elwen | Scrapped Princess. (Reply)

So the series is finally over. Whew. With a cliffhanger at the end of almost every episode, it was pretty torturous at times. Although to be honest, by the end I was kind of apathetic towards them. So what if Pacifica lost her memory? So what if she lay dying next to her blood brother? I mean, I cared, but I suppose I also accepted the reality that I wouldn't find out what came next for a while, so I easily suppressed any curiosity.

But anyways, talking about that isn't the point of this entry. So I thought the ending was pretty nice. It resolved most of the issues, and rather neatly at that, without being too saccharine or "message of hope" the way X was. (It had that a bit, but that was given since they were playing on the free will versus living in a glass cage theme.)

I was starting to think the ending was a bit too pat, around when they started showing all the characters we've met, like the fake Scrapped Princess whose name I have forgotten. And then they had Chris and Winia actually work out, when I still think there was nothing at all on Chris' part during the entire show. But at least they didn't quite have Pacifica end up with Leo. That would have been too ideal, although it kind of made the ending sour for me to see that she was still bullying him. And here I thought she had grown more mature. Feh.

It was really sweet to see Zefiris at the end, leading a normal life and being able to live with Shannon and Raquel, so I'm not going to question how exactly she managed to become human or acquire permanent physical form or whatever.

My biggest confusion is what exactly happened between Shannon and Cz at the end. I should probably rewatch that part because I could have sworn she shot him through and then for some reason dissolved.

The conversation between Seria and Pacifica was interesting. Although I have issues with the fact that it was never mentioned that Pacifica's powers wouldn't activate until her death. It makes me wonder if that aspect came up after they started making stuff up in order to end the series in a timely fashion. (But I don't know anything about the manga and the novel, and whether they're done or not, so maybe this was how it originally was.) I also found it kind of disturbing that Seria's sister looked like Magami Tokiko. Very interesting twist that her brother was Zefiris' beloved Becknam, though, although the Natalie connection was more fuzzy.

So I guess I liked this ending better than the one for Matantei Loki. This one was a bit too pat, as I've already said, but I like the openness of people going on with their lives and exploring a new world. Whereas MaLoki left far too many questions hanging there. Like: is Odin still trying to kill Loki? and, will the gods age as time progresses?

But yeah, they're both more satisfying than Spiral or Weiss Kreuz, so I'm not complaining too much.

The thing I really didn't like about SP 24 was the zoom out at the end, with the Dragon and "The End". It so did not suit the series. The little sci-fi glimpses, and even the space battle at the end, somehow managed to harmonize with the rustic, medieval fantasy feel of the rest of the series, but last scene was just too cheesy Star Wars for me. It reminded me of the end of MIB, where they zoom out and you find out that the universe is just another marble for aliens to play with. Not something that goes with Scrapped Princess.

All the same, it was a nice series, with an interesting blend of fantasy and science fiction, and a lot of cool characters. (I wish we could have learned more about Fiure, though.) Definitely something I would recommend. Now to wait for some nice company to come and license it so I can collect pretty DVDs with neat extras. (That goes for Matantei Loki Ragnarok as well.)