selector infected WIXOSS Ep. 12: Oh look, it’s the “finale” episode

I-I know we’ve had our differences, WIXOSS, but let’s just end on a bang, okay? C’mon, truce?

– Hitoe had managed to recover some of her memories of her friends a while ago. Looks like you don’t even need to play the card game after all. It looks like you just have to put a little effort into your life. Nevertheless, she keeps playing the game anyway, ’cause she wants to be Jesus too! Well, if Jesus was singly obsessed with the fates of sad, little girls.

– That’s the hilarious bit, though. Ruuko at least had the bright idea of making her wish comprehensive enough that it would free all of the LRIGs. Not Hitoe, though. She just wanted to free Yuzuki! Either she’s apathetic enough not to want to free any of the other girls, or she’s dumb enough not to realize she could free them as well. Hm, I’m going to have to go with “dumb enough.”

– Aw, isn’t it heartwarming, you guys? Hitoe’s just happy to be in a world where people even care about her! Therefore, she says, “To me, there’s no other wish I want granted besides that.” Hmmm… hmmmmmmmmm… but y’know, she’s not the main character, so she’s not allowed to be heroic. She can only be dense, and thus say cute but nevertheless dense things.

– Seeing this, Ruuko is more resolved than ever to get her better wish granted. So it’s also kind of funny in a way. I totally hear you Hitoe, but you’re kinda simple-minded, so I’m going to beat you. Of course, it’s better that Ruuko wins anyway, because if we’re going to be realistic, Hitoe’s not the sort of person to win the whole thing, y’know? But no one’s going to actually say that out loud.

– Drink a shot every time you hear the word ‘tomodachi.’

– It’s apparently so important for the girls to get dumplings afterwards that the anime has to mention it twice in quick succession. Hm. Must be some killer dumplings.

– Finally, the battle between Ruuko and Iona commences. Ruuko notes that the battlefield she’s in is so cold and lonely… like Iona’s heart. Oooooh. Too bad Iona is a woefully underdeveloped villain, so there isn’t even an emotional underpinning to this scene. That’s the thing with this entire anime. It’s so goddamn shallow.

– This battle is somehow unlike other battles, Ruuko observes. This battle is so not fun and exciting. Maybe ’cause your friends’ fates are on the line, and therefore, the pressure makes it unfun? But nah, WIXOSS wants to make it seem as though there’s something sinister about battling Iona and Ulith. I guess the sex angle didn’t really pan out after all, unless they’re doing it in a sensory deprivation chamber.

– Nevertheless, Ulith finds that she’s no match for Tama: “She’s in a league of her own!” Of course, I wonder why Tama has managed to become so strong, but ultimately, the details of the card game itself is unimportant. The game itself is just a means to some end, i.e. the drama of the story. Unfortunately, the drama of the story kind of sucks, so you’re kind of left wanting. This final battle should be an externalization of the conflict between these two characters, but as I’ve already stated, Iona has been a terrible villain. As a result, all you’re left with is Ruuko’s determination. Unlike fans of the anime, however, I’m not convinced that I should care about the fates of her friends whatsoever. The drama is thus kind of flat. There’s no push and pull between the two sides. There’s just Ruuko, and the rest doesn’t matter.

– In the middle of it all, Mayu tries to turn Tama against Ruuko by claiming that Ruuko only cares about her friends. Ruuko and Tama totally won’t be tomodachis who’ll get dumplings afterwards! Oh, that is truly horrible. Anyway, it takes two to tango, and if your LRIG refuses to agree to the wish with you, then you’re shit out of luck.

– You’re probably wondering why Mayu is intervening, but if she oversees this whole crappy game, it probably wouldn’t do her any good if Ruuko frees all of the other LRIGs, huh? Hey, a woman’s gotta think about her job security.

– So after the conversation ends, the battle rages on.  All we see, however, is literally black and white splotches flying around a dark scene. The anime even bothers to point it out, too: “The white and black are colliding with each other.” Thanks, Hitoe, for that wonderful observation that I couldn’t possibly see for myself.

– They battle so hard, the battlefield crumbles around them, sticking our two combatants back into the real world. What does this even mean, though? What’s the thematic significance? Oh right, it gives Ruuko the opportunity to gaze at the skyline of her city and remark on how beautiful it is. Hearing Ruuko, Tama is convinced that Ruuko intends to become an LRIG for her friends’ sake, and thus, she’ll ditch Tama forever!

– As a result, WIXOSS is going to be totally different from that other anime, i.e. Ruuko is not going to get her chance to be a Jesus figure. Aw hell no, not if Tama has anything to say about it!

– Meanwhile, Iona is watching Ruuko this entire time and gripping her left breast. Uh, okay…?

– Ruuko tries to do the oath with Tama, but Tama doesn’t tell her exactly what to say.

