Makeine: Too Many Losing Heroines!

Episode 12

The season finale is a sugary sweet self-deceptive romp that ends on a high note.

This episode has a number of different roles to fill, and I think it succeeds in most of them quite handily. In the first sense, it has to act as a natural continuation of what we have seen thus far: Nukumizu helping the girls with their troubled love lives. Yanami is in the spotlight for this episode, and Nukumizu helps by going along with her to fake a grown-up date. It also has to act as a season finale of a will-they-won't-they type series, moving the characters ever so slightly closer together without fully dispelling the ongoing mystery. Lastly, it has to serve as a possible series finale since season two has not been announced as of this writing.

It does all these things skillfully, though with the weakness that no one area gets the episode's full attention.

The entire contrivance of the fake date is classic rom-com territory. Yanami asks Nukumizu to help stage a very mature date with a guy who doesn't exist to inspire jealousy, and she conceives of a fake boyfriend - Markien - who is completely unlike anyone real, certainly the most different from Nukumizu someone could be. But wouldn't you know it, Nukumizu is the only one who can come along and make sure all these fun events happen and keep Yanami entertained… Why, if I didn't know any better, I'd say this fake date was a real date all along! And whether the cast members realize it or not (and Yanami's final words whispered directly into Nukumizu/the audience's first-person camera shot certainly implies she knows what she's doing), if it walks like a date and quacks like a date…

Of course, this episode also shows lots of delightful expression work and mundane goings on, with A-1 leveraging their considerable talents to bring it all to fruition. Even the throwaway gags like the gardening horror hallway sequence are done with deftness and a clear eye for cinema. It's a strong finale, and plenty of folks are probably hoping this is not the end for the anime adaptation. But if this is the last entry, it's not a bad one to go out on.

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Grant is the cohost on the Blade Licking Thieves podcast and Super Senpai Podcast.

Makeine: Too Many Losing Heroines! is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.