“It was inevitable” ~ Nobunaga, when it wasn’t inevitable.
So what do we have here? The usual suspects – i.e. everybody dies and other last minute drama. Unlike Brynhildr’s finale, I actually greatly enjoyed Nobunaga’s final, extremely dramatic moments. What a ride this show ended up being.
Picture, if you will, the final scene – the story boiled down to just Mitsuhide, Nobunaga, Hideyoshi, and Jeanne. Mitsuhide turning on Nobunaga at last, admitting to having killed nobukatsu, battling with nothing left to lose against Nobunaga as Da Vinci paints his vision of the future in the “Last Supper” in a burning building from which he knows he will not survive. Melodramatic? Perhaps. Entertaining, powerful, moving? I believe so. Nobunaga throws much into the mix and despite making a serious hodge-podge of it sometimes, I must concede I was greatly impressed by the show and even more impressed by the scenes leading up to the finale (and the impressive showing in the second half).
Nobunaga was Judas. Mitsuhide was the true savior king. Calling Nobunaga the Destroyer King wasn’t just a red herring of doubt either, which truly surprised me. Arthur ended up being irrelevant (and his intentions unclear and slightly uninspired, which is a point of contention I have with the show).
What did I like? Everything outlined above was bloody fantastic. Kenshin riding in at the last second to challenge Alexander (What did I tell you?) made me get up and visually proclaim how excited I was – I couldn’t contain myself. God fucking DAMN was that awesome. Who’d ever thought that Kenshin would have lived so long in this show?
Ichihime dying was certainly Mitsuhide’s catalyst – with her gone, he had nothing holding him back. I knew we were in for some blood. Excellently executed. Speaking of executions, let’s talk about the more literal kind – good fucking riddance to those stupid know-it-all twins – dying Caesar handled you with one hand. Get wrecked idiots.
The final fight (including using Ichihime’s comb as a weapon) was nothing less than a precision F strike in regards to feels – talk about evoking some powerful imagery. There’s so much to talk about regarding what went well.
What was bad about it? Not much, really – I feel Arthur was thrown by the wayside and really wasn’t important, which was kinda annoying. Nobunaga and Jeanne’s feelings for each other felt out of nowhere, as we’ve really only seen Jeanne have feelings for Nobu but not the other way around. Nobu was hard to read but sometimes I’m not sure if it was in a good way. I was expecting the two twins I hated to be part of a bigger picture but they were just red ponytail guy’s henchmen.
The show went from being a 7 to an 8 or a 9 in my book. Fantastic second half, albeit melodramatic but thoroughly entertaining. Now I’m just waiting for Sentai to release this over here.
