Zetsuen no Tempest - 12

"Absent Thee from Felicity Awhile"

Now I can add fighting trees to my "strange things I'll likely only find in anime" list.

I'm one of the few people who actually loved Eureka Seven: Astral Ocean despite its heavy flaws, but after watching Zetsuen every week, I keep wishing that Bones had used some of the perfect balance between excellent exposition and atmosphere present in the latter to supplement AO. Clearly they're capable of great production, and it is true that Zetsuen is an adaptation rather than an original work like E7:AO  was (perhaps that's where the discrepancy was born), but still there's that little bit in me that just wishes they'd done a job this clean and riveting for Ao's story (he deserved it, the poor thing). We have few loose ends here, and all the explanations have made perfect sense without seeming unlikely or convenient. It seems that each week this series only gets better and better, and it doesn't seem to be slowing down at all. If anything, it's picking up steam, and after a fourth week of almost no movement from the Samon-Yoshino-Mahiro triad, we finally hit what looks like a climax.

Awakened by the resurrection of the Tree of Exodus, the Tree of Genesis has begun its own revival around the world. Amidst this chaos, Mahiro demands to know whether a Mage of Exodus exists, and what that implies about Aika's murder. If the Tree of Genesis is responsible, killing Aika for the sake of Hakaze's escape, then Mahiro should be against Hakaze; if the Mage of Exodus is responsible, he should turn on Samon. But then there's also the question of whether or not the Tree of Genesis has merely made is seem like there's a Mage of Exodus and manipulated Mahiro to help Hakaze after all. Samon certainly doesn't think the existence of an Exodus mage is possible, but Hakaze reminds him that she herself was born as the Tree of Genesis' human avatar on Earth when it sensed its awakening drawing near, and that without her consent the Tree will not revive. Following that logic, the Tree of Exodus too may have a mage, but there is no guarantee. After all, Samon feels that Hakaze puts too much faith in the Tree, and that no deity as powerful as that would place its fate in a human's hands, and when the Tree even hands Hakaze a new offering after she can't find Samon's, she starts wondering if things truly haven't been manipulated the way he insists.

Regardless, Hakaze uses the offering and makes her "return" to the future, in just the manner Mahiro explained last week. She promises Mahiro that if the Tree of Genesis is responsible for Aika's death, she'll allow him to kill her, though whether the Tree would allow such a thing is doubtful. In the meantime, the Tree of Genesis has knocked down the barrier to the Tree of Exodus, and a more bizarre climactic battle I cannot recall in recent memory. The humans are utterly powerless against the two Trees destroying each other, and the Kusaribe have no hope of regaining control without Hakaze. It's both funny and a mark of the seriousness of the situation to see Samon have to bow down to her so quickly, with only minimal resistance, but it's obvious that she's the only human alive with any chance of getting in between the clash of gods.

Yet even she is unable to stop or predict what happens next; I'll admit I never even imagined this coming, and Samon is horrified that the Tree of Genesis has basically thrown away Yoshino and Mahiro the moment they ceased to be useful. Hakaze immediately goes to Yoshino's aid, sacrificing her best offering to prolong his life (is it just me, or has she been exceedingly gentle towards him since he refused to abandon her? I smell a romantic interest) and ordering Samon to save Mahiro before heading off in a hugely dramatic closing scene, with Aika reading out lines from what I'm told is The Tempest (If I've read it, I have no memory of it), accompanied by Beethoven's "Tempest" Sonata (I actually recognized this; though not by name) as Hakaze and Samon prepare to seal both Trees, finally ending the lack of movement that has characterized this arc.

What a magnificent ride this first cour has been. Anime has changed substantially in the last seven years since I began to immerse myself in this world, and to be honest few series today rival some of the amazing stories I saw back then, whether contemporary or even earlier works. I may be nostalgic, but I make it a point to revisit those series I loved, and I still can't quite come to terms with the way the industry works now. That's not to say everything in the old days was wonderful, and that everything today isn't, but I've honestly become too good at following plots and seeing twists before they arrive, if only because not many series are breaking the established molds while retaining credibility and momentum. Fortunately Zetsuen is not one of these; I have no clue where this series is going, because honestly, how many series kill off their protagonists (both of them) at the halfway point, and manage to do it dramatically, beautifully, after a four episode debate, and have every moment leading up to it be as gripping as an action flick? It's a shame we have to wait two weeks for the next episode, which looks like a flashback one, because I'm dying to know what the second cour of this series looks like.