The Spring 2018 Anime Preview Guide

Last Period: journey to the end of despair

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In this world, there exist brave heroes known as Periods, who fight against the monstrous Spirals. Haru and his teammates Choco, Liza, and Gajeru are four such periods, and they work studiously for their beloved Arc End Branch Office #8. Unfortunately, upon returning from vacation, they discover their office's fortunes have been stolen, and the branch closed entirely! Now it's just up to the four of them to make their leader Erika proud, and perhaps one day restore their noble branch office's fortunes. Of course, it would probably help if their leader assigned them any missions with an actual profit margin…

Last Period is based on an online role-playing game, and is available on Crunchyroll every Wednesday at 12 PM EDT.

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Nick Creamer
Rating:

Last Period's free-to-play game pedigree might inspire some skepticism, but I'm guessing you won't want to sleep on this one. Last Period isn't a generic “fantasy in a game world” show; it essentially follows in the mode of shows like Konosuba and Outbreak Company, offering a solid mix of charming camaraderie and barbed riffs on videogame conventions. It's upbeat and attractive and pretty darn funny, establishing itself as a fine addition to the videogame parody pantheon.

The show quickly rushes through its default premise, setting up a standard JRPG world where the heroes are known as Periods and the monsters are known as Spirals. We're then introduced to the adventuring quartet Haru, Choco, Liza, and Gajeru, as they learn their own branch office has had its fortune stolen, and they themselves have been reduced to unlicensed temping in order to eventually buy back their own former building. And so they head off to fight more spirals, offering a combination of chipper can-do attitude and fatigued genre cynicism all along the way.

So far, the four original of the Last Period crew have already established a fairly solid rapport between themselves. While Haru's simplistic, upbeat nature would likely position him as the lead in a more traditional fantasy show, it's his companions Choco and Liza who both steer and steal the show here. Choco takes the “mysterious, soft-spoken heroine” role and runs with it to the point of absurdity, offering a great mix of deadpan punchlines and fourth-wall breaking genre commentary (“cramming money jokes into a guy's dialogue is lazy writing”). In contrast, Liza acts as the true leader of the group, furiously negotiating for better pay and generally being the voice of reason. The two of them end up with much better material than Haru and Gajeru (whose one big gag is an easy “I'm an idol otaku” gimmie), but this episode's overall joke strike ratio is quite strong, with only some choppy pacing and over-extended weaker gags holding it down.

Last Period is also very solid aesthetically, boasting plenty of lively movement, strong expression work, and a generally pleasant, colorful design sense. I particularly liked the show's opening song, whose crayon tale of the cast slowly improving as adventurers endeared me to them before I'd even met them. On the whole, Last Period feels very much like a somewhat kinder version of Konosuba - take that show's genre parodies and apply them to a group of people who generally try to be decent to each other, and you've got Last Period. That's a fine combination, and Last Period is looking to be a fine show.