Mayonaka Punch

Episode 12

Writing this is hard.

In his last review of Mayonaka Punch, Nick noted the fuzziness of the divide between the internet and real life for people who make their living online. People don't realize the impact their comments on things can have on the creators who read them. In the wake of his absence, I had to take over for a friend I never met in person, whose face I barely knew. A collaborator with who I vented to about insensitive internet comments on our work. I wish he could have seen the last episode of the show he deemed best of the season, and all of us could have heard his thoughts on how it wrapped up.

But fate has made it not an option, and I can only hope my words will suffice in his stead.

MayoPan's finale picks up right where the last episode left off, with the girls of MayoPan announcing on livestream that they are vampires. Because this is forbidden, it turns into a high-stakes game of tag against their hunters around the abandoned hospital. Misaki observes from the control room as her friends are picked off, one by one, until she's the only one left. The negativity from the chat threatens to overwhelm her once again. Still, she realizes that her perception has been distorting reality: that what she sees as hateful may be others just having fun or stirring the pot, and that she still has supporters among the detractors. This gives her the strength to look the camera in the eye and pick up the game where her allies left off.

”Don't read the comments” is an old truism about posting any work online, and it's one that I've never been very good at following. I've shielded myself from a lot of the bile by fostering an attitude of, “How dare you speak to me,” but I'd be lying if I said they didn't get to me sometimes. You end up in a loop where your critics drown out your supporters, and you fall to distorted thinking, where everything that could be possibly construed negatively becomes tainted. It's paralyzing.

There's a lot of talk about how depersonalizing the internet can be, and how much meaning is lost – Lonely Oedo Girl may seem toxic when reduced to text on a screen, but Masaki realized the thinking behind the words may be much more complex. It resonates with what I've witnessed as the community has responded to Nick's passing. People I saw complain about him on Twitter retweeted his obituary and GoFundMe, and forum members I know battled it out with him expressed their condolences and sadness. I'm not saying anyone was being insincere, but that people are complex and don't always consider the impact of their words.

Luckily, Mayonaka Punch is not a series to lean into platitudes. The vampire tag was all a stunt to get Masaki to return to the manor and reach a million followers, with the hunters played by Live, the Hype Sisters, and the Outside Boys. Once the relief wears off, Masaki turns around and punches Live in her scheming face because she's still Masaki. There are no syrupy lessons about the importance of finding family or how the important thing is to do what she loves. Maybe she learned to value her team a little more and not be a complete tyrant, but she's still selfish and crotchety.

The reason Live has been craving her blood this whole time? Twenty years ago, she got wild hair up her ass about not being able to go out in the sun, got blasted with UV rays, and turned into a bat. Masaki found her as a small child, and Live bit her. That's all. It doesn't make sense that Live could imagine how Masaki would look like after 20 years, but I still love that it was a chance encounter that left no mark on Masaki except for an owie on her finger. No great meaning, no destiny. Just Live tasted something yummy before falling asleep and dreaming about it for 20 years.

But as unsentimental the ending of Mayonaka Punch is, I am as sentimental a fool as they come, and, like Masaki, I cannot fight my nature. Chance encounters shape our lives and unite us with people we never would have known otherwise. Everything we do and are is created by the slow accumulation of coincidences. It is chance that has led me here to write this review and has made it so that the one who should have been is no longer here to do it. I think Nick would have appreciated the final episode's mix of sincerity and pragmatism.

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Mayonaka Punch is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.