So, it's time to talk about whiny ninjas again. Angst and ninjas are two elements you don't tend to see together in anime. As a show, Nabari no Ou has tried to carry itself with pride on the shoulders of the moral gray areas — much like every episode of Heroes. This might confuse some viewers, however, as this show's more about showing two effeminate Shinji Ikari clones looking into each other's eyes and hugging while suffering profoundly. So, of course, with the second half of the show comes the need to start making things clearer. See you later, gray areas, it's time to turn the angst and triteness to 11!

Where we last left off, the lead Banten faction and gray, dark Kairoshu were assembled at the super secret Koga ninja school of Alya Academy and were caught up in a conflict over the very forbidden technique book they were all trying to steal. This story arc amounted to no more than acquiring the information they sought — which inevitably falls into the wrong hands because the main character treats the people who actually care about him like crap. Also, a revelation about one of the main supporting characters goes nowhere, and he continues to remain a two-dimensional figure, despite his own opportunity for a few moments of angst.

Following that arc, the rest of the show plots along to its conclusion, with the "good guys" piecing together everything the angst-y lead duo had been up to all along, while the taller one with the funny hat begins having melodramatic flashbacks to a past trauma as he continues to waste away toward his inevitable death. Of course, this crucial traumatic experience is never properly developed; only alluded to in a rather lazy fashion to drive home that "bad things happened, but you don't need to know!" The character remains unsympathetic.

As the climax nears, those pesky gray areas go away and the cast neatly divides itself into the "good guys" and the "bad guys," with the main villain — older-guy extraordinaire Hattori — dropping any pretense of being an interesting or original character in unveiling his grand plot. Why have an antagonist who preaches idealism strive for something ultimately idealistic, when you can make him into something far more sinister? Everything needs to be simple. You've got to get back to angst-y pretty boys and their sad, longing expressions.

In the previous review, I established that little lord angst-pants Miharu wasn't going to become the Nabari King as the series title suggests. Naturally, I was right. When the final episodes rolled around, it was time to assemble the bad guys and two sets of good guys — the friends Miharu treated so poorly and most of the named Kairoshu members, leaving you with only a few real villains and a bunch of grunts. Not that any of that matters once Miharu finally loses control of the Shinra-bansho. Who needs to put together a competent narrative when the protagonist's super power is an awful deus ex machina that you can set off at any time? Not to mention, when you realize just how ridiculously powerful it is, it obliterates any and all suspension of disbelief. When your ninja show starts cutting to massive views of the galaxy and universe and gigantic DNA strands, "bad" no longer covers the lows the show's plumbing.

With the fate of the world hanging in the balance thanks to a super-powered fourteen year-old getting hopping mad, could humanity have any hope? Yes! When Miharu's raging mother issues again surface (with his mom talking to him in his own head) he can tame the Shinra-bansho and bring the several cringe-worthy episodes to an abrupt anti-climax.

In the denouement, much is made of "it's not over yet," but by the end, Nabari no Ou makes it quite clear that yes, the story is in fact over, and it's a happy ending. All the bad guys die, and the only good guy who does earns a trite moment of directly stating that he'll live on in the others' hearts against the sky. The angst-y boys get to retire to veritable old-married-couple life, and everything's super now that they suddenly sort-of care about the fact that other people care about them. Kind of. The only two characters I liked stuck around, but they never developed, much.

The first half of Nabari no Ou was awful, and the second half continued the trend. The rest of the story is trite padding for a show about two effeminate young boys to find something implicitly romantic for fangirls to coo over in each other, and the writing goes from messy to downright insulting to the viewer's intelligence by the end. In the least, they cut back on their "devilish" Miharu moments that were supposed to be funny and cute, and the second ending song ("Aru ga Mama") was easily the best of the OP/ED songs in the series, though the accompanying animation was clearly slash-community fodder.

There's a lot of dumb anime out there, and Nabari no Ou fits very much into that category. My feelings from the last review stand: as game writing goes, if you think Tetsuya Nomura's a genius, this show was made for you. If you want to watch something good, I suggest convincing yourself this title doesn't even exist. You're better off that way.