[DreamSword]

Episode 24: Promised Land

Please forgive the drop in quality when it comes to the screenshots used here. I had to swap to a different source for this episode and I didn't care enough to look for a better quality one.

Now, I know this might come as a total shock to you all.

But the ending of Blassreiter is, infact, complete garbage. To the point that even it kinda just gives up on itself.

Look, let's just get into the events here. When it comes to the bombing of Germany, there's nothing of substance to really speak of. Everyone in Zwolf ends up dying to prevent the US from nuking the entire country, the end.

During this it's revealed that Mei Fong is a clone and that somehow, Joseph's' blood was key to completing the Blassreiter project, despite the fact that the project was already in full swing way before Joseph and Sasha even met. Heck, why not say Xargin's' blood was used? It'd make way more sense.

Speaking of Xargin, he and Joseph are busy having their final battle, all the while pretentiously quoting scripture at each other, and no matter how hard he tries, Joseph seems to be no match for all powerful Xargin, and it's here that I absolutely lost it due to what happens as Joseph lay dormant, presumably dying. You are not ready for this.

Gerd and Hermann appear from the afterlife to give Joseph a hand! They proceed to possess Joseph's' body, allowing Joseph to take on their forms and use their weapons. But even this isn't enough to beat Xargin, but thankfully the two managed to stall for an hour so that way the anti-nanomachines are now fully active within Joseph's' body. And rather than outright kill Joseph then and there it gives him yet another power-up.

But it doesn't matter! Joseph still loses anyway! Because of course we can't have anyone even hope to match Xargin, who gained all of this immense power by... anyway! I hate this entire thing because all it serves to do is validate Xargin's' nihilistic viewpoint, while still somehow managing to contradict itself. Like, we have this afterlife sequence flying in the face of one of the anime's' major themes, for starters. That being that God is never there for you(real nice by the way, thanks Blassreiter).

And ontop of that, we have Joseph preaching an optimist viewpoint only to get slapped down with ease, and Xargin's' viewpoint that death is the only thing that holds any value in life is made completely true when, as Joseph lay dying, the anti-nanomachines spread out thus taking out the Amalgam hoard, and Xargin with it. I think it's very telling that Xargin all but outright proclaims that he's won as his body begins to disintegrate. I honest to goodness have zero idea what this show is trying to say or do at this point and frankly, I've stopped caring. It's all trite regardless.

We then flash forward to five years later, where Amanda and Malek now work together in the New XAT, and just... look, I'll just straight up say what happens.

Amanda is visited by the spirits of her "friends" congratulating her on a job well done and all of them urging her to continue to carry a torch of hope for the world to come. So you might be thinking "Oh, so the show is airing on the side of optimism afterall" right?

Exceeeppt.

These are literally just holograms, and even if they weren't, what in the heck would people like Wolf, Victor, and XARGIN of all people even come close to caring about anything that Amanda has to say or do? It's so cheap, so tacked on, and so out of tone with the rest of the show that it's blatantly just there to have a forced "happy" ending at the end of all of this. Undeserved, unearned, and completely badly done.

Now, at the end of all of this, you might be expecting me to say that no one should watch this and to avoid the show at all costs, but no, actually.

Infact, I dare say I encourage someone, anyone out there to go through this mess and try telling me I missed something vital, that this show is infact way smarter than I am, and that everything it does is some subtle, brilliantly woven masterpiece. Because at the end of the day, I honestly can not tell what in the HELL this crap was trying to accomplish, if anything. It really makes me wonder: Just what sort of headspace were all four writers in when making this?

Final thoughts post will come later today, because frankly I just wanna be done with this piece of filth already.