What They Say:
Uh… Hello, everyone. I’m Yuru Yuri protagonist Akaza Akari. …I’m the protagonist, right? It’s the final episode, but I can still call myself the protagonist with confidence, right? I was so confident in the first episode… sniffle. No, you mustn’t give up, Akari! Have confidence, Akari! Today’s our overnighter. It’s the perfect place to establish my presence! Come on, everyone, I’ll show you my brilliance! Until we meet again!Until we meet again… Akarin.
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
With the final episode of the series, Yuru Yuri goes to have fun with its core cas tof characters while still making sure that others have their chance in the sun as well. The show is one that at the start felt like it would be pretty tightly knit around the four ostensible leads but it ended up bringing in a lot of the other girls as well. And that was a positive because they played off of each other so well, but in the end it also felt like it slighted the supposed main characters as they got less and less time. If not for Kyoko being such a camera hog, you’d even start to wonder if the original four were supposed to be much of a draw at all with some episodes. When the day spent at the club house has others showing up, even Akari gets upset about thing when the other four show up and she talks about their reduced presence because of it.
Being the quirky group that they are, they end up with some very cute full body sleepover costumes that are like different animals and they get into a bit of amusing role play with it. While the episode has some fun there at first, it does bring the rest of the gang in and they play all sorts of contests and games against each other in a predictable but cute way. While we had the stuffed animal cosplay, we also get more elaborate costumes that we’ve seen before and a whole lot of pervy-ness from Kyoko that’s utterly adorable. She’s so completely a character that should not play charades because of how into it she gets, whether it’s playing the flute, boxing or baseball stances. She’s so easily misinterpreted because her worldview is so skewed that it’s definitely comical.
Some of the best material from this episode comes when a big kissing sequence gets underway that involves multiple characters. It goes so over the top in a way that it’s surprising but yet it’s wholly appropriate for what the show has been angling towards all this time. The pervy nature of the show when it comes to the girls being interested in each other to some degree has been harmless fun, but Chitose gets to go the distance here and provides the payoff that many fans wanted. What makes it work though is that they don’t do it in a smutty, slutty way with deep atmosphere, rich colors and intense music. They do it as a proper comedy thta makes you grin and laugh throughout it.
In Summary:
Like past episodes, the fun here comes from the interactions and the quirks of the characters. Whether it’s nosebleeds over imagining friends naked or just trying to pin down one of your cute friends for some frisky fun, they all go throuhg the motions well with the overnighter in the club house. There’s a laid back atmosphere that works very well that has populated the rest of the series as well, so it doesn’t try to do anything radical here. In fact, the series deserves praise for not shoehorning in some ultra serious storyline at the end such as threatening the existence of the club or something else. It stuck to comedy and slice of life situations throughout and that’s something a lot of shows of this nature have a hard time doing in the last couple of episodes. Yuru Yuri is cute and harmless good fun and made me smile each time a new episode came out.
Grade: B
Streamed By: Crunchyroll
Review Equipment:
Sony KDS-R70XBR2 70″ LCoS 1080P HDTV, Dell 10.1 Netbook via HDMI set to 1080p, Onkyo TX-SR605 Receiver and Panasonic SB-TP20S Multi-Channel Speaker System With 100-Watt Subwoofer.
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