I didn’t feel it. The excellence of the first two episodes was simply missing. I agree that what evoked emotional responses here were not the adaption scenes, but our memories of the VN.
I won’t say that this part absolutely needed two full episodes, but just one was clearly not enough. Time constraints are the enemy of good adaptions.
The Kotarou looking older thing was kinda weird, too. It’s like they only did that in order to make the moon adaption actually match the promotion posters which they had completely forgotten about in the first two episodes.
I’m kinda worried about the lack of explanation for some things. For example, won’t the anime-only viewers be very confused about why “Kagari” was on the moon? Or why she stayed behind? Won’t the confusion intensify in Terra? I doubt they’ll be able to come to the right conclusion with the broken pieces of information they’ve been given.
Also, it was not mentioned that Kotarou couldn’t “revive” after declaring war on Kashima Sakura anymore, but it seems that wasn’t necessary.
And I still feel that they should’ve shown what happens when the earth dies. There needs to be a picture in the viewer’s heads about the end of the world that happens regardless of whether or not salvation takes place. But we only get a verbal explanation along the lines of “The earth always just… dies. Believe us!”
I think I’ve mentioned this back during the first season, but the way they had ended it was kind of a problem. They took some of the moon/terra scenes and just copied them. Like Yoshino leading the wolf pack against the army of familiars. It just doesn’t feel as strong in moon because we’ve already seen it happen before.
Well, it wasn’t all bad, and I did like some of the kinda-original stuff, like the girls being able to say their farewells. (Though Yoshino’s farewell was still more emotonal than theirs. Is that ok?)
Sakuya is such an epic poser xD