Nabari no Ou - Episode 25

By the end of the last episode of Nabari no Ou, it was looking like we were in for a cataclysmic ending to the series, with Hattori dead, Yoite gone bonkers and the Shinrabanshou about to be unleashed unchecked by Miharu.

But, of course, this is Nabari no Ou we're talking about, and thus five minutes into this episode we're back to the plodding old story that has haunted this series so much. After all that build up, which is brought to new heights by the Shinrabanshou creating some kind of "giant of light" (I'm sure I wasn't the only one waiting for Second Impact at that point...), the whole process is stopped because Miharu sees his Mum who tells him to forget about it. Talk about an anti-climax.


In all the confusion Yoite has somehow managed to disappear (he certainly gets around pretty well for an almost dead guy), and so the rest of the episode turns into a predictable case of Miharu going in search of Yoite, helped by Thobari and Yukimi (who also got injured in the scrap before the Shinrabanshou stopped doing its thing). Very little happens beyond that aside from confirmation that Raikou is dead, which once again leaves me wishing this had been a thirteen episode series so that we don't have to worry about every other episode slowing to a sloth-like pace.

Considering how well poised the end of episode twenty-four was, it's almost incredible that they managed to make something so dull out of this instalment after threatening some kind of apocalypse in the opening minutes - It seems that the writers of this series have succeeded admirably in turning cliff-hangers into stamp collecting parties. Despite enjoying a few episodes of this show, I'll be more than glad to see it finish with what looks like an equally dull final episode just to get it out of the way. A real shame, when you look at the potential for what this series could have been.