Okay, show, I shall grant you this: I did not see this one coming.
So, we catch up in… um… the real world. Or at least in live action, as Kafu provides a voice over for finding her spirit adrift in this realm where she exists as the digital singer KAF, mulling over the experience of existing everywhere and yet not being sure that she exists. This eventually causes her to drift to a concert by VWP – the real world group consisting of at least versions of these characters, where she experiences the songs of her other self and reaches important epiphanies about what she really wanted to achieve.
It needs to be stressed, this is a head trip of an episode up to the concert, but… actually it’s dang strong. I’m not freely impressed by metafiction and actually think it’s more often than not a lazy cop-out, but when it’s applied smartly like in this episode or the ending of SSSS Gridman? It can, legitimately be a major game-changer.
I think part of why this works is that the leadup, which is a fair bit of running time, provides more of an earnest emotional experience than, frankly, most of the show so far. It’s esoteric, but you’re still brought to relate to it, even more than the over-the-top suffering that had permeated Kamitsubaki City thus far.
The other part is that, at the concert, we get answers and some direction for the show’s finale.
Specifically, the emotions of the crowd are used as power (remember that being a plot point? Fragment Energy?) for Sophia the Witch to… not exactly manifest, but make her presence known. It calls out the characters we know, albeit rendered per their stage hologram outfits and designs, and they’re able to talk with her. Sophia, glowing ball of light that she is, says that Kafu’s song reached her and basically let her know that the whole reset plan was wrong, and reveals that their world was a simulated universe she made, and that Maxwell is a “soulless” entity likened to a computer virus that attacked it. She offers to let the girls continue to exist (in infomorph form though they are) in the Live Action world that represents “another possibility”, or to send them back to their home for their final chance. No more Phenomenon revivals, no more second chances – beat Maxwell and give their home dimension a future or don’t.
Led by Kafu, who has realized that she wanted to live and hold out for hope, decide to run it back one last time, thus setting up our final two episodes.
There is a lot I could say about this, but I will hold most of it for now, since we’re so close to the end. I will say this much: a good ending can’t save a truly bad show. It didn’t work for Revisions no matter how much it tried… but I don’t think Kamitsubaki City Under Construction has been a truly bad show at any point. It has sort of bottomed out, up until now, and niche and mediocre; watchable but uninspired. To that end, there is a lot that a truly strong finish could do for it. And, as thematically appropriate as it may be to say this, I now have some hope that it might actually deliver.