A fitting conclusion (sort of) for the show’s cutenessIn our final episode, it seems that the Salamander bits did what they were meant to do. Iris’s family is no longer in debt so she won’t be forced to marry a Dilly, Sarasa has profited greatly from her share, business is booming, everything looks up. That’s when she gets a letter that apparently the company her parents owned before their untimely death is doing well, and wants her back as the proper heiress. It’s a huge opportunity, but it’s framed so that it seems like it would mean leaving the village and her current little shop behind.
I give the show credit in that it handles Lorea really well here. She’s clearly deeply broken up and terrified that Sarasa is going to leave her, but she also tries to keep that bottled up rather than whining. You can tell, and a lot of it is down to her exact animations and voice performance to convey that she’s not actually comfortable and is instead putting on a brave face.
Sarasa visits everyone around the village, who mostly have a lot to say about how awesome she is, and how they’re welcoming her as a member of the community. She then pays a visit to the company and finds that the interim management has been good people, and that her time in the orphanage was mostly due not to being truly abandoned but to them not having the time or resources to take care of a little kid while also saving a company on the rocks after that murderous highway robbery incident, and that they hoped she’d be better cared for there. Which, frankly, seems to have been the case given what Sarasa has achieved in the intervening seven years.
Torn on what to do, she pays a visit to her mentor, who talks some sense into her while fencing, because why not? She tells Sarasa, essentially, that if she wants to make people happy she has to be one of those people. Thus, as the shop is overwhelmed by requests that Lorea, Kate, and Iris struggle to handle, Sarasa comes home, with her matters decided and resolved, leaving her parents’ company in good hands while establishing a working relationship, rather than departing to take over management there. The gang is all together, the village is thriving, profit is made, and the ending song plays us out for the last time.
I’ll be honest, this show is fluff… but sometimes fluff is what you want or need, and in that case I could think of many worse shows than this one to spend your time with. I don’t think it will win any awards, or really be long remembered by myself or by others, but at the same time, I don’t feel like I wasted my time here. It’s sort of in the same category as Flying Witch or Helpful Fox Senko-san in being this low-impact and rather laid-back entertainment that doesn’t go too heavy on the action or the drama or even the comedy, but just sort of lets you chill. There are many works like that, and this one is the one that resulted from putting four parts Atelier and one part Spice and Wolf in a blender. Take from that what you will.