Robotics;Notes - Episode 22 (Completed)

The GunPro-1 is ready to roll, and roll it does, meaning that it's time for the big face-off between Aki, Kai and company and Misa as controlled by Kimijima Kou.

While Misa might have the technological advantage in many ways, that isn't to say that the group of rebels facing off against her are stuck in the stone age - they're more than capable of using AR technology to baffle and render Misa's missile attacks largely useless, while their use of monopoles in the GunPro-1 gives them a chance of something resembling a level playing field.  Throw in Kai's "special weapon" in the form of his ailment and the means to trigger it at will, and things less predictable than you might first think.

Thus, this final episode sees things to and fro; Kai takes the upper hand against Misa, only to find the spectre of Kimijima Kou (who has also locked out any chance of preventing that all-important rocket launch) in a less forgiving mood.  With the emergence of an application that can "kill" Kimijima however, at last an end is in sight to this conflict, if they can only succeed in making use of it to win the day and prevent the launch.  No prizes for guesses how that ends up in this final episode.

Even when it came down to its grand finale, there was something missing from Robotics;Notes - never mind the gaping holes in both plot and logic, some nicely realised and pleasingly robust action wasn't enough to paper over the substantial cracks in the series as a whole.  While Steins;Gate did a wonderful job of building up a rapport with its characters and the cast as a whole during its quiet first half, Robotics;Notes failed to do this in similar circumstances, and then made things worse by continuing to plod along in a meandering way even when push came to shove.  As a lesson in mediocrity, this series certainly did the job, but given the hype in the wake of Steins;Gate's success it ended up being easily the biggest disappointment of the last six months.