The last two episodes cover a ridiculous number of chapters and skip a truckload of fanservice, though there should still be a big sex scene to look forward to on blu-ray.
Episode 11
Rui finally accepts that she’s lost, and gives Natsuo a final kiss. Luckily for her, she won’t have to give up on Natsuo for all that long.
Hina and Natsuo meet up. Hina tries to break up, Natsuo essentially proposes. Natsuo wins. Then sex happens.
Obviously, they don’t show it in the TV airing, but based on what we’ve already seen it’s a lock to be in the blu-ray.
One thing I really liked about this scene in both the manga and anime was that it shows Natsuo finally manning up, which for the first time makes it feel like he actually deserves to be invited into Hina’s bed. His manliness lasts all of about 10 minutes before the plot crushes him into a sobbing mess, but it was nice while it lasted.
Here’s how that sex scene played out in the manga (it’s actually multiple sex scenes all in the same night, they had a lot of passion built up apparently):
Everything about this sex scene was just amazing in the manga. The long, frustrating set up. Frustrating both emotionally and sexually, since the series to this point had been somewhat skimpy on Hina’s nudes. It is hands down my favorite sex scene I’ve ever read in a manga. It goes on and on, it’s just epic.
I bet we’ll see maybe 25% of this in the blu-ray given that the production has really minimized the amount of adult content to this point. But it will still be nice scene for fans of this couple.
Episode 12
Overall Thoughts:
It’s incredible how many chapters this anime covered, with the final scenes going as far as the chapter 61 in the manga. The last two episodes alone covered nearly 30 chapters, while actually skipping very little in terms of story.
That’s impressive. The bad news however, is that most of the nude scenes in that span, especially the funnest, most senseless nude scenes, have been seemingly cut from the anime. Among those changes, was that Natsuo and Hina actually date for a considerable amount of time and have a couple more intimate encounters before their eventual breakup. There’s even a chapter where they vacation together at a mixed onsen. That was a very nice chapter. Too bad it didn’t make it in the anime.
In a lot of other scenarios, I’d consider this a big disappointment. But given that Diomedia has never done this kind of adult content before, or even significant amounts of nudity, and given that the manga was seemingly too extreme for an anime, I’m just happy to get what we got.
Fanservice aside, the anime was remarkably faithful to the original. There were no significant derivations in the anime from the manga story, including all the events of the final episodes.
The ending isn’t what I wanted, but it’s the kind of ending that perfectly suits the show. None of the characters in this series are ever allowed to find long lasting love, so it’s fitting that the ending would build on that theme as well. I was hoping that they would end on the fireworks sex scene, but I get why they went just a little further and ended bittersweet.
The ending also puts Rui back in play for Natsuo. Though to be honest, I never really cared about her feelings, even though I probably should have. And I didn’t care about Natsuo’s ambitions to be a writer- he just struck me as a young guy that didn’t really know what he wanted to be when he grew up yet and thought writing was that answer. In the real world, it likely wouldn’t be. But what I did buy into was Natsuo’s forbidden love for Hina, and Hina’s reluctant reciprocation. I hope that by the time the manga is over, Natsuo has a chance to keep that promise about marrying her.
This series was gorgeously animated, and given how much it motivated me to read the manga (something that almost never happens), it gives me faint hope that maybe this series will be just successful enough to get another season. The ending may be bittersweet, but it’s also an ending that will easily transition to a second season, if one were to be greenlit.
But if this is it, it was a good ride. For me this was probably the most emotionally involving ecchi anime since School Days or Shuffle. It could have definitely done better service wise, but that’s still some pretty good company to be in.