– The battle continues on for just a bit longer. Don’t worry, it’ll end soon. Even so, the effects of the battle are now manifesting itself in the real world. The entire skyscraper they’re in is trembling and falling apart under the weight of, uh, a card game.

Meanwhile, we see Hanayo-as-Yuzuki stare up in the sky and cry. For what? We just don’t know! But hell if this isn’t totally emotional and meaningful! We’re sitting here wondering why card game would leak out into the real world, what the card game even means to the real world, etc., but we’re totally missing the fact that Hanayo-as-Yuzuki is now crying uncontrollably, and that’s so saaaaaaad.

– Ruuko wins as if it was ever in doubt. Unfortunately, since the oath was never completed, her wish ain’t coming true. Ruuko only now realizes she’s been screwed over by her own LRIG. So uh, I guess Iona wins by default?

– Apparently, Iona had already won enough battles, but the conditions just weren’t right for her wish to come true. What conditions? The “watch a poor girl’s dreams get crushed in front of you” condition?

– Well, Ruuko can’t do anything now but watch as Iona becomes an Eternal Girl, which means… which means what, exactly?

– As expected, Ulith is now Iona, but she just walks off without us even knowing what she aims to do. Meanwhile, Tama has disappeared as Ruuko’s LRIG, replaced by none other than Iona herself.

Wow! What a… shitty twist. People are saying that Iona wished to become Ruuko’s LRIG or something to that effect, but I thought the selectors become the LRIG (which is what we got), and instead, the LRIG gets to fulfill the former selector’s wish (which is what we saw with Hanayo). So how can it be that Iona’s wish is to become Ruuko’s LRIG? Isn’t her wish about to be carried out by Ulith?

– But yeah, that’s it. That’s actually it. The series ends here with nothing fucking resolved. Oh, I guess there’s one more asspull before we’re done for good: Ruuko’s grandmother ends up saying the exact same thing as Tama: “[I want] to be with Ru-chan.” Boy, who wants to guess what this means!

– But I have a score to settle, so wait here…

…

We called a truce, WIXOSS! We agreed to end on a bang! Okay, okay… You’re right, I have been sandbagging this entire episode, but c’mon baby, you have to admit this episode was kinda stupid… Wait, what are you doing? No….

Just let yourself die gracefully. Nobody has to know you ever existed! C’mon, WIXOSS, be reasonable! A new identity won’t change anything!

Oh yeah, get jealous of my MS Paint skills.

Welp.

Final thoughts:
Even in a “to be continued…” story, most tales would have the decency to wrap at least one major plot point up. At least one. Not WIXOSS though, oh no… why did Ruuko have all those freaky dreams at the start of the series? Why, you just gotta watch the second season! What does Ulith-as-Iona intend to do now? Why, you just gotta watch the second season! Why does the game even exist and what’s its purpose? Why, you just gotta watch the second season! What was Tama like before she became an LRIG? Why… why aren’t you going to watch the second season? Instead, all we get is that Ruuko’s wish doesn’t come true. That’s the ending? That’s your fucking ending? Seriously, it’s like Okada went, “Oh, they think I’m copying that other anime, but I’m going to totally subvert the expected ending by… not delivering an ending whatsoever!” That’s not smart, though. That’s just bad writing. I don’t personally care that the story is to be continued, but like I’ve said, you have to resolve something. Otherwise, the first season is incomplete, which is even worse than a failure. You can argue that the story was always intended to take two full seasons to cover, but hell, that doesn’t even cut it. You think there isn’t a sense of finality in each book of a long-running book series?

In the end, WIXOSS sucked through and through. The girls were cliche both in personalities and their character development. Okada did nothing but throw the big book of anime tropes at us. Tomodachis! Brother-sister incest! Girls are totally mean and they bully other poor girls! To top it all off, none of the characters displayed any sort of intelligence throughout the entire series. I still can’t get it out of my mind that Akira stuck her leg up at one point in the story to bar our heroines from leaving, and this was enough to force Yuzuki to agree to a battle she never wanted to have. And then at another point in the story, Akira sicced her loyal fans on our heroine, forcing them to run and hide during school. How did people watch that episode and not completely laugh their asses off at how stupid WIXOSS was? The best part is, the anime doesn’t even deliver on the emotional front. How am I supposed to feel sad for a girl who’s too inept to make friends on her own that she has to rely on a card game? How am I supposed to feel sad for a girl whose only wish is to use the magical powers of the card game to trick her brother into loving her? Whether or not you condone incest, it’s fucked up to make someone else fall in love with you. Yo, I want to watch people with real problems, not a bunch of pathetic or morally bankrupt characters.

In the end, there are no all-important themes to explore or even a smugly self-righteous message to relay. It’s just a bunch of stupid girls playing a stupid game for their stupid, selfish reasons. In the end, one girl decided to be climb herself out of the primoridial ooze and be selfless, but she ends up getting stupidly screwed in the end because subversion! And, y’know, we need a second season to push this stupid card game some more. The end.