And so it had to end, dear readers, this wonderful, quirky, and ultimately pointless series that we somehow all cared for, Koihime Musou. As you may have intuited from the post’s title the finale was underwhelming. It’s almost as if Koihime Musou wanted to flee to the security of the most peddled anime tropes after spending an entire season indulging in sexy fanservice and self-depreciating humor. Ah well. More to read below with a click!
The few, the proud, the girls of Koihime Musou!
A Koihime Musou review is already in the works, so this episode will steer clear of analyzing the show as a whole and instead focus on the finale, which, like a hungover Irishman, briefly shot up wide awake cursing the sun before becoming too dizzy and falling back into a stupor.
The good tidbits first! In a twist that will have feminists worldwide roaring in approval, the show slowly inched towards the revelation that Liu Bei the anime character is a total jackass — a refreshing turn of events considering the unanimous dislike for a male character who materialized out of thin air to ruin a very serviceable all-female cast. Not only that, but let’s be honest, if you’ve read the historical novel you’ll realize the historical Liu Bei is the limp noodle in a pot full of otherwise spicy meatballs, so to speak. Witnessing Guan Yu bitch-slapping his two-timing pretty boy face was cathartic for me in more ways than one.
But why is he a jackass? Well, as surmised, the bandits gathered together an army the second Liu Bei, Guan Yu, and Ma Chao left the fort with their own forces to go help Cao Cao and He Jin in… some endeavor or another, I didn’t fully understand it, and I don’t need to because the true fight lays at home! A home defended by two young adorable girls, one of which is sick with a cold. While Guan Yu argues for a swift return to defend their base, Liu Bei favors abandoning the lot of them and continuing to smooth-talk his way up the Imperial chain of command. Will the strongest Tigress return in time before the brigands ravage the town and commit unnameable atrocities on poor little Zhuge Loliang?
Not on Lili’s watch, bitches!
A six-year-old is always happy to be an accessory to murder.
Right on cue after Guan Yu’s sound thrashing of Liu Bei, the Tigresses we’d met over the twelve episodes return one by one to fight off the bandits, Ma Chao even going so far as to seeing Cao Cao, her sworn enemy, and begging for help. The reunion we’d all been waiting for was finally taking place!
And then it was over.
Whuh? Yup. Twenty seconds of bandit booty booting, Guan Yu screwing up Zhao Yun’s revelation of her identity as the Masked Butterfly, and queue the credits.
I’m usually quick to swing the Cocktease Bat at a show that doesn’t deliver on its promises within a reasonable timeframe. With Koihime Musou however… I can’t figure out if there ever were any promises, save that of sexy girls wielding halberds getting into wacky hijinks. And the timeframe of twelve episodes makes me inclined to cut it a bit of slack.
But then I remember that the show wasted at least 3-4 episodes in side plotlines (Lu Bu/Dong Zhuo and the Wu chicks spring to mind) that held little artistic merit or lasting importance to the show’s already thin continuity. If we’d been in for a longer ride, say twenty-four episodes instead of twelve, I could have managed a modicum of forgiveness, but as it stands, Koihime Musou, here comes the Cocktease Bat!
- How can you not have Xiahou Dun lose an eye?
- Why did Zhao Yun go from one of the main characters to a cameo role for 75% of the show?
- Why do the credits bother showing Xu Zhu eating people under the table and Zhang Liao working as a maid?
- So what was the deal with Guan Yu’s dead brother/boyfriend?
- Where the hell did Zhang Fei’s pig go?
- No great battle of wits for Zhuge Loliang?
- Where’s my Ma Chao/Huang Zhong make-out scene?
Oh crap, I said the loud part quiet and the quiet part loud!
- Mr. K
agreed the ending of the show was crappy. Though it does merit some good points overall it fell short. With all the girls gathering for one giant battle against the mooks youd expect some epic fight as Lotr but no what we got was a 20 second bum rush scene! Though i did like the all female army *hehe nice* and the lil cutback scenes to where everyone is now*kuma!*, but it just didnt deliver the goods youd expect. Well we could always look forward the OVA which is going to be different so they say >.>
I’m all for “different”… but in this case I’d really appreciate a more precise definition of “different”, because we all know it could swing two ways: either they can make the OVA an extended epilogue and improve on the series’s conclusion, or they can throw the story out the window and just have Guan Yu strut around in a bikini for forty-five minutes.
hmmm a very heavily fan serviced OVA for 45 mins or a better ending…i think ill choose the latter