takt op. Destiny

Episode 12

Given how messy the back half of takt op. Destiny has been, I tried to keep my expectations for this finale in check. Going into "TAKT -Hope-", I was mostly just hoping for an ending that could deliver on the action scenes and wrap up what little plot we had left in a decent manner. Thankfully, I think the show succeeded here…except for the very end. We'll get to that in a moment, though.

Honestly, there isn't a whole lot to recap so far as the story goes, because not much really happens in this episode outside of the obligatory fight scene and exposition dump that it needed to provide in order to earn the bare minimum of closure. Since TAKT and Destiny's character arcs were resolved weeks ago, all that's left is to tie up the last loose ends of the plot: Orpheus and Sagan. A good chunk of "TAKT -Hope-" is devoted to Destiny's showdown against Oprheus, and it is pretty good, visually speaking. Orpheus is a villain that really is all style and no substance, so it is difficult to care a whole lot about the battle, since Destiny's victory is never in question, but it's fun to watch, and the music keeps things feeling just urgent enough. That's good, too, because all of the girls' dialogue is chock full of cliché anime platitudes about “fighting for what you believe in” and whatnot, so the battle isn't winning any awards for its deep, thematic resonance.

The burden of theme lies squarely on the shoulders of TAKT's confrontation with Sagan, and this is where the finale stumbles the most, aside from maybe it's very last shot. For one, Sagan has been impaled by the D2 crystals in a manner that I can only describe as an extremely goofy looking horizontal crucifixion, so it's almost impossible to take his Final Villain Monologue seriously. It doesn't help that his actual motivation is quite pedestrian: He got all traumatized in the original D2 war over the endless sacrifices that his soldiers and Musicarts made, so he resolved to end the D2 conflict once and for all by…sacrificing the entire continent of North America to the monsters in order to protect the rest of the world, I guess?

The somewhat impressionistic direction used to frame Sagan's flashbacks is kind of cool, but it isn't enough to paper over how bland and underwhelming Sagan's whole deal is. TAKT doesn't even have to exert any effort to defeat him either, which really takes away from the threat that he and Orpheus posed here at the very end of things. It's not terrible, and I've seen anime outright shit the bed in their last few minutes, so it could be worse. I just don't think any TV show in the history of the medium has wanted “It could have been worse, maybe?” to be the pull quote on the back of its DVD box.

Then there's the ending ending. The part where Destiny gives up her life to save TAKT's is sweet, and I don't have any issues with that; the show foreshadowed it to hell and back, after all. No, my issue lies with the reveal that, after Destiny un-lifed herself and left her…essence, I guess, in that pendant, it got passed along to Anna. While TAKT recovers from his grievous injuries at the Symphonica, the very final shot of the series reveals that Anna is a Musicart now too, somehow.

I…just…what? Putting aside all of the lingering questions about how Anna was able to manage such a transformation in so short a time, or how she has retained her personality and memories despite everything we've learned about Musicarts, this whole reveal just doesn't work at all, dramatically. To have a character make such a drastic, life-altering decision off-screen is bad enough, but it also fails because of how Anna has gotten the least amount of development out of any of the main characters all season. Between this and the absurd out-of-nowhere kiss from last week, a whole lot of these recent story developments feel like kinds the rushed, studio-mandated choices that only exist to awkwardly promote some other, related IP. I just can't figure out why takt op. Destiny would do that…

Ah. That's right. I never begrudged takt op. Destiny for being a glorified commercial for a waifu-collecting mobile game, but it sucks that the series had to show its most crass and commercial face right as the curtains closed. Maybe the takt op. game is really good? Maybe it answers all of my lingering questions and tells a cool story in its own right? I couldn't tell you, since the game isn't out in the U.S. yet, but I sure hope that's true. If not, we'll just have to look back fondly on the brightest moments from takt op. Destiny and daydream about the anime that it could have been.

Rating:

takt op. Destiny is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.

James is a writer with many thoughts and feelings about anime and other pop-culture, which can also be found on Twitter, his blog, and his podcast.