Review of Phantom: Requiem for the Phantom

If Psycho Pass is Minority Report done right, then Phantom is The Bourne Identity done right, or at least for the first 20 or so episodes, which are pretty much masterpiece and I enjoyed them immensely. And then last arc totally screws it all up. Well, not totally, but enough for it to matter. Soundtrack was splendid, there were many exceptional tracks that worked miracles with setting the mood, but then there's one black sheep track that felt so incredibly off. Interestingly enough art had similar feel, very well pulled off, except sometimes on rare occasions it would seem cheap, but it's okay, all thingsconsidered. The way dash of romance was so very subtly interweaved with the serious and dark plot was likely my favorite thing about all this. My issues with last arc:

SPOILERS AHEAD:

I hated how after time skip, everyone looked exactly the same except Cal, who suddenly looked 8 years older. It was a super mega immersion breaker for me. And the fact I hated her character twist didn't help at all. Seriously, that character twist just felt so off, like she's suddenly whole different person and nothing that happened so far mattered.

Also the overused trope of over exaggerated misunderstanding was lame in Code Geass but Phantom somehow managed to make it even lamer with Reiji not even attempting to communicate his point of view.I understand it's one aspect of J culture but god damnit it's still dumb as fuck. That bullet in the epilogue was so bad it was good. Plus he had it coming. Wasting that kid and having Karma as opening and insert theme song was a death flag if I ever saw one.

I almost thought we were in for a twist with nothing happening in the end but hey whatever, it's fine either way with me. But Elen's reaction hardly made any sense then so... yeah... stupid semi-ambiguous endings being semi-weird. Ah whatever, it's nothing in the face of how terrible Cal's development felt for me.

The darkness of whole show was uplifting, interesting, immersive, shocking, but at that point it just became depressing, sad and lame. However, since it's Urobuchi, even a screwed up arc still had some coherency and kinda worked well enough to not destroy the show. At least Elen-Reiji dynamic still worked wonderfully, and the whole school setting twist was unexpected and hence fun. The fancy-suit-Reji from second to last arc was likely the coolest thing ever.