WARNING: OP Boss incoming!!

“7th Day: Saturday of Variances”

You’ve done it again anime….you’ve done it again.  As things are winding down to the finale, our party is put into a fiercely intense battle with the last Septentrione, Benetnasch.  Unfortunately for the crew, ace summoner Hibiki is still out of commission thanks to the previous Septentrione battle.  Another event to dampen the mood for our heroes is the fact that they all received dead-face clips prior to the battle.  Upon facing the turnip-shaped boss, everyone realizes that the thing is OP as hell.  Meanwhile, Hibiki continues to sleep and dreams about his past interactions with his parents and Daichi.  These scenes took up quite a bit of time and emphasized how important Daichi was to Hibiki as a childhood friend, which was a good thing, as it helped me feel that Daichi wasn’t as useless as a character.  Anywho, the battle rages on and Benetnasch uses a cheap ability to temporarily remove all of the demons on the field.  Fumi manages to disrupt the ability with her Trumpeter demon, but is spotted by the Septentrione and is subsequently annihilated.  The rest of the party then dies one-by-one thanks to a ton of exploding ice cream cones.

Man, that’s a true friend.

Before Daichi and Io face their demise, Hibiki and his demons manage to protect them.  After Hibiki’s demons fall to the turnip boss, he and Hotsuin use their magical powers to hold off a powerful attack.  While things seem grim, Daichi freaks out and manages to summon Black Frost….but calls it Jack Frost.  In this anime, Frost appears to be a truly powerful demon, which I feel is very fitting (he’s one of my favorite demons in the SMT series XD).  Thankfully, Daichi finally has his epic moment of power with Black Frost and helps in finishing off the Septentrione.  The remaining party members begin to grieve as their victory came at the cost of so many others.  Hibiki loses it and challenges Hotsuin, who retaliates with death threats before being stopped by Alcor.

I’m glad Daichi got such an awesome demon.

This episode had three major events to me: the annihilation of most of our party, the flash backs of Hibiki, and Daichi’s moment of honor.  Although I was initially pissed about the many deaths, I must say that it was almost necessary to emphasize Hibiki’s hope for the ending, which is a reset to the day before humanity’s trial.  Due to Daichi’s strong role in today’s episode, I’m quite certain that the anime is going with something similar to his ending in the game.  Such an ending would nullify the dark theme of this series thus far, but would lead to a happy ending.  In all honesty, I would be fine with this ending as I truly liked the fallen party members and would be happy to see them back alive.  Although this ending appears to be most plausible, the anime can pull a quick turn and come up with something completely different from the game’s endings.  The anime series has differentiated itself from the game counterpart in many ways, so I wouldn’t be too surprised.  Well, I hope you guys aren’t too disappointed about the many deaths in this episode.  Until next week, “Let’s survive.” (Unlike Airi, Jungo, Fumi, Hinako, and all the others)

These two will not be forgotten… T_T