09.27
Well folks, this is it. The final episode of Gatchaman Crowds and the penultimate edition of Crowds-Sourcing. Its being a bumpy three months for me and this show but its my hope that Crowds ends on a high note…
Alas.
Sick em Katze!
With the new, additional Crowds only managing to cause a minor raucus and not doing anything productive, it looks like Katze’s finally won… until he gets called out by his old nemesis O.D. Yes we finally get to see O.D in the G-Suit and… its not very interesting. For all the threats about how transforming would cause the world to be destroyed, O.D’s sole appearance in the suit is kind of an afterthought. It does look bitchin though. In the end though, while O.D sucessfully wails on Katze (who gets his own rather familiar looking G-suit akin to the appearance of the original Berg Katze), the latter manages to successfully destroy O.D’s NOTE, causing his eventual death but not before he can pass it off to Rui (nothing happens though).
Shame we only get to see this suit for thirty seconds.
MEANWHILE… Gatchaman is having a bitch of a time keeping the Neo Hundred Crowds at bey and the other new Crowds aren’t helping any matters. Rui (who actually has the most screen time in this episode) decides to use GALAX to help convince the new Crowds users to utilize them for a far more beneficial reason by playing the… wait for it… “Tachikawa Crowds Game”. A series of social networking activites where the Crowds basically come the equivalent of digital pets and perform goals like rescuing people and delivering supplies. In the end Katze wakes up from his beat down and sees that people are having fun with the Crowds, which pisses him off and he leaves. Credits Roll. Thats it.
O.Dead.
OR IS IT?!?
We time skip ahead to the following summer. The news media is wondering when the government is going to end the Crowds Game but they’ll have to ask President X. The surviving Gatchamen (or at least Sugane and Paiman since they and Hajime were the only ones with speaking parts this week) are still active and Hajime has a new bandana… which is red… and actually Berg Katze. Wait what?
This was basically how the show ended.
This… this was a bad finale, and most of the fault can be lain at the feet of last week’s waste of time. Nobody really got time to shine. Of all the Gatchaman, only Sugane and O.D get some decent action with Hajime spending the entire episode out of suit and the rest amounting to blink and you’ll miss it cameos. The idea that Facebook games are what really saves the world does fit into the theme of the show about social networking and its effects on society, but it ultimately once again diminishes the main characters of this show. I can’t believe I’m actually writing about a Gatchaman show that had barely any actual Gatchaman-ing in it. Its a disappointment. Might as well call it Kamen Rider instead.
I know... but you weren't making it easy.
Structurally the episode somehow managed to feel even more rushed than the half-recap last week and its non-ending felt well… incomplete. With half the cast reduced to virtually non speaking cameos, and too much time being spent on the Crowds, there just wasn’t enough time to give them a proper send-off. And why is Katze a trash talking hankerchief? You know what… fuck it…
No comment.
2/10
We’ll wrap things up next week with my final thoughts on the show and the final average grades. Its been fun I guess….