Clockwork Planet

Episode 12

For all of the mind-boggling madness that occurred when Clockwork Planet tried to get metaphysical on us last week, this finale episode ended up being quite straightforward and routine. It doesn't even feel so much like a series finale as it does the end of the most recent arc – the immediate threat of the Yatsukahagi attack has been eliminated, but nothing else feels particularly resolved. I suppose this works out because in making such a paint-by-numbers finale, Clockwork Planet has avoided ending with something that tries too hard to be experimental, shocking, or any of the other innumerable “twists” that many a terrible anime have pulled in their conclusions. On the other hand, this finale only succeeded enough to maintain the same level of barely passable fluff it's been producing all season. This isn't the worst anime I've watched during my time writing streaming reviews, but it's easily the most forgettable.

It's hard to even go through the usual recap of the episode's most significant events, since everything that was set up and telegraphed last week continues exactly as you might expect. aNCHOR powers up to take on the Yatsukahagi, Marie and Naoto do their thing repairing the Pillar of Heaven, and the other characters mostly stand around doing nothing. The biggest set piece of the episode is easily aNCHOR's attack, but it's undone by the cheap animation and boring direction that has plagued this series from the very first episode. Couple that with the fact that the little moe maid has never been able to rise above her status as a thinly scripted archetype, and the whole middle section of the episode falls flat. It hits all the beats it needs to function as a story, but none of those moments feel engaging or interesting at all.

The same thing goes for the villain, whose name I've already forgotten on account of his complete lack of personality or plot significance. He spits out a couple lines that tease the connection that Marie and Naoto have to the ever-enigmatic Y, but outside of that, his dialogue consists entirely of stock villain clichés. Not once did I ever have any interest in who he was, why he was doing what he was doing, or any of the other basic facets that make a compelling character. Many villains end up outshining their protagonists, but in Clockwork Planet's case, the main antagonist ended up being the most boring character in a series filled with nothing but stereotypes. When everything is wrapped up all neat and tidy, our heroes set sail into the horizon, headed for new adventures (and a horde of battleships). In the last three minutes of the episode, it feels like Naoto, Marie, and the others have completely shrugged off the events of the previous twenty. When the characters themselves seem barely affected by their own story, it can only be that much worse for the audience.

A lot of my problems stem from the fact that this finale has made the whole series feel like a commercial for the light novels and manga on which it's based, which would be fine if the anime weren't so shoddily produced that it just makes me want to steer very clear of its source material. This makes the inclusion of so many unanswered questions feel less like material for future stories and more like unsatisfying threads that will never lead to anything worthwhile. That's a shame, because there are a lot of questions to be answered, and I could see a version of this story where the answers are kind of interesting. Who was Y? What connection does he have to Naoto and Marie? How does this magical ability to generate machinery from nothing even work? And perhaps most importantly, why did one of Y's sexy robot maids just fall out of the sky and into Naoto's lap? Clockwork Planet never bothered to flesh out any of these plot points, and I definitely don't feel compelled to spend the time tracking down the books to figure any of it out.

In the end, this is Clockwork Planet's greatest failure. Every story, regardless of the medium or genre, has one true goal: prove to its audience that it has a reason to exist. Some stories are meant to entertain, others work to challenge its audience's beliefs, and there are even stories that exist only to please the whims of its creator. Clockwork Planet is one of those rare stories that doesn't seem like it did any of those things. It simply exists, a halfhearted and forgettable adaptation of a narrative that exists elsewhere in more complete and presumably superior forms.

Rating: C-

Clockwork Planet is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.

James is an English teacher who has loved anime his entire life, and he spends way too much time on Twitter and his blog.