A Centaur's Life

Episode 12

So A Centaur's Life ends as it began—in a series of disconnected vignettes on monster girl school life and other random things that the manga-ka likes. The first half of the episode is pretty dedicated to fanservice, probably as a reward for sitting through this whole thing. Our heroines go on a dungeon crawling adventure, which is to say that they do generic fantasy adventure stuff and show a lot of skin. After that, the series concludes on an arm wrestling competition between all of the class's girls. It's a pretty low-key affair, one final celebration of all the most prominent characters, and a chill way to send off the whole thing.

The D&D adventure is about what you'd expect – Nozomi plays the warrior, Kyouko the mage, and Hime (with her bow skills) the rogue. I'm sad that they didn't include a gag about Hime trying to sneak around with her huge horse body, but whatever. Sassassul also plays a priest, which is ironic considering how little Antarctican culture seems to understand about religion. Still, it's appropriate to their race's overall vibe, which is reminiscent of a monastic order guarding secret (scientific) mysteries. Together, their adventuring party slays monsters (who thankfully aren't half-human schoolgirls) until they reach the final door. They also get sexually assaulted by a slime, but that's neither here nor there. In the end, Manami is waiting for them in a dominatrix outfit to serve as the final boss. Kyouko points out that dom-Manami pads her chest, and the mistress runs away screaming. Of course, this whole thing was just a story made up by the girls' perverted classmate Akechi, and none of them approve of its contents.

Next, there's the arm wrestling competition between all of the girls. This is basically a sendoff to the show's central cast, with most of the girls getting a standout moment. Wimpy Kyouko loses immediately and proceeds to comment from the sidelines. Nozomi's athleticism takes her all the way to the final four. Manami beats Nozomi for a slot in the finals and cites child-rearing as the source of her incredible upper arm strength. And then Hime – who doesn't even know why they're all arm wrestling – handily defeats her. I'm not sure if it's just because she's a centaur or what, but archery seems like it'd do a lot to build your biceps and triceps too. So our main heroine comes out victorious in the same way that she's gone through most of the show – obliviously.

And that's it for A Centaur's Life! We're ending things off with a pretty innocuous episode, but there you go. Overall, I had a lot of fun with the show. It could've been more tonally consistent and looked a whole lot better, but I was always excited to see whatever new weirdness it would be delivering week to week. I honestly wish that there could be more to watch. I've grown attached to the characters, and I'd like to experience more of the story's strange yet surprisingly accurate observations on life. If this were serialized in a magazine over here, I'd definitely be picking it up regularly. I'm not sure it's conducive to binge-watching, however. This definitely feels like a drop-in, drop-out kind of story—if this show can even be said to have a story. I'll miss this world, even if it never really came together in a lot of ways.

Grade: B

A Centaur's Life is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.

Gabriella Ekens studies film and literature at a US university. Follow her on twitter.