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOD
This horrible original route finally ended; ironically along with the entire world. Actually I am quite happy we got a bad end; mostly because it means we would get Moon/Terra animated. I’m pretty optimistic for the 2nd season, since Moon/Terra is much easier to animate in 13 episodes than the entire common route and this patchwork of all character routes (it’s Grisaia all over again), though the animation quality will still suck.
Regarding this episode:
Still was kinda sad to be honest, most likely though because I already have some attachment to the characters from the VN…and seeing the apocalypse happening was impressive. I agree the boob grab was horribly out of place; that’s the kind of stuff I expect to see in Chinese “anime”, not in an “adaption” of one of the greatest VNs ever. Also Sakuya’s final was really disappointing (hope they improve this in Moon)
