Needless to say, almost the entirety of this episode is first the race to reach Sakaki before he does some serious damage to Jouga and its residents, before the even more inevitable face-off between Sakaki and Nemuru, Hiro, Isuzu and company - A point in which our bananas villain suddenly becomes less of a cold-blooded killer and more of a luke warm, slightly fuzzy one, especially when it comes to despatching any of the major characters.
It's difficult to know what to say about this finale of the series proper (with the final episode looking like it was penned after an afternoon of recreational drug use judging by the preview), as it's simply so obvious in the way that it panned out that you could probably have guessed exactly what was going to happen last week. While it finished everything off nicely enough, there was nothing to really get excited about here, and the whole thing ended up turning into some kind of mushy morality tale on how we should accept people who are different to us - Not really something we need anime to teach us in parable form, I'd like to think.
This ending does however sum up Ookami Kakushi quite succinctly, as a series that never really pushed the boundaries of its characters, story or plot, preferring to plod along as a run-of-the-mill mystery that ran out of steam entirely once some of its secrets were revealed. It's certainly a far cry from the more shocking and complex world of Higurashi, to the point where it would be an offensive comparison to even call this effort Higurashi Lite. Come this final "proper" episode, it felt more like Scooby Doo with knobs on than anything truly noteworthy.
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Anon