What They Say:
Saotome’s plan is finally coming to fruition and with no one powerful enough to stop it, the world will be saved from Hyobu Kyoskue. less
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
Events have been building up in a somewhat roundabout way for awhile, but now everything has come down to the precognitive trick that can mess with peoples’ heads. With Saotome having worked the angle pretty well at this point to create a situation in which it seems like there will be some form of peace and trust between espers and normal humans, something that BABEL has long worked towards with their use of the three girls that have grown up in the last few years, it could all be for naught because of what Saotome has planned. Using Yugiri to kill the person that has come out in favor of a peaceful existence between the two would certainly shatter any good will there is.
Which is why it’s easy to see how Kyosuke and Andy would work with BABEL in whatever way they can at this point to make sure it doesn’t happen, especially since it could have a ripple effect on Kyosuke’s Queen down the line. The first half works through this well as we get a fair bit of action as Andy works with the BABEL folks to save the politician only to have the police turn on them. But for Kyosuke, he finds himself more in a psychological trap as he works down the line to bring back Yugiri, only to end up confronting a younger version of himself that’s quite disappointed with who he’s become and what it means. But it also plays back to the present in a way as he sees that future that his Queen will bring and it’s worth breaking his limiter in order to achieve his goals in the hear and now for her. The two have long had such an odd relationship in a way that it’s really well done to see how he’s just so enthralled to what she will become that he’ll do anything.
But it also deals with what Kyosuke has to do when it comes to Yugiri, who sees herself just becoming a tool to be used by others, something that Kyosuke has adamantly not done with her for the most part. But he’s able to grow and change here in a way with her that really shows some growth for both of them. Well, Yugiri really needed it since she was so minimally designed, but it’s great to see Kyosuke become something more here after all is said and done. It also ends up drawing in Andy as it progresses since Kyosuke has to go big in order to fix everything in the only way he knows how, and this allows Andy to show something to Kyosuke that Kyosuke certainly would not have been able to believe in general at the start of the series, and of Andy in particular as he does his best to save him from utter destruction.
In Summary:
That things end all wrapped up for the most part is not a surprise here and the last act of it gives it all a nice sense of closure that’s pretty appropriate. The series is one that spent a lot of time showing us how Andy and Kyosuke lived and viewed the world, even with Andy playing a double agent of sorts along the way, and it explored a face of the Psychic Squad world that really worked for me. Taking what was pretty kiddy material as we saw in that series and ramping it up to deal with mostly adult characters here, and allowing us to see the trio in their middle school form a few times, was a perfect side story for that show. What we get here lets us know the growth path for the property as a whole and that it can be more than we saw before, especially under the hands of Manglobe who worked on this production. With what we get here, it’s pretty self contained but it definitely leaves me wanting to see another season of these characters off on their own adventures – as well as getting more Psychic Squad material for their middle school years. There’s a lot to like here and it’s a show that I think will work even better when viewed in marathon form.
Grade: B+
Streamed By: Crunchyroll
Review Equipment:
Sony KDS-R70XBR2 70″ LCoS 1080P HDTV, Dell 10.1 Netbook via HDMI set to 1080p, Onkyo TX-SR605 Receiver and Panasonic SB-TP20S Multi-Channel Speaker System With 100-Watt Subwoofer.
