Review: Gen:Lock “Touch What’s in Front of You”

Overview (Spoilers Below):

As the Twilight ravages New York, Chase and the members of gen:LOCK face a fatal decision that could finally seal humanity’s fate.

Our Take:

We’ve finally reached the end of Gen: Lock’s sophomore season, and just like before, it’s looking to end it off with a high-stakes showdown. The journey towards the finale has been an interesting one for me, with plenty of twists and turns that got me invested in the season despite its flaws. Now, we see that that journey is coming to a close, with Chase and his team making their final stand against the Union’s secret weapon. No, I’m not talking about vampires and werewolves. I’m talking about the nanotech cloud that’s eating people alive. Seriously, they have got to change that name.

This episode concludes the second season on an underwhelming and messy note by offering the same flaws as the previous chapters, including its pacing and complexity. First off, you may have noticed that Kōichi Yamadera’s name remains in the opening credits sequence, even though his character, Kazu, was killed off a couple of episodes ago. This tiny flaw managed to become a massive bothersome to me since Kazu didn’t make a single appearance in the finale. What’s the point in putting the actor’s name if they do not include the character at all?

The episode also sees the other members of gen:LOCK getting Flow powers of their own, including Yaz and Val. So we can assume that they’ll be using the Flow instead of their mechs if they move forward with a third season. Seeing Cammie with a Flow upgrade in last week’s episode was a refreshing treat that proved her worth as an asset to the team’s victory. This episode further showcased Cammie’s powers while also giving Yaz and Val a taste of the Flow abilities. The only good thing about this scenario was when Cammie and the others merged to create a Flow mech to defeat the Twilight-merged monstrosity. The transformation sequence remarkably resembled something from an anime regarding its animation style.

The other thing that left me feeling mixed was the fates of Colonel Raquel Marin and Brother Tate. Raquel was killed off by Sinclair during his escape from the Polity, while Brother Tate got crushed like an insect by the Twilight beast. While it did represent some potential changes to the war, the execution toward those scenes felt unrewarding to me, especially Colonel Marin. This might be due to its eight-episode limitation or the fact that I didn’t care for the characters as I did for the gen:LOCK team. Whatever the case may be, I felt nothing but emptiness when I watched these characters meet their doom. However, I did find it funny that Brother Tate was killed by his own creation.

Overall, “Touch What’s in Front of You” is a subpar finale that eased the characters’ traumatic arcs, especially Chase, and possibly ended the war. A couple of moments helped me get through the second season’s conclusion, such as its themes and suitable animation. Despite its good intentions, it’s a finale that may or may not be worth touching again for a while. The second season was an intriguing yet complicated journey that I will go over in my season review soon. Let’s hope I have the right energy to explain specific details from my perspective.