English Dub Review: Gnosia “Epilogue; To the World of Stars; End Point and Starting Point”
OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)
Setsu’s sacrifice to keep looping still haunts Yuri, leading them to a last ditch effort to save their friend at any cost.
OUR TAKE
Okay, NOW we’re done, for really realsies. We completed every achievement, beat all the minigames, found all the hidden collectibles, and corrupted the save files with torrented mods. Gaming analogies out of the way, this is definitely a more satisfying and conclusive ending than episode eighteen, since it gives everyone in the cast at least one more chance to be themselves and feel like things are all coming together. Raqio in particular gets a lot of the spotlight for people who aren’t Yuri or Setsu, which certainly feels like they’ve come a long way since just being the catty pot stirrer they were at the start. In fact, pretty much every dangling plot thread gets tossed in the mix, such as Yuri’s existence as an extension of Gnos, the core being of the Gnosia, and Remnan, SQ, and Kukrushka’s shared connection to Manan, who actually shows up as an active character. However, the reason I would rate this slightly lower than the incomplete ending is mainly because stuffing in all of these plot resolutions ends up doing this three episode final arc no favors, and probably could have been better handled if they had added a handful more episodes to add up to a more conventional count of twenty four to twenty six. I suppose it’s better than not having them addressed at all, but I still end up feeling a bit unsatisfied. It was also at least a bit refreshing to see character designs that weren’t one of the same fifteen overdesigned people we’ve been dealing with for twenty episodes now, even if those people don’t have names.
What I do appreciate is that, for the final episode, we bring things full circle, back to the first episode’s meeting about Gnosia. It would have been quite weird if we had the last third or so of the series not have a single full Gnosia meeting, and while we do see Yuri go through all of the loops again and see many small instances and iterations, including ones where they’re in a female body and a Gnosia several times, I’m glad we got to see one last proper meeting that showed just how much Setsu and Yuri have learned across their journeys. As for the ambiguous ending, I’d like to think that Yuri, despite their devil’s bargain with Gnos, was able to live on in the world they saved, but the ambiguity is another slight mark down on that. Still, this was a pretty intriguing and fun series overall, and I may just end up playing the game at some point now too. With all of that done and dusted, we now take our last loop as viewers and review the season as a whole, as well as tally up all the stats from the dozen or so meetings we’ve seen to see who was the most picked as Gnosia!
