Sabikui Bisco

Episode 12

After last week's stunner, there aren't a whole lot of surprises left in Sabikui Bisco's bag of tricks, but it doesn't need them to pull together a satisfying and highly fungal finale. In fact, it's a credit to the story's construction that all of this feels as natural as it does. It's an over-the-top capstone on a drawn out and action heavy kaiju assualt, yet it hits the right character beats and ties a neat bow on this season's most important threads. And at this point, all Sabikui Bisco really needed to do was not trip over itself in order to wrap up a solid adaptation, so it can consider itself as steady as bedrock.

To my chagrin, Bisco's messianic return does indeed receive an explanation, but at least it jives with the rest of the setting. If I've already accepted that spore-coated arrows can spontaneously generate skyscraper-sized caps, then it only takes a light mental jog to accept that pipe snake poison can turn you into an immortal mushroom man. What's most important is that it's very gross. Bisco remarks that he has to clean Rust Eater growths off himself regularly, and he's in a hurry to find a cure for this unwanted boon of immortality, which is very in-character for him. I had been wondering where the story could go from here now that one of its heroes is apparently unkillable, and this makes a lot of sense.

Even with Bisco's miraculous mycelium, however, it still takes all hands to take down Kurokawa's yucky rust-spewing colossus. Personally, I wouldn't have dragged this confrontation out over three weeks, and I think the story's pacing would have been better served by frontloading at least one more episodic travelogue to better acquaint ourselves with both our heroes and the oddness of this world. Nonetheless, this conclusion has a collection of small and large moments I like a lot. Tirol frantically flipping through the Tetsujin user manual is a fitting gag for her mental acumen and total lack of combat prowess. Milo and Bisco naturally get the finishing blow with their bro-and-arrow combo, fitting their bodies together to send one final Rust Eater payload through Kurokawa's cranium.

Pawoo definitely steals the show, though. I continue to find it funny the narrative seems so adamant on setting her, not her brother, up with Bisco—whether this is due to prejudice, cowardice, or some other factor, I couldn't say. But if it's going to do so, then at least it's doing so with plenty of aplomb. Never mind that she gets the best action setpiece in this episode, rocketing herself up close and personal into the Tetsujin's massive mug and using her much vaunted pole to cleave his mask in twain. She Frenches Bisco and then nonchalantly brags about tasting the tongue of a walking deity. That is pure action hero badass behavior. At the end of the day, I'm still team Milo, but Pawoo is too good a character to be upset with.

And Milo and Bisco do bless us with the finale's tenderest moment after the battle is won. Yeah, Pawoo got to play tonsil hockey with him, but it's Milo who snuggles up against Bisco's chiseled chest to listen to the steadiness of his hyphae-enhanced heartbeat. At no point in the episode is there ever a doubt that they'll do everything together, from kicking Kurokawa's big rusty ass, to searching for a cure for immortality, to spreading the good shroom news (and spores) to Japan's other prefectures. Despite all the melodrama of the season's second half, they're back to bickering like an old couple in no time. It's pleasant! And that honestly might be the best word for Sabikui Bisco. It might make a lot of waves with its weird ideas and outrageous presentation, but overall it's just a very pleasant, crowd-pleasing watch that does right by its source material.

As my last word on Sabikui Bisco as an adaptation and anime, I really want to note how impressive and consistent it was on the production level. I think I may have voiced my quibbles a little too much in these reviews, but that's only because the show was operating on a level where I could assess the animation and feel okay about it. Because, as a whole, the show looks great! It emphasized personality-rich character art and backgrounds throughout its run, and it was able to inject kinetic energy where it counted. This finale, for instance, has some really nice cuts. Consider the fallen Tetsujin sloughing off its rust body, or Pawoo slamming her sword into the giant mask. It's even more impressive considering this is Studio OZ's first main credit, although director Atsushi Ikariya is no neophyte, and the team appear closely entwined with the older and similarly named Studio NAZ. This tally of animators and animation directors suggests a highly concentrated core staff, and the results speak for themselves.

The season bookends itself with the border outpost, which both serves as a nice way to send off those characters, and serves as a piece of narrative punctuation suggesting the further adventures to come. While Imihama is sorted now that it has Rust Eater aplenty and a governor who's not a total psychopath, the rest of Japan isn't as enthused about Milo and Bisco's fungal proselytization. The societal rot that let Kurokawa flourish is still out there, and they need to cure it with their own brand of good natural rot. I will most certainly be game to pop more shrooms should we ever be blessed with more Bisco, but with its creative vision and focus on adapting just one volume, this season does an admirable job standing alone as one of winter's most enjoyable action anime.

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Sabikui Bisco is currently streaming on Crunchyroll and Funimation.

Steve can be found on Twitter if you want to read his World’s End Harem livetweets. Otherwise, catch him chatting about trash and treasure alike on This Week in Anime.