I’m quite neutral with this episode. I saw multiple good, bad, and other points, which I will have to describe here in a very cut-up fashion.
The good: I think everything they did flowed in very well to Kotarou learning about guardian. Arguably, wherever this story plans to go requires Kotarou to have deeper knowledge about guardian and most likely gaia as well; knowledge that he did not have in any single route in the VN. Showcasing a light introduction to Shizuru and Lucia’s route, I feel, was able to push the story to Kotarou learning about guardian in a fairly good way, and I couldn’t have imagined it in any better way. Heck, the entire reason why I always thought Rewrite would be difficult to adapt is that I couldn’t imagine how they would juggle the knowledge of both guardian and gaia while still being in the occult club, so, with that, I am fully satisfied with how they approached it.
The bad: The mystery lacked, well, mystery. Because of all the flashbacks connecting lucia and asahi haruka, I thought they made it a bit too obvious that lucia was actually haruka. Especially when Kotarou was remembering what Shizuru was telling him about Lucia, they decided to show what was obviously Asahi Haruka holding the dead animals. If that didn’t say the obvious, I don’t know what did. Frankly, I quite liked the mystery in Lucia’s route, and was fairly shocked finding out that Lucia = Haruka, so I thought they could do it in a more subtle way.
fite me irl
The neutral: The scene in the chapel. I absolutely loved the overly cheesy dialogue that Kotarou gives Lucia in the chapel; it’s part of the reason why I love the Lucia route so much! However, they went the route that pretty much every other VN adaptation uses, and pushed the feelings of romance into that of friendship, thus making the cheesy dialogue of “I am here for you” a lot less cheesy. And making me love it a lot less as well. It was done tastefully, but it isn’t my cup of tea, and was honestly a big gripe of mine in (Little Busters Anime) Kurugaya route’s adaptation in the anime.
The interesting: Kotarou permanently has anti-poison powers now. Or, at least, anti lucia poison. How will they use that in the rest of the series, I wonder. My only hope is they do not simply just sweep it under the rug, and properly utilize it in the story later on.
The I’m-not-supposed-to-like-this-but-I-do: That ending scene, including both the credits and the final animation, was just pure, unadulterated fan service for VN readers. The ending credits montage made absolutely no sense in context, the final scene seemed to be just randomly pushed on there… But man did I love every single second of it. Lock on!
