Survival Game Club!| Episode 12 (Finale)
EmperorBrandon: Being the last episode, they flip around the usual formula of doing the epic battle in the last segment, and we get one for the first half this time instead, with Momoka getting a weird virus and girls on the run protecting her from a kooky wasteful government agency. It was fitting for a last episode in bringing all the random people who have had fun (admitting it they get that out of Momoka despite her flaws ) with the group onto the scene. Gets all dramatic, but I knew something anticlimactic was coming. Momoka’s voice had gotten better later on in the fight, so I was wondering if she even needed a cure.
Heh, and Momoka actually shows some genuine concern for Urara for once as the club screws up their birthday preparations. I wouldn’t expect that concern to be rewarded, though. We all know there’s only one “present” that can really satisfy Urara, and so it ended on that note.
Nork22: will admit, the biggest laugh I got out of this episode was the random car flying out of nowhere with an explosion coming out behind it and the title of the special squad flashing below it. Can it get anymore 80’s camp? And the whole girls going great lenghts to protect Momoka, the rebuttal of them being infected, and the many guest stars appearing made this episode so dumb and enjoyable. To finish that thing off with something so anti-climatic… good job Sabagebu.
Also Urara getting the best present at the end: priceless.
bctaris: I have to give it to the this show for that ending. That’s being true to its twisted roots, screwing over the main character and rewarding Urara of all people.
The show stuck to its guns (so to speak) all season, never really losing a beat, not trying to outdo itself every episode, or develop the characters beyond the thin veneers they established them as, just being random and absurd and violent. Until the end, of course, where they make the point about how silly going over-the-top in an already off-kilter show can be. (The hunting promotion segment in episode 7 was maybe the only time it veered into anything resembling earnestness.) They even, in retrospect, went easy on the specific action film references, not making it all about parodies, and keeping focus on the characters. One of the few shows I can compare it to would be perhaps Miami Guns, from more than a decade ago, which had the same mixture of absurd colorful characters, ridiculous violence, and wacky parodies. Sabagebu, however, I think did a better job at staying focused on the central gag comedy of it all, being wisely constructed out of segments instead of episodic and multi-episode story lines that could lose focus.
stardf29: This was a great finale episode, though, with a very involved final battle that involves all sorts of characters from earlier in the series, plus some moments that almost get emotional… only for the whole thing to end anticlimactically. Wonderful.
That’s not all, though! Momoka tries to be nice and give Urara a Christmas gift… of course, that can only end in herself becoming the present. Also, apparently Miou does battle with Santa Claus during Christmas.
Don’t let my relatively low personal score fool you; this was a show I enjoyed quite a bit, a black comedy that works precisely because it makes its characters likably unlikable so you don’t feel too bad when they get subjected to this show’s sadistic sense of comedy. It’s all an effective working of the show’s comedic style and my lower score is simply indicative of my preference for other types of comedy and not a knock on the show itself. And even then, it was still a fun show.