English Dub Review: Chain Chronicle: Light of Haecceittas “The Light of Haecceittas”

Where we spend more time staring at Phoena’s cleavage than figuring out what that word in the title means.

Spoilers Below

This, the final episode, begins in the thick of the action. Musica, who had been knocked off her perch and prevented from singing her evil-slaying song, is caught by one of the mages and put back into position with a super-sized ward placed to protect her.  On the ground, Juliana and Shuza battle the succubus Eirenus. At first, she taunts them about losing Yuri to the darkness, then tries to goad Shuza into giving into the darkness, too. When he won’t, she switches tactics. If your bonds make you so strong, she’ll just cast a huge area of attack spell and take out all your soldiers. Shuza isn’t phased. He only recognizes the strong, and the strong don’t need help. Her ploys failing again, she becomes desperate and attacks Shuza directly. He unleashes a mighty energy blast and turns the succubus into dust.

Inside the throne room, the final stages of the Chain Chronicle’s corruption have begun. Phoena decides to take this final moment to play her trump card… BOOBS! Wait, no, she has a magical tattoo there. It pulls on the darkness from the Chain Chronicle, drawing it into her instead. The Black King is not worried. This is just a minor setback and will end up killing her. It has only delayed the end for a moment, but a moment is all that she needs.

Aram dodges around Yuri’s strike and makes a useful conclusion: Dark Yuri’s armor is made out of the same black mana that fuels the barrier. If he could get his hopeful light behind the armor, he could destroy it from within and free Yuri. Unfortunately, Yuri is determined to prevent him from making good on this plan. An explosive strike knocks the spell thief flying. Yuri is about to go in for the kill when arrows come flying at him. Cain, Mishidia, and Marina have arrived, and they’re here to save Yuri! Combining their attacks with Aram’s light, they manage to break through the armor, and flood Yuri with the same light.

Inside his mind space, Yuri fights against his darkness in a war of blades, wills, and words. All the terrible things he’s done, his friends won’t welcome him back! They’ll sentence him to death as a criminal! The sins he’s committed are a festering wound that will be with him forever. The real Yuri dashes in with a final strike against the weakness of his heart. He will just have to carry that wound with him. That will be how he will atone for what he’s done. The darkness within him dissolves, leaving a tiny mote of light. Yuri takes that move within himself and regains command of his senses. Back in the real world, the black armor that cocooned him shatters, revealing sweet, NEW armor made from light mana! Together, the gang head for the throne room.

Within, they arrive just in time to see the last of the darkness drain from the Chronicle and into Phoena. While Marina heals Phoena, and gives the cleavage more screen time, the rest of our heroes throw themselves into an all-out attack against the Black King. The assault is rebuffed by his wealth of black mana, which throws Cain and Mishidia around like rag dolls. Apparently, they got his hackles up, though. He begins to pour out dark magic, and transforms into a giant guardian dragon of evil! He begins charging a massive energy blast, one sure to kill those members of the team unable to get up and fight.

That’s when Furball comes busting in and tackles the Black Bahamut to the ground. In a flutter of wings, the battle takes to the sky, and Yuri and Aram launch in to join it. This scene is seriously a rush. Dragons dueling in midair, barrages of energy blasts going every which way, Aram jumping in for some impressive aerial acrobatics, and Yuri sticking his sword straight into the Black King’s eye! With another surge of power, Furball knocks the Black King back down to the throne room. When he hits the ground himself, the white dragon loses consciousness and returns to being a tribble.

Now, as everyone knows, every final boss battle has three stages, and the third is typically some corrupted angel. No difference here, as the Black King sprouts wings and horns and a bunch more rhetoric about how hope in the future is foolish. He launches another black Kamehameha but finds it turned away by a tiny ball of Aram’s light. “That light! I knew it was the light of Haecceittas! The light that reads the darkness!” This shocked me. Not the revelation of what the light was, we all kinda knew that. I was more floored by the fact that, for the first time in the entire series, this is the first time Haecceittas has every been said! Seriously? It’s in the title of the show, and you use it once? And the two C’s are pronounced as an X? Really?

In the face of this, Yuri and Aram combine their powers and perform their signature move “Seize The Light” as a chain attack, powered up by the light of… Haxitas is how it’s pronounced, I guess. They break through his every defense and flood him with light, purging the darkness from him. Villain defeated, Chain Chronicle is pure again, victory all around! Right? Well, there’s the problem oh Phoena dying from darkness overload if anyone cares. Marina’s powers aren’t enough to stop it, and Aram’s light isn’t strong enough either. Luckily, The Black King, now purified and back to being the Chain Chronicle’s keeper, begs the book to save her.

Butterflies of light flow out of the Chain Chronicles and careen straight into Phoena’s tattoo. The light purges her darkness and saves her life. Then, from out of that same light, Pirika emerges alive and well! Phoena reaches up weakly to her fairy friend and holds hands with her. With no more dark mana to fuel it, the barrier dissolves and the black soldiers vanish. Juliana cheers her soldiers on: they’ve won! We are treated to a montage of everyone returning to their normal lives as the ending credits appear on the screen. Aram prevents a thief from stealing an apple, the same scene we met him in at the beginning of the series. He now travels with Mishidia, Cain, and Marina. He invites his younger mirror to join them. Elsewhere, Phoena sits on a boat, contemplating the Chain Chronicle and her last moments with her father. He commends her on finding such good friends and tells her she’s grown so strong. In his last breaths, he confesses to the sins he committed and begs Phoena to rebuild the world he destroyed. Back on the boat, Yuri and Pirika join Phoena, and they set sail for parts unknown.

Woo! This episode was a real ride! The art, the animation: Superb! They pulled out all the stops here and threw everything that they had into blending their two animation methods almost seamlessly. There was one scene where Aram threw himself through the air at Yuri, and for part of it, it was incredible traditional animation, but on the next part of the attack, it was CG, and it switched back for the rest of the exchange. I could only tell the difference because I was specifically looking for it. There are many other places where they could have used CG but chose to put the time, effort, and money int doing it traditionally for some added style. And did I mention that the aerial combat seen was a rush? It was. The only downside was that a couple of the voices were a bit too grating for my taste, specifically Marina and Pirika. Then again, I’m sensitive to high frequencies. Though the ending lacked a true epilogue, there was enough an ending that you felt resolution, and that’s the important thing. I give this episode nine magical cleavage shots out of ten.