Katsumi is set to reopen the gates to Nemesis. With the demon sword Medium at her side and
the AMP in near shambles, Earth will feel her wrath and that of the Lucifer
Hawks. All is not lost. Kiddy, Lebia, Yuki, Nami and Lum Cheng are
far from defeated and will have to pull all of their remaining resources for
one last, desperate counterattack against this unstoppable force. How far is Kiddy willing to go to save the
soul of her best friend Katsumi? And
even if Katsumi can be saved, will her power be enough to stop the oncoming
apocalypse? The last stand of the AMP
has begun.
Five beautiful women, battling an army of demons from
another dimension, using a mix of technology and magic, in a Tokyo of tomorrow.
How did a premise that sounds so cool end up going so
horribly wrong? How? HOWWWWW?
On the Brightside, Silent Mobius is finally done and I
cant say im not sorry to see it end. The
finale took all of the possible goodness built up from the previous week and
decided to do nothing with it (well almost nothing, there was one decent story
within). And in the end, there was no
end, only a poor executed “To be continued” for another season that we’ll never
get…unless this is rebooted and done right.
The final episodes are, in general, a mess. The writers were either scrambling to write
themselves out of all of the plot holes or just said F it, let’s dig them to
the center of the Earth and beyond.
There are attempts to wrap up everyones stories properly. Rally faces Rosa, who has been whining for no
real reason apparently cause Rally always loved her but Rosa refused to hear
it. Kiddy and Isozaki faced the Medium
possessed Katsumi to try and bring her back.
Yuki had to get her head together with the help of that guy she met in
the past and the rest of the AMP had to deal with a Lucifer Hawk replaced
Nami…wait…what the heck? WHEN DID NAMI
GET SWITCHED OUT?!
There are so many curveballs thrown at us it’s hard to
see them all and keep up with them. It
all feels as last minute as Lum Cheng’s Grandfather, who we’ve only seen once
until now, suddenly showing up to bail out EVERYONE!!! Rally and Rosa near death? Granddad swoops in and saves them. Katsumi needs her sword to save the day,
GRANDDAD TO THE RESCUE!!!! I’d say he’s
a deus ex-machina but that falls to the ACTUAL Deus Ex Machina Rally and
Isozaki have had in orbit all of this time.
But I guess you don’t pull out the giant satellite weapons controlled by
R2 like units until a Lucifer Hawk disguised as Nami tries to fuse with your
entire building…I cant take much more of this.
The only thing I liked about these last four episodes was
Kiddy’s resolve to save Katsumi. After
hearing how to free her from Medium via a conversation between Rally and
Isozaki (who was once possessed by the sword but that feels like it was just
thrown in cause she’s had no purpose on this show at all besides looking in
charge when she’s not) Kiddy was ready to make the ultimate sacrifice to save
her best friend. It worked in the end
and it was a short but nonetheless effective payoff for one of the few storylines
that worked in this shows entire run.
Kiddy was even there waiting for Katsumi after she said her goodbye to
Roy. I’ll miss the adventures those two
have shared at least.
As much as I did admittedly enjoy Evil Katsumi (listening
to her freak out Lum Cheng talking about how she had sex with Roy was so
entertainingly wrong), I did like that Katsumi got to have a proper farewell
with a vision of Roy. Yeah her parents
had to come in and ruin any chance of a last kiss. But Katsumi did learn that she’s pregnant
with Roy’s baby. So…was she six months pregnant while the whole battle with the
giant building was going on? You know
what…ill let the show have this one. I
liked Katsumi, I really did. Her story
had issues but so did the rest of this tiresome show. So if its anything having to do with her,
Kiddy, Roy or Ralph, that gets a pass from me.
And if you think ive forgotten about the crummy
animation, I haven’t. I’ve stopped
talking about it because it feels pointless to point out that glaring flaw week
after week. I only bring it up once
again because…oh God it was so much worse in the finale. The Lucifer Hawks fusing with AMP HQ clearly
looked like something out of a mid 90’s PC video game and not in a good
way. The finale was already going badly enough
without the animating staff needing to remind us one more time that they
couldn’t decide how they really wanted this show to look.
That brings us to the very last episode, which spends
more time setting up the non existent Season 2 than bringing things to a
suitable conclusion. Because it worked
so well for Priss and the Knighsabers, Katsumi took on a literal building sized
Lucifer Hawk…and killed it in about 5 seconds.
We then jumped forward a week.
Everyone’s alive (unfortunately) including Kiddy and Ralph (I’m happy
about that), and Tokyo is being evacuated so that the AMP can fight the Lucifer
Hawks without a risk of further civilian casualties. Katsumi’s also going to fight them 6 months
pregnant and we got to see how everyones getting along in the wake of a battle
that only Kiddy did anything important during.
I’ll admit, by this point, my mind was shut off. Except for Kiddy being at deaths door and
Katsumi returning to normal, I could really care less about what happened to
everyone else. And why should I when the
show itself didn’t seem to want to treat anyone other than Kiddy and Katsumi
with respect and fleshed out character stories?
The truth is, I couldn’t wait for this show to be over and even with the
“to be continued” thrown in at the end, I’m glad we never got a Season 2 of
this incarnation of Silent Mobius.
With that, final thoughts on the series? God this show was a chore to get
through. A set up with such promise
crashed and burned really quickly. The
AMP was seriously underpowered, most of their staff were never given time to
grow and became stale quick. The enemies
were never scary and their human personifications just liked to yell about
everything. The magic and technology
fusion never got a proper execution (with both failing pretty regularly to take
out a Lucifer Hawk unless it was Katsumi using her magic). There was no satisfying backstory provided
for how the Silent Crisis came about or how the beginning of its beginning…ugh
this list could go on forever but I’ll add in the poor animation and leave it
at that. I will admit, of what little I
did like, I did enjoy the opening and ending themes, which are just kick ass
and beautiful tracks. The second end
theme especially, “Til the end of Time”, feels like the perfect theme for
Katsumi and Roy (too bad it was introduced and overplayed and just wasted when
it was introduced in Yuki’s time travel episode). Plus if the show looked more like the intro,
I could let Silent Mobius keep a number on its overall score.
I wanted to like this show. Episode after episode I kept hoping it would
get better. It was almost sad to watch
it all unfold and crumble week after week.
Just when you thought there was some saving grace in one episode, the
one to follow would just smash it to bits.
There’s potential in the story, the cast is cute girls I want to like
and see succeed. When you have a cast of
sexy bad asses fighting evil, there’s only so far that element alone will get
your show. Then you realize they might
not be good at what they were chosen to do and are mostly just useless
background noise for one main member to do all of the work.
Katsumi, Kiddy, Lebia, Nami, Yuki, Isozaki and Rally all
deserved better than this…we all did.
Final score for Silent Mobius is a seriously sad…
4/10
Im not sure I want to say “Unfortunatley, that’s not
quite the end of it”. I’ve heard good
things about the Silent Mobius movies, which were made long before the
series. Maybe my spending time in this
universe can be salvaged by watching them.
Get ready for a special double feature as I wrap up Silent Mobius with
Silent Mobius: The Motion Picture and Silent Mobius 2: The Motion Picture on a
special day…tomorrow, Halloween. Let’s
hope these flicks provide the scares the series never offered.
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