Episode Synopsis:
Concrete Revolutio rockets towards its conclusion in what is apparently the penultimate episode (I wasn’t expecting the seasons to be so uneven).
Having discovered Master Ultima’s plan to abuse the regenerative properties of non-human super-creatures by essentially burning them for fuel, Emi brings her ocean-dwelling yokai to bear against his submersible techno-city and murders him. She then arranges for Jiro to be brought to the city. Kikko and Fuurouta, on Jiro’s tail, discover that Jiro was tipped off to what was going on by the Ad Agency Lady. After a visit to her, they are subsequently located by the Megasshin pair, who are ostensibly working with the government forces, but are harboring Raito because they sense something is amiss. When Earth-chan crash-lands nearby with said government forces on her tail, plus Jaguar and two new super-robots of his design, things start getting real dark, real fast.
Episode Review:
Sooo… yikes.
As usual, there’s a lot going on here. Let’s start from the top.
On the one hand, I appreciate that pretty much no fight in this show is drawn out to the point that the physical or even tactical abilities of the characters take the focus away from the ideological conflicts. All the time that could have been used to do that, of course, is frantically being used to progress the show’s myriad plotlines. On the other hand, though, Emi’s fight with Master Ultima did feel kind of anti-climactic. He’s been this distant presence for so long, pulling the strings, that I was actually expecting him to be the final boss, so to speak.
Where the show appears to be going instead is to have Jiro himself be the final boss for most of the rest of the cast. His slaying of the old Grosse Augen dude from episode one is no less than a declaration of war against human civilization, but, once you decide that you aren’t human, that you owe no allegiance to humanity’s corrupt society, and that the survival of humanity is mutually exclusive to the survival of the supernatural realm presided over by your childhood fiancée, I guess you gotta do what you gotta do.
I’m not really sure what was going on with all of the pondering the nature of reality in this episode. Ad Agency Lady posits that superhumans are a dream that could vanish overnight, which I almost missed for trying to read the song subtitles and for still being hung up on Jaguar and Professor Hitoyoshi talking about a Jiro-is-a-gateway-to-a-parallel-universe theory – which honestly feels a little too much like Fullmetal Alchemist (2003) than I expected out of a show raiding tropes from 1975 (though there may be precedent from the era that I don’t know about). I will also add that Jaguar is awfully optimistic about the whole nuclear power thing.

I do hope that the last remaining episode is going to be enough to tie everything up – it does seem like we’ve still got quite a bit left to deal with. How did Judas get here in the combine-y jet thing? What roles do Psy-Kicker and his unassuming classmate have yet to play? I’m especially interested to see what Kikko and Emi do about the split-devil-queen-personality-tiger-yokai… thing… now that Fuurouta’s let the metaphorical cat out of the bag (and also after having seen it referenced in a recent episode). I’m also curious if we’re going to get any more about how Jaguar fits into this, but, for that, I’m not gonna hold my breath.
Episode Summary:
A ghost, a time traveler, a bunch of other jerks, and the not-quite-princess of the devil realm are about to throw down with a magical shisa swordswoman, the queen of an extinct race of bug people, the princess of all yokai, and the personification of the atomic bomb.
Let’s ROCK.
0 comments on “Rolling Review – Concrete Revolutio: The Last Song (23)”