Devil Survivor 2: The Animation - Episode 13 (Completed)

And then there were two - with everyone else eliminated, the future of humanity now rests on the shoulders of either Yamato or Hibiki.  But which is better?  There's only one way to find out.  FIIIIIIGHT!

While Yamato has no problems with attacking Hibiki to claim what he believes is his rightful place before Polaris, Hibiki is altogether more reticent about doing any damage to Yamato, instead trying to plea to his conscience as a friend.  Yamato has no need for friends however, and what's more he's kept a trick up his sleeve - the ability to fuse Personas... sorry, Demons... to create even more powerful allies.  That said, Hibiki has one last trick of his own, as he finds himself inheriting the demons of all of his fallen comrades, giving him an overwhelming amount of firepower for this final struggle.

So overwhelming is that gap in abilities that it's Hibiki who manages to claim the place in front of Polaris to remake the world as he sees fit, and you can probably guess where we go from here - a complete reboot of the world which effectively takes us back to where the series started, minus the Septentrion invasion and with the Nicaea site reimagined as something stupid but harmless.  However, it seems that not all of Hibiki's memories of his struggles have faded, and as they come flooding back he finds himself compelled to find Yamato and ensure that even this most antagonistic of friends has also received something approaching a happy ending.

It was probably inevitable thanks simply to the way things were set up, but this was a bit of a weak and entirely predictable finale to Devil Survivor 2 - there's nothing inherently wrong in going down the "reboot the world and live happily ever after ending", but the final conflict between Yamato and Hibiki really struggled to be anything like as epic as it should have been, and the additional mechanics thrown into that final battle felt shoe-horned in and more akin to something that should have reared their heads earlier in the series.  Still, as a whole Devil Survivor 2 did a solid job of entertaining me - it didn't break any new ground or knock me off my feet, but I enjoyed it week on week for what it was and always felt sufficiently engaged to want to watch each week's episode without forcing myself to do so.  It might not be a show that I would consider watching again, but in this throwaway streaming world it seems like perfect fodder to fill some time without ever feeling like that time was wasted.  Ultimately though, I imagine this series will forever be remembered as "that show that wasn't Persona 4".