So I thought I would quickly round up my thoughts on both the ending of TM8.0 and what I thought of the show in general.

Beware of spoilers in the coming paragraphs. You have been warned.

I think everyone who was watching this show knew that there were only a set number of outcomes to this story. If the initial premise is that the kids need to find their way back home, it’s likely that some of them probably won’t, just to drive the message home. And what’s the message? Earthquakes are really dangerous. So up until now, it was a question of who would survive, if anyone at all.

Would they kill the parents and finish with a “we will fight on in their honour” kind of thing? Would they kill Yuuki and/or Mirai in a sort of “your luck will eventually run out” kind of BAD END?

Well, one of the inevitable conclusions passed, but it passed in a way that I certainly wasn’t expecting for a show like this.

You may have heard by now, but to clarify, Yuuki was indeed killed and didn’t make it home, in a physical sense anyway.

The thing is, they staged it so that we see happenings through Mirai’s viewpoint. Turns out Mirai’s viewpoint wasn’t exactly consistent with reality’s. So the last few episodes ended up a la Fight Club or Sixth Sense, where it’s revealed that Yuuki wasn’t alive at all. Well, not so much revealed as made really fucking obvious throughout one of the last eps before being unshockingly mentioned.

And suddenly, the (previously thought) trippy mindfuck episode makes all the more sense.

I mentioned above that I honestly didn’t expect this. I know by now that TM8.0 isn’t afraid to kill to get its drama across. But still, it didn’t have that feeling of a show that would pull a stunt such as that until now. The first seven episodes were rooted solidly in reality – everything on screen could reliably be verified as truly happening. The fricking Tokyo Tower collapsed for God’s sake, and not in a dream sequence! When that precedent is set, its hard to imagine that something happening on screen isn’t real. And this is why I really didn’t see the very real death of Yuuki coming.

It ended up being quite a sad affair all around, as Mirai made her way home alone, breaking that much touted promise with Mari.

Speaking of Mari and her family, that ended up being a really crap episode. I mean, finding two bodies that look exactly like your mother and daughter, then finally revealing they’re alive. It strikes me as trying too hard to create drama that didn’t need to be created. There were much more subtle and powerful ways to make that episode better, but no. I mean, you feel happy for her and everything, but that’s using such a cheap method to do it.

To round up my opinions on the show in general, I think it was a very nice and original idea. That carries a lot of weight in anime these days, where you can almost guess what will happen in a show just by hearing a paragraph describing it. Beach episode, hot springs episode, male protagonist sees/touches breast of female protagonist, etcetera. TM8.0 was a very original idea that didn’t seem as if it would have much to give from the outset, but the idea did deliver on very palpable drama and thrilling moments.

Real characters who didn’t follow stereotypical anime norms to a tee helped support the show through a bit of a lull mid-season. Apart from a few stinker episodes, the end really redeemed the show for me. Had they dealt with the ending in any other way, I don’t think I would be praising it so much right now.

It’s certainly not the best show of the season, but because of the realistic characterisation and even just a speck of an interesting concept, it’s definitely worth a watch.