Fractale – 11 (Final)

Episode 11 – Paradise – 楽園 (Rakuen)

In the end, Fractale finished off while still leaving a bunch of questions unanswered, and not to mention, this episode felt rather awkward as a finale. I get the feeling that the creators for the anime counterpart had no idea where they really wanted to go with things in the latter half of the series, which produced a rather odd amalgam of events in this finale. The direction of this felt…well, directionless, or perhaps the better phrase here would be all over the place; the episode kept jumping from one thing to another, with each event getting rather little explanation or elaboration. Not to mention, some of the dialogue felt sudden and unnecessary, and more importantly, with very little logical explanations behind them all. In the end, while the ending did produce a happy ending here, I can’t help but feel really disappointed with this finale.

For one, there was the events with Phryne’s father. His explanation about Phryne and Nessa was necessary for the final scenes in this episode, but it almost feels as if the explanation was crammed in here so that the scene in that giant dome would make sense. Even then, the lack of buildup towards the events in the dome made everything that happened in it feel too sudden. Why in the world was a 16 year old called “god” anyways? How in the world does that have anything to do with how the Fractale system operates? The lack of proper explanation here kind of makes the turn of events stretching my suspension of disbelief.

Also, the random moment where Phryne stabbed her father with “possessed” eyes got NO explanation at all. I do vaguely remember something like this happening earlier in the series, but even then, why there was no explanation for this happening. Is there some sort of key detail about Phyrne’s past we don’t know about or something? There was also the surreal moment where Alabaster (the other Lost Millennium leader) walked in and blew himself up after having a pseudo-conversation with the high priestess. I guess that was just a convenient plot twist to allow Clein through to Phryne and Nessa, but it still didn’t detract from the randomness of it all.

In the end, the girl that is “Nessa” and “Phryne” recovered from their coma at the end of the episode, and while it was a happy moment, at the same time, felt a bit lacking. My impression here is that the creators tried to cram in EVERYTHING in this last episode, which didn’t work out at all. Everything felt improperly explained, some of the events didn’t get enough screentime to leave an impact or flesh out characters, and it feels as if details are missing from everything that happened. There were some neat ideas here, but the strange thing is that almost all of them were lacking in some way or form, which certainly turned out disappointing.

Overall Enjoyment: 3.0/5

Final Impressions:

Fractale did start off as a rather ambitious series, with a vast, fascinating setting. Coupled with some unique ideas such as the Fractale system, “keys”, and the organizations of this series (the Temple, Lost Millennium, etc al), there definitely was potential here. The setting itself was decently thought out, and certainly added to the fact that this series had some serious story potential.

Unfortunately, Fractale’s story ended up having it’s ups and downs as a series, with some great moments, along with some very lacking moments, that led to this series turning out rather cyclic in nature. At times it was a great adventure series, and at times it felt like something completely different (and not in a good way, mind you). At times it feels as if the story was overtly ambitious, or just trying too hard to have a “deeper meaning” to things, which certainly didn’t help. The thing with Fractale is that it touched upon a bunch of different ideas, with some interesting ones in there, but the series didn’t really spend too much time developing some of these ideas. Quite honestly, a few more episodes for this show could have done wonders for it.

Characters here were your standard, typical fare, and though they did have their charms (such as Nessa’s personality), the way in which they developed wasn’t particularly noteworthy. Clein does get some decent growth as a character, but we really don’t get to fully explore character growth much within this series. Some people do complain about Clein’s characterization as your typical angsty teenager, and while I can partially agree, because of his initial characterization you do get to clearly see how he evolves as a character, which is always nice to see. Overall, though, character development was lacking, especially in our main cast (Phryne, Clein, and Nessa).

What was probably the most surprising aspect to this anime was the animation and art itself. For a TV series, Fractale had some surprisingly well done animation and very fluid transitions in between scenes. There are a few episodes in particular where the production values do stand out, and for that, I have to give kudos to the studio for a job well done.

In the end, Fractale was a series where it had a ton of different events and ideas floating around, while it would have been much better to cut the excess and focus on the ones important for the main plot. There are a few episodes in particular that I can think of that could probably just have been removed altogether. As a series, Fractale turned out to be a decent watch, though I can’t help but be disappointed at where it went.

Animation/Art: 8.5/10

Music: 7.5/10

Characters: 7.5/10

Story/setting: 7.0/10

Overall Enjoyment: 7.6/10

Screenshots are later in the post.