[DreamSword]

Episode 25: Heroic Spirits

Man, they really went all out with this final battle.

It's got practically everything people could want out of a final battle. The hero becoming more powerful than he's ever been, a final opponent being taken down by someone in their weakest state, over the top and impossible acrobatics, obvious greenscreen effects, and an emotional reuniting of various characters.

And, yeah, I'd be lying if I said that none of it at all worked for me. I was practically all in on this from beginning to end. The hype was real, despite certain aspects being outright impossible(where the heck did Kaoru's' parents come from??).

But that being said, I think I still have a couple of small critiques to give when it comes to this whole thing.

I think it would've been much more emotionally satisfying to me had it been Garo and Zero both who took down Kiba at the end, with them striking the pose that Kaoru painted of the two working together earlier in the show. And while I get the idea behind Koga's' "I'm not alone!" speech, rather than citing the legacy of Garo, I think him citing the friends he's made along his journey would've been alot better and a way to symbolize the entire cast coming together to overcome all of the chaos that the past 100 days have brought into their lives.

Again though, these are just small critiques that I think would've made something that was already great that much better for my personal tastes. If you wanna know my personal favorite touch of the finale, it's actually that we never actually get to see the final page of the picture book that Kaoru painted herself. I felt that was a really good move!

All in all it's a really well done payoff in terms of both emotion and action, and you can tell everyone involved gave it their all. Had everything ended here, I'd've been incredibly satisfied overall. We're not quite done with this show yet though, as in usual GARO fashion(unless you're Vanishing Line), we still have an epilogue special and a movie to get through! The extra episodes have been some of the most interesting bits of GARO media to me so far, so I'm very excited to see what's done with the original tomorrow!