Friday, 24 June 2016

Space Patrol Luluco Episode 13 Review + Final Thoughts

For the love of justice
(This review contains spoilers!)

          Well, we’ve come to the end of our wild and crazy ride with Luluco and the space patrol crew. What a show this has been. I chose to watch it solely because of how different and creative the art style looked, thinking it would be good for a few laughs and some mindless entertainment, similar to shows like Nichijou and Umaru-chan. I certainly didn’t expect the show to explore themes of middle-school romance and what it means to have a first love. But, here we are.

          We’ll get to talking about the show overall in a bit. Firstly, how did the last episode fare?

          Well, it wasn’t the best I’ve ever seen Luluco, and it didn’t quite measure up to last week’s, but it was an admirable finale overall. We picked up exactly where we left off, as Nova is taken out by the Blackholian just after he confesses his love for Luluco. Luluco suits up in an awesome new outfit (apparently she’s like this legendary warrior? It wasn’t explained very well) as she fights him Shadow of the Colossus-style, jumping around all over him while she shoots him with a Judgement gun-morphed version of her and Nova’s shared crystal heart.

          Unfortunately, this episode falls prey to a lot of deus-ex-machinas, as everything kind of happens conveniently. Despite it never being hinted to before, Nova had a black hole implanted in his brain the whole time or something? But even so, he was able to come back and sacrifice himself to stop the Blackholian and be launched into another dimension. It wasn’t a super satisfying way to beat the villain, but as a method of closing the relationship between Luluco and Nova, it worked.

          I also didn’t quite get how Luluco transformed into this new, ultra-powerful version of herself out of the blue. She apparently harnessed all the power of her first love or something, but it was explained away so briefly, it was sort of a “just don’t question it” thing. To be completely fair, this is a show where in previous episodes, they’ve lit a Kill la Kill inspired planet entirely on fire and one of the main characters is basically a cardboard cutout. I don’t think that making sense is one of their top priorities.

          We ended off with an epilogue, showing where all the major characters have ended up. While I’m hoping for a Season 2, it was nice to see how everyone got their happy ending, and how Luluco is still searching for Nova, trying to rekindle her first love. It was a satisfying way to cap off the season.

          As for the series overall, while it had several ups and down points, overall was a complete joy to watch. It’s one of the funniest, creative, and most heartfelt anime I’ve ever seen, and I’d consider even putting it in my top 10 favourite anime ever. The talented folks over at Studio Trigger really know how to tell an excellent story with excellent characters and fantastic humour. If you haven’t checked it out yet, it’s only about 2 hours to watch the whole thing, as each episode is only 8 minutes long. You won’t regret it, I promise.

          Please do a Season 2, Trigger.

FINAL SCORE (Episode 13)
7/10

Good

FINAL SCORE (Overall)
9/10

Amazing

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