EPISODE 11
With Empress and her group approaching, Lunatic began to enact her doomsday plan. And like the final boss she is, she is on a whole level strong, able to decimate the human army as well as beating Empress and David without a sweat. For the final battle, the series sure quickened the pace by having the battle between humanity and Artemis’ army didn’t last that long, which was quite disappointing after the built up of Empress and group finally found unity. Everything happened too fast to my liking. To make it worse, the Iron Ocean is used to fuel a nuclear reactor on the Moon which powers a magnetic device to attract meteorites that falls down to Earth to wipe out the remaining humanity for good, making it further race against time to defeat Lunatic before all the meteorites wipe out the surviving humans.
Not only that, episode 11 must give the fight a pause by revealing the reason why Artemis decided to destroy humanity. Artemis was originally designed to terraform other planets, but after researching humanity and concepts like death, Artemis decided that Earth is the planet that needs to be terraformed first. Her solution is to wipe out native species to allow any alien life to settle there. If the alien life is unsatisfactory, she will repeat the process. As Artemis can live long for as long as no one can kill her, she can wait for hundreds or thousands of years until she gained the most satisfying result in terraforming Earth in the way she likes.
I already had a bad feeling when episode 10 has such a rushed pacing and cramming several conflicts into one episode. This episode gave an info dump that could have been better handled if they set their priorities right. Though the possibility is slim, I hope everyone get a happy ending. Empress, Dead Master, and Strength already fought so long and lost their friends and family. They deserved a peaceful life after this. And David, he finally got Charlotte back, don’t want to leave her orphaned only moments after they’re finally reunited as father and daughter.
EPISODE 12
So much for a happy ending, Black Rock Shooter: Dawn Fall left us with an open ending. It’s neither bad nor happy. Empress managed to stop Lunatic’s doomsday plan. Though there’s only 30% humans left on Earth who survived the meteorites attack, it’s enough to buy humanity time for 200 years before Artemis reenact her plan again. This victory was cryptic, however, as Empress, Dead Master, Strength, and David were killed in the battle. With the time given to them, the survivors were determined to finish what their predecessors couldn’t. 50 years later, Norito took over David’s position as a colonel, Monica as the head research like Stella, and Charlotte officially became a Hemitheos Unit along with Miya (who became one after got severely injured form the meteorites prior) and the clones of Dead Master and Strength.
I can’t say I’m liking how the series ended with Norito and the others launched an attack to the Moon and then helped by the recovered Empress without being shown how the result of the attack is. But I can’t say I hate it either. I’m sad many times watching this episode from all the deaths of the majority of the main cast, especially David. However, I also like the idea of the survivors continuing the legacy of the ones who had fought for them. Each of their lives has been changed by Empress and the others through the time they had fought together, yet they were powerless to save them. Their shared feelings of loss brought these survivors together to honour their fallen comrades. I wouldn’t mind one more episode that focused on how the survivors recovered from their loss and united to once again fight Artemis. Plus, child Dead Master and Strength were so ADORABLE! (^///^)
FINAL THOUGHTS
Black Rock Shooter: Dawn Fall has an interesting premise, fine performance of the seiyūs, and wonderful visual. However, it has pacing problem and lack of proper character development for some characters like Norito, Miya, and Dead Master. Some of the characters also lacked the background, specifically Dead Master and Strength. All we know is that they were from the same orphanage as Empress, but no further explanation of how they used to be during their old times together. I’m also don’t like Smiley and his obsession in finding a wife through rape. On the other hand, I think the action sequences were good, save for the last two episodes. The soundtrack accompanying the moments also fitting.
Overall, I don’t think this series is better than the previous BRS anime, but it’s not worse than the previous one either. I still hope there’ll be better BRS anime adaptation in the future. And, I know that it’s sci-fic, but I prefer that next time they don’t rely too much on using CGs. Some of the CG movements were off in my opinion.
