Welcome back all you Samurai Rabbit fans! Well. More like – welcome back all you people who are following my journey through this decidedly mixed and uneven series. We’ve reached the end of season 2 and while it’s been less painful than the first season, I can’t say it’s been a treat. Let’s see what this finale had in store for us and whether it stuck the landing better than before.
And as always, spoilers ahead.
1. Soul Oath Redux
When I was first taking my notes, all I could write was that this felt like we were doing the exact same things as the season 1 finale, “Soul Oath”. A more accurate version of that sentiment is that this is them trying to redo the finale to season 1 and make it, you know, a decent finale. Does it actually work? You know what? It does.
“Invasion!” successfully brings together many of the threads and characters it’s been clumsily working with throughout the series and creates a compelling enough conclusion. Does it have any kind of consistency or good pacing? To that I ask: Have you seen this show? Hell, the animation even got noticeably jankier in the finale – Gen’s celebration faces at the end are nightmare fuel inducing. But what it lacks in, well, most things, it makes up for it in the few stylized 2D segments and in Yuichi & Gen’s growth as characters. It’s not much but it’s enough. Not ending on a half-baked cliffhanger really helped too.
2. Lead Us, Oh Meditative One
I was as shocked as you all to see Yuichi’s arc come to not only a satisfying conclusion but also to have him step up and be an actual leader in this episode. I’d say I’ve been extra dismissive of him all season for no good reason but you all know that isn’t true. While it’s true that we end on a good note, getting here was neither well handled nor particularly well paced. Still, Yuichi shows that he’s learned a lot from his training and newfound responsibilities and seeing him embrace them is nice.
What I particularly liked was the use of meditation as the touchstone. Seeing him successfully meditate and turn into giant Usagi was a genuinely great moment. It felt like a culmination, even if the rest of it – specifically his sudden competence as a leader – came out of left field. Good job Usagi. You finally did your ancestor proud.
3. GEN. IN. SPACE??????
When Gen leaves the ship without Kagehito, I lost it. I nearly stopped the episode completely. How are they breathing in space?! They made it very clear that it’s space space in some dimension. How are they breathing?! How is Gen breathing? When Kagehito was with them and they entered the ship’s sphincter, I could suspend my disbelief enough. When Gen’s falling back with the tube? Nah. Nope.
I just…this broke me. I know. I know. It’s so minor and so pointless but if you’re going to pretend that a spaceship is a, you know, spaceship, you gotta at least give an explanation for why the people from Earth can breathe in this mysterious dimension that, for all intents and purposes, is just SPACE.
GAH!
4. Botto of Boring
To put this out there, I’m not a huge “giant robot/mecha” genre fan. I like the space opera aspects but the escalation of humanoid robots fighting other, slightly different humanoid robots does nothing for me. The beat-em-up aspects are fine too but what I come to things like Gundam for are the greater politics of the world and the characters. So you’ll imagine the shock I felt when I uttered these words during “Invasion!”: What a waste of a giant robot.
Seriously! Half the dang season was spent building up the need for a warbotto to fight the invading forces and then the last couple building up Kyoko’s destructive potential only for both to be about as useful as Chickabooma, the Bat Clan leader, Chizu and Lady Fuwa. That is to say: fine enough for taking out some goons but not much else.
It’s pretty disappointing that the only characters who do anything of worth are Gen & Yuichi. The women of the show are placed on the same level as the tertiary characters and it all comes down to Yuichi in the end. It stinks. Kyoko & Kitsune deserved that win on their own over the giant monster. What was the point of the bottos’ presence otherwise?
Continued below5. Life Returns to Normal
I haven’t really talked about the actual plot of the episode, have I? Mostly that’s because it’s not that engaging since every complication is solved in the most convenient way possible. Remember Gen’s debt to the bat clan that was seeded once and then never done anything with? It gets forgiven because Gen saves the leader’s life. Nothing more is learned about any of the characters, everyone survives and there’s no real stakes by the end.
Gen saves Kagehito’s people and gets what they need from the ship. Yuichi cuts the Clavis off the Ki-Stone after and stops the invasion. Things go back to normal, as they don’t get the credit and instead it goes to the Bat Clan dude. Kogane cuts the power for an hour every night and people celebrate because they can see the stars which…don’t they need power for, you know, hospitals and food preservation and whatnot? It’s a decent enough sentiment but, like the space thing, it doesn’t feel thought through.
And that’s really the greatest problem with Samurai Rabbit as a whole: nothing feels thought through. Things just kinda happen and we’re asked to go along with them. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes it makes me so mad I nearly throw my notebook at the screen and other times, it reminds me of hanging out with my friends on a cool night, looking up at the stars, wondering what we did to be so lucky to have each other.
Thanks for joining me on this walk through season 2. I’d like to say I’ll miss this show but then I’d be lying. It’s a shame that I can’t wholeheartedly recommend this as an entry point for kids to get into one of my favorite comic series. As I said at the end of last season, it’s a fine way to waste 5 hours but not much more than that. Unlike that last season, I’m more confident that this is the last we’ll see of the show. This ending felt pretty definitive.
If that changes, you’ll see me again. Ikuzo.
