Listeners

Episode 11

Well, it's the penultimate episode of a show with a large episodic cast, you know what that means! Time for every surviving character from our heroes' travels to come together in one spot to fight the final antagonist and show us how much encountering the protagonists have changed them for the better! Well, most of them anyway. But we'll get to that.

For now, it's time for the supporting cast to start gathering forces to face the awakened King of the Earless, Listeners. Yes, it turns out the show's been named after the final boss the whole time. I thought Jimi using the term was him redefining the Earless, saying that far from being unable to hear, they'd been listening to the emotions of humans the whole time. But apparently that's just Mu's original name, which seems somewhat less poetic in my opinion, but I guess it technically means the show was named after Mu the whole time, so props to her for getting top billing. Well, sort of, as it seems Mu is a different personality from her megalomaniac original, and she's still kicking around in there somewhere as she tries to warn Echo's sister in Liverchester to get out of dodge before her body can raise hell.

On that front, Denka finally decides to rise from his rose petal bath long enough to rescue the remaining Players that Tommy had gathered in Londinium, working to build as united a front as possible to stop Listener. He's joined by a wary ally in Roz, whose already once-lost country is now in chaos as the Earless forms of her loved ones are driven mad by Listener' influence. But Roz doesn't want to help kill Listener – she fully believes that Mu can be freed from her own ravaged psyche, and Denka agrees to it; he knows what it's like to lose someone dear through inaction with Jimi, and true to his declarations in episode 5, he wants to give the next generation a better life. It's risky, likely impossible, but with the power of love and music they have to try regardless.

Other cast members are less hopeful. The Valentines return, with Kevin having conveniently jerry-rigged a way to combine the power of all the gathered Players and Equipment to overpower Listener, but Bilin is already concocting a contingency plan for if (when) their initial strategy of “fire a big laser” fails. By her reasoning, she helped encourage Mu and Echo to go on this journey in earnest, despite her own misgivings, so it's her knightly duty to put an end to the girl if she can't be saved. It's a decision that could be seen as cold, but it's clear from how she says it – and how she purposefully boards their Equipment without Kevin – that she's doing it out of regret for not being a better mentor. Nir is decidedly less conflicted about the whole thing – knowing Mu has caused her nothing but hurt, and she'll be damned if she'll let that continue by sitting back while Listener' army of Earless destroys what's left of her found family. So, time to murder Mu whether she's lucid or not.

The preparations that take up the bulk of “I Am the Resurrection” make for some solid character beats – Listeners' greatest weakness has been struggling to flesh out its fairly large cast, and here we get to see characters interact and emote in ways they weren't able to while confined to episodic adventures. The biggest issue is just that it's glaringly obvious that the big plan they're all working towards isn't going to amount to anything because we know Echo's going to be the one to stop/save Mu. It makes me wonder if maybe these last 2 episodes might have worked better swapped, leaving Echo's whereabouts a mystery until the closing moments as the tide turns fully in the Earless' favor. It would do a lot to add more tension to the other characters' struggle while working as a surprising cliffhanger to hook us into a flashback of Echo's experience at the crossroads. What we get instead is a serviceable episode building to an expected conclusion that can't ever shake the feeling like it's going through the motions.

The other big issue is that Listener the character just isn't particularly interesting. She's a big bad JRPG final boss, complete with second form, but doesn't have much personality outside of evil shouting and big purple laser blasts. Her presence also means Mu has basically sat out the last quarter of her own show, and that's a shame because there are plenty of ways the show could have integrated her in some form or another. What we're left with is a gaudy, shallow final antagonist and little room for any meaningful resolution to our heroine's so-far developed conflict, and that ain't great.

So now everything's in place for the big finale, and of course our final episode is a Beatles reference. There really was no other way this show could go out, really. With little chance of an encore, it's just about time to see if Listeners can go out on a high note.

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Listeners is currently streaming on Funimation.