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「㐧拾弐刻」 (Dai Juu-Ni Koku)
“The Twelfth Moment”
With the finale of Kokkoku, we learn that the best way to get rid of your enemies is for them to become babies so you can be better parents to them and prevent them from growing up to be your enemies. That’s the lesson that the Yukawa’s take with them as Juri promises to raise baby Sagawa in a bid to not have to kill an infant as well as give him a better means of living. This whole scenario is weird, but it’d be easy to give it a pass given that there have been more morally questionable anime moments where characters have raised baby versions of their significant other.
The most interesting development in the final episode is Juri’s life in Stasis. She had resigned herself to the idea of eventually finding a way out while she raised Sagawa and even sent Jii-san back when it became apparent that she didn’t want to keep him stranded in Stasis and needed someone to let everyone know what she’s up to. Although we see her often as the voice of reason, her experience alone in Stasis only solidifies her imperfections as isolation slowly messes with her judgement. Her decision to raise Sagawa without any help only builds on the strain she has from being stuck in Stasis, and results in her stalling baby Sagawa in the real world so that she wouldn’t have to worry about keeping him fed and dealing with the guilt of stealing to keep him healthy. In the process, however, she loses all sense of purpose as Sagawa being stalled had only given her a few brief moments of freedom.
Happily, she makes it back to the real world and earns a happy ending where she is able to see her family again. Where it gets dicey is the last-minute decision to center her revival around the blonde lady from the 1st episode, who happened to be the Founder’s partner with just the right power to eject her from Stasis. It was nice to have an optimistic ending, but at the same time, it feels like her problems were solved too easily, and that her eternal existence in Stasis was a means of wrapping up the loose ends of who Sagawa was idolizing this whole time and popping up at just the right time to solve Juri’s problems. That’s not to say its a cop-out and she should’ve been stranded there, but it was a relatively easy fix that would’ve made it easier for the Yukawa family and Sagawa to deal with their issues without reaching the point it did.
Epilogue:
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Final Impressions
In all of it’s weirdness, Kokkoku was still a very pleasing experience. The plot is engaging as a sci-fi action mystery that takes place almost entirely in frozen time, the Yukawa family’s human and flawed qualities make them interesting characters who you want to root for, and the series makes an admirable effort to explain the concepts and mechanics behind Stasis and the family’s abilities. Similarly, Majima was an intriguing character as she has a justifiable reason to be both allied and against the Yukawa’s with her family’s struggle overwhelming her. Aside from Sagawa’s questionable motivations for wanting to transcend time, the strangeness that came with his attempts to transform himself into a Herald, and Juri’s escape from Stasis coming down to luck, there’s nothing much to complain about. There are still lingering suspicions that not everything is alright given the deja vu and the clock’s time in the final scene, but it was nonetheless a captivating ride with the Yukawa family, and it’ll definitely be sad not to hear “Flashback” and “Asayake to Nettaigyo” for another week.
End Card
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Deus ex Bullshit.
There really was no other way to get Juri out of that situation than Deus ex Machina. Normally I would be pissed….but this girl sacrificed enough and went through enough solitude that she deserved to have some form of happy ending. Even if it was through unconventional means. Like I would be okay with her becoming a handler, but that would have been a heavy-handed ended that led to nowhere. I mean like….so? They destroyed the stone, as of now they have no other way to go back into Stasis. So Juri becoming a handler would have been pointless if there’s no one to handle.
Even with just a little more thought and using for the most part what’s already available they could have built a more satisfying conclusion. For example if they’d used the stasis fish thing they suddenly introduced this episode properly.
What they SHOULD have done is set up the “ecosystem” that exists within stasis over the course of the series. We know the jellyfish exist but outside of when they’re getting expelled we don’t see a single other one and this large stasis fish is the ONLY other lifeform we see. They should have had more of the jellyfish and maybe even smaller fish floating through the air or darting around the periphery of the action. They even could have gone as far as having this big fish popping in and out of the background like it’s watching everything through the entire show, or if not through the entire show we should have seen it following and observing Juri through her extended time in stasis through this episode.
Then when Juri finally starts breaking down the big fish appears before her like it did except instead of just fucking with her and disappearing it rushes through her body and expels the jellyfish. Hell since this is a more complex lifeform and we’ve already established Juri being able to see visions of memories or whatever they could have had her get a flash of memories to provide the blonde’s exposition.
“went through enough solitude”
I’d say that not lasting even a year (much much less, if we subtract the time with jii-chan and baby Sagawa) was pretty weak sauce of her, but then again no one in her family was particularly bright so I guess it’s not entirely unexpected that she’d simply lose hope without even trying any kind of experiments with her powers.
Weak? Oh come on.
Long-haired Juri is hot. Shoulda kept that hair-do.
I will accept this episode as this is better than Grancrest Senki which wasted an episode with summerizing past epsides.
Grancrest Senki’s recap is a .5 episode. Not part of the normal episode count, and thus 0 episodes of said episode count have been wasted. Recaps are used to avoid having to eventually air something like this
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UhmBnaEcbfA
So what are they saying in the end card?
And what conversation was she feeling like she’d had before?
It was a deja vu of the first episode.
They are saying “Thank you for watching”
I think you missed the point about the baby. She punched him back into time so he could have a life and she did it suddenly like that because she knew she was making excuses to keep him there with her and wanted to do it before losing her nerve. And I think she knew that doing it was also killing herself since it was only after losing him that she really started falling apart.
Neo-Sagawa could be immortal if we go by the Deus Ex lady’s explanation of how she was born. A funny way for him to win.
I was hopeful for a moment that we would see the how and why of stasis. I’d hoped we’d get something about the how and why of the handlers. Why the Yukari family have their abilities. The blonde lady inspired that hope but, nope, she just has a mysterious godlike power and that’s all there is to it.
Disappointingly easy. I wanted Juri to return home and don’t hate the ending, I just felt it was built into the story. It’s too obvious a tacked on shortcut.
I’m also surprised that it isn’t obvious to everyone that if Juri did return to normal time, she’d return at the same moment time began flowing normally for everyone; the only question seemed to be how old would Juri be? She’s worried about her family missing her but they didn’t know she was missing because they weren’t conscious at all during any of the time she was in Stasis and they weren’t.
Your intro really summed it up; and like you said despite all the questionable motives and developments, weirdly enough that was an enjoyable experience for me.
I didn’t really catch what was going on at the end with the clock scene where chibi Sagawa was talking to Juri? What is being suggested here??
Mama Juri was waay too cute.
I really enjoyed the show even though it felt kind of rushed towardss the last few episodes.