Here we are then, the final episode of this season. What I was expecting from this series run time has come true and they’ve already announced a fifth season. Not only that, but it’s coming out this summer! That’s something really cool to look forward to. It’s not technically a split-cour series, but it might as well be. Either way, knowing that we probably won’t get a significant conclusion today, but also being aware that this isn’t the end, let’s temper our expectations and dive into the final episode of this season!
We ended the last episode with the Hunting Dogs getting attacked by the gambling addicts in the flying casino. Sigma wants to make sure his project stays safe. Tachihara got stabbed and hit in the head by a bat, but we’ve learned at this point that these people aren’t going down easily. We’ve already seen Teruko grow stronger so watching her turn into an old lady here is no surprise at all. I just wonder where Tachihara is. Oh, that explains it. She can use her power on other people too and turned Tachihara into a small child. And as I’m typing this, we get an explanation of her power as well. What a terrifying opponent, she can just age you to the point where you’re no longer a threat. This does make me wonder how old Teruko is. It might be one of those things where she’s actually a thousand year old woman and not a young girl. We’ll see.
We get a little bit more information about Sigma. As I kind of expected, he’s not a real person per se, but someone spawned from the book. Three years ago, to be precise. So at some point in the past, the Decay of Angels had access to the book and might have lost it since then. Now they’re using one page of iit again. Teruko makes it to Sigma and gets handed the key to the controls. We cut away to Atsushi and Kyouka making their way through the casino. The two splitting up worries me, but Atsushi has to hurry if he wants to be in time to join the standoff between Sigma and Teruko, who just disabled Sigma’s weaponry. Sigma gets the upper hand though and aims the discount dominator at Teruko who still manages to overpower the ability. She destroyed her own eardrum to stop the damage from being as severe. Oldest trick in the book
The Hunting Dogs have a mentality much like Akainu from One Piece. Absolute order at the expense of everything else. If someone is considered a criminal they will be taken down, no matter the cost. It’s this iron determination that allows them to be so scary and undertake dangerous operations that need monthly repeating. Sigma pulls Teruko off of the but she manages to catch back on. Atsushi then saves Sigma. I was half expecting him to save Teruko, but he quickly reminds us that Sigma is their way to find out where the page is. We also learn he stabbed the police chief. Sigma is kind of painted as a victim, and to an extent he is being used by Fyodor. On the other hand, he is a dangerous terrorist trying to undermine all of society and use coins to blow up the country. So we can only spare so much sympathy. Things aren’t going smoothly still for Atsushi, as someone flies up to them, probably sent by Fyodor. I’m not sure I know who this person is, but at this point there’s just too many characters.
It did strike me as strange for them to save Sigma. The Hunting Dogs will now be even more convinced that the Agency are bad guys. A video reaches Tachihara of Atsushi explaining the plot, but apparently Fyodor has written a line into the page that no one will trust the Agency.
And of course we learn that both of the Mafia executives are perfectly alive. I do want to make it very clear that this is disappointing. I know this is a shonen series and the stakes often end up being extremely low for any real named character, but at least the old executive should have died here. Tachihara probably cared for them more than he was willing to admit and i’m going to guess that his special power somehow lets him circumvent the page’s words, but come on, have some respect for the viewer here. If every “death” is fake, the reader will stop being invested. Game of Thrones ran into this problem where early on everything had consequences and later on characters would just walk away from lethal damage like it was just a papercut. Shonen does this way too often and it shouldn’t keep getting away with it.
Oh, that’s the point of this all. That’s some great writing, I love this.
Fyodor: All law enforcement and investigative bodies that happen upon evidence of the Detective Agency’s entrapment will dismiss it without consideration.
Of course this would disappear for Tachihara when he realizes he’s not a hunting dog but a member of the port mafia at heart. I like his story arc a lot, it’s complex but not in a contrived way. He just really loved his brother and let the rage get to him. Even like Hyoma from Mononogatari he is still a reasonable person. The Mafia believes in the Agency because it knows the Agency all too well. They can’t be terrorists, they’re the most annoying goody two-shoes that exist and they’ll either come out proven innocent or die in the fight.
I love how Dazai’s master plan is just “Humans are too unpredictable”
We also get to find out what happened to Nikolai. He didn’t die after all and is probably going to either save Sigma or perfectly finish him off.
A very solid cliffhanger that would have made me very angry if not for the fact that we already know we’re getting more of this story soon. I’ll cover the next season right here on this blog so subscribe if that’s something you’re interested in. All in all I think this was one of the better seasons of this show, and that’s saying a lot considering it’s been pretty good for most of its runtime. I definitely should invest in the manga in the near future, I’m pushing it higher up the list of priorities. Thanks for reading.
Opal Kaharis 