Ending Thoughts: Urahara

Synopsis

This is the tale of three high school girls that have a shop of their own focused on fashion and cute items. But this is no tale of cute things and fashion as one day the girl’s town ends up being invaded by aliens who seek to take away earth’s different cultures and famous monuments. When’s the girls’ district culture gets threatened, they make the decision to stand up and fight and even get the ability to do so from an artefact given to them by a pair of escapees of the aliens.

General Thoughts

The plot is slow, the characters could have used little more development along with the villains, the way that the series tackled on the subjects of culture, friendship and creativity is highly commendable. With the way that the art and animation presented itself in the beginning, from its pastel colors to its magazine like designs, you wouldn’t expect the route that the series would take, especially with a premise that would not appeal to most audiences.

It’s fascinating to see on how the plot works around the different characters and how it goes about their different stories. The thing is though, not all of the characters worked out all that well and thus resulted in a lot of characters being rather predictable for the most part, especially on the part of the villains. Still, once it reaches the climactic portion of the series though, it takes for a rather unexpected and twisted turn of events.

Looking at the bigger picture of the entire thing, it’s really towards the second half of the series that you find quite a few surprises with not just the plot but the way the characters react to certain situations. To be fair though, one of the characters ended up as having a rather shallow character arc. Another thing to note for the series is how creative the series in terms of its monsters and action scenes though the amount of clichés leave quite a bit of disappointment.

Ending Thoughts

Wacky, that is the best way to summarize the final episode after the build-up of the previous episodes. In addition to this, the final message of the episode left a rather disappointing note for the series. While there is nothing wrong over the creativity message itself, the general approach of the episode didn’t leave much of a final impression for the series. The portrayal of the villain also didn’t help things.

Really, a gigantic shrimp makes for a less than intimidating given how creative the previous monsters were and the whole chase scene while colorful and fun, was rather cliche in hindsight. Add to the whole power friendship cliche to defeat the final boss, and we basically have a downfall for the plot. But at least the art remains consistent in its appeal and had its good moments in the end.

Overall, there was quite a bit of cliches, wacky moments and not all that great of a final message but it still had a good hold on some emotional moments, kept its visual appeal and basically could have been done better given the build-up of the previous episodes.

Conclusion

Looking at the bigger picture of the series, it seems that the series ended up as a bit of a mess. It had good art and animation with creativity over its monsters and actions scenes though it is rather cliche in terms of general plot start. The overall plot doesn’t work out that great in the beginning but as the series progressed you can see the development in its concepts and characters.

It is disappointing however that with all the build-up, the series ended on the note that it did. The message fell flat and the overall layout just turned out rather wacky and cliche especially with the final boss. What’s more, the fact that it went with the whole friendship is power cliche is a little overdone. Still, the series has it moments and the way that things are handled within the series is what makes it so unique.

Rating: 7/10