Revenge is a dish best served cold….or with the fury of a thousand suns. The one iron rule of anime is that penultimate episodes set the tone for the ending and often paint the picture for how things are going to wrap up. The beginning may set the tone for the series, the middle may modify or stick to it but its the penultimate episode which lets us know what to expect from the series finale. In Crime Edge’s case, there were no major surprises.
Crime Edge has had a set formula of enemies becoming friends, in the spirit of shonen anime and manga, so the penultimate episode didn’t present anything out of the norm. It indicated that the series would end on a happier note than what we’ve seen and most likely bring the power of romance in to give the main couple and of course Kiri the final piece of character development.
With all that in mind, there’s not much I could add to Crime Edge. The timing of this final development and the development itself are straight from the textbook of action-romance series aimed at the younger demographic and not much else. Whatever satisfaction I got was from seeing Kiri pay back Emily for what she’d done, was not enough to get me to jump up and down with excitement for the rest of this episode.
Just one episode left in Dansai Bunri no Crime Edge. One episode – already aired, pending subs – that’ll hopefully be an adequate ending to this short adaptation of an ongoing manga. Based on what we’ve seen, there shouldn’t be any problems with bringing the story to a halt and allowing for a transition to the manga or an unlikely second season.