English Dub Review: URAHARA “Goodbye Parfait”

“What could we make with beads that would be a natural enemy to a giant shrimp?”

Overview (Spoilers Below):

As the final battle draws near, the girls construct a gigantic kitty out of beads with some help from Misa. Luckily, Ebifurya seems to possess almost no fighting skills, and quickly gives up.

Once Ebifurya has surrendered, the gang decides to destroy the giant parfait in the sky, leaving their fantasy world and returning things to how they were before the Scooper invasion (except for all the misplaced buildings and landmarks). Rito, Mari, and Kotoko bid a heartfelt goodbye to Misa and the Scoopers, vowing to work hard to rebuild their hometown.

Our Take:

One of my favorite things about the finale is how Misa became more central to the plot. When she was first introduced, she seemed like a cute sidekick without much depth to her, but giving her a solid storyline and letting her grow in her creativity was definitely a good choice. In fact, Misa’s arc is a great way to describe the main point of the series itself: that copying work we like isn’t necessarily a bad thing since it can lead to the confidence to branch out into our own original creations. In these 11 episodes, our heroines learn to take control of their own creativity while helping Misa discover hers.

On the negative side, the final boss battle wasn’t as epic as I hoped it would be. Rather than working together to battle the shrimp, the girls simply cheered on the giant cat and watched as it did the grunt work. Sure, one might say that they did their part by creating it, but I still wanted to see Mari fire her cannon one last time.

While the final episode of URAHARA didn’t rise above my expectations in any way, it didn’t sink too far below them, either. Goodbye Parfait is a fitting conclusion to a mediocre show that never quite had the animation quality or plot required to hold viewer’s attention. I’ll look back on it as a series that had great potential (I still love URAHARA’s colorful art design and how it explored the concept of originality), but never managed to get seriously good.

Score
6.5/10