Go to Togetsu
Get there, and nothing more yet
It is quite cold there
In a show with many episodes that don’t achieve a whole lot, the penultimate episode of Scarlet Nexus may take the cake for uselessness. By the end of last episode, we had the idea that both groups were going to be going to Togetsu. This episode, they talk about going to Togetsu, resolve to go to Togetsu, and finally show up at Togetsu. Then the episode cuts before they get to the inside of Togetsu.
There is some actual meat to the episode, on Kasane’s side. In her scene about talking about going to Togetsu, we get that one of her friends is from there and really doesn’t want to go back, and that they seem to be deeply tied to the brain research that’s being done. On the way, her group has a little skirmish with an Ice Other, and at the gates they’re greeted rather coldly: the friend who didn’t want to go back ditches, and the weird hooded Togetsu nuns believe that Kasane is their stolen Chosen One. When she doesn’t want to go in alone, they attack, subduing her after its revealed that one of her other friends is some sort of Togetsu clone.
On Yuito’s side he just sort of walks up, meets some robe guys just outside Togetsu, and gets invited in with his group. Really, he got the premium welcome, I think if they’d offered the rest of Kasane’s team some tea and a spot to warm up, she might have been a little more accommodating, or at least gullible.
Aside from that, there was one scene with Karen and Fubuki reminiscing about Fubuki’s Other-ized fiancee, followed by a scene where an angsting Naomi encounters a voice offering to be her friend, presumably said fiancee. So, I guess that’s setup for later.
The thing is… we’re basically out of later. All indications are that Scarlet Nexus is going to be a twelve-episode show, meaning it has only the finale left to resolve (let’s count off)… 1) The Red Strings, and what that means for Kasane and Yuito; 2) Kunad Gate, including the possible need to kill Yuito; 3) Suoh’s Other-metamorphosis research; 4) Seiran’s human brain research; 5) What the deal is with Yuito’s past and his memories of Kasane; 6) What the deal is with Yuito’s past and having been a dud; 7) What’s going to happen with Naomi and Fubuki’s fiancee; 8) What plan or endgame Karen actually had; 9) Some sort of payoff for Karen in the future copying Kasane’s power; 10) Some insight into Togetsu so we know what’s going on with the clone and the defector; 11) Some sort of resolution of Yuito’s conflict with his family and the truth of the nation; 12) Maybe, if there’s time, some real information on the source and nature of the Others, who have been discussed as a mystery enough that the show seems to want you to want it solved.
With good pacing it would have been extremely difficult to get all those balls in the air and resolve them in a mere twelve episodes. Even in twenty-four episodes, it would have been rough (though possible) to run so many interconnected plots. The kind of mess Scarlet Nexus is making is more reminiscent of what something like Eureka Seven does in fifty episodes than it is the kind of plot you can set up, go through, and pay off in a single season. Add in the poor pacing and heavy waste that makes these episodes feel like brief fragments rather than full chapters of a story, and you have a recipe for disaster.
We’ll see next week how they handle it, but I for one am thinking that it may have been a mistake to squeeze a 60-hour JRPG into a 5-hour Anime. True, there aren’t going to be 60 full hours of plot in a game, but there’s probably going to be more than five.