Big Order

Episode 10

Well everybody, we made it. After 10 episodes filled with grueling mediocrity and baffling incompetence, Big Order has finally ended. The show pulled out all the stops this week and concluded in the only way it ever could have: with thundering anticlimax.

Given the consistent lack of quality and coherence in Big Order's back half, I didn't go into this finale expecting anything particularly good, but I was still kind of shocked at how bland, slapdash, and rushed it managed to be. The episode begins by dialing up the drama and angst to 11, and all of it feels completely unearned, as does the epic final stand our heroes take against the Will of the Mental World, aka God. It should take a whole lot of effort for a show to make a battle against God feel underwhelming, but Big Order makes it look almost effortless.

Everything starts falling apart much earlier than that though, starting with Rin and Eiji's “emotional” reunion. Here are two people who've barely shared a word over the last five or six episodes, and Rin is literally mutilating herself to declare her devotion to the emotionally crippled Eiji. I think it's supposed to come across as edgy and intense, but I couldn't do anything but laugh. Big Order has managed to demonstrate the emotional depth of a small puddle, and every time this episode tries to amplify the drama, it just falls flat on its face.

It only gets worse from there, with the previously mentioned fight against God winding up a complete wash. After some nonsensical shouting about the value of the real world, human willpower, and Eiji's love for Sena, everything gets resolved when Daisy comes and unlocks Eiji's full potential, allowing him to kill God and dominate the world in the way his sister couldn't. There's no dramatic tension of any kind, and the victory ultimately feels completely hollow. It also marks one of the few times I can remember an anime using a literal deus ex machina to write itself into a forced happy ending, which is a dubious honor indeed.

The solution to the conflict also raises the question of whether or not all of Eiji's arguments the last couple episodes have been entirely pointless. He spends the whole episode trying to convince his father that making the world live up to people's wishes isn't a valid form of happiness, but at the end of the day, isn't that pretty much exactly what Eiji did? Instead of everyone getting a Perfect World, they have to live in the one Eiji wants? It's weak writing that negates any kind of point the show might have been trying to make with its story.

The show also decides to overlay a good 85% of the episode with a muddy, grainy, black-and-white filter. I don't know if it's supposed to give the proceedings an otherworldly feel or if it's a stylistic homage to the series manga origins; either way, it doesn't work. The action just ends up looking muddier and more lifeless than usual. Usually, the visuals are the one area of Big Order I can't criticize too much, but this episode even manages to mess that up.

In the end, everything culminates in an incredibly brief epilogue, where Eiji explains that everyone is happy and alive and going to school together. All of the Orders are gone, and Sena is apparently going to live after all. All the problems everyone suffered through are apparently resolved, and nobody questions anything that's transpired so far. It's exactly as rushed, cheesy, and cheap as it sounds. At least when Big Order was reveling in its edginess and violence, it was being honest with itself. This finale might have scraped by with a D, but the brazen laziness of such a shmaltzy send off leaves an even more sour taste than I could have expected.

There's a lot more I could talk about but, frankly, I've had enough Big Order to last me a lifetime. I've seen a lot of anime over the years, and plenty of it has been bad. I've seen shows that were uglier than Big Order, shows that were cheaper, lazier, more offensive, and more dull. Still, I struggle to recall an anime that has been quite so frustrating an experience, so all-encompassing in its badness. Whatever potential it showed in the beginning was almost immediately wasted, and things were all downhill from there. It has been fun to write about, and I've loved seeing other viewer's responses to the show and these reviews, but the show itself was a complete failure. It's been quite the ride, and I'm glad we could take it together, but it's time put this miserable series to bed once and for all.

Rating: F

Big Order is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.

James is an English teacher that has loved anime his entire life. He spends way too much time on Twitter.