Review: Gēmusetto: Death Beat(s) Season Finale

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Back in the living world, supernatural investigator Bendy Rivers still can’t quite let go of his past chasing Makasu around the world. Soon, strange supernatural occurrences begin occurring, which Bendy links back to Makasu’s death, so Bendy gets himself killed by a Wendigo in order to finally finish things, much to his wife’s grief. He then finds himself right where Makasu and the rest of his group are and forms his own battle animal, Theremanatee, and ends up joining the group to enter the Center of All Death. Once inside, they face the true enemy: Christian Scientists who plan on resetting the world to nothing. Bendy sacrifices himself against one of their minions, dying twice as a result, but a bomb counts down to the universe’s destruction, forcing Makasu to take the blast himself, also double killing him. The rest of the group decide to sail on Tytii’s boat as they remember their friend. Also Bucket from last season apparently is pregnant with Makasu’s child.

OUR TAKE

This crazy bullshit finally reaches its climax in the most anime way possible: by saving life and afterlife with giant battle animals based on music. Oh we’re getting pushed out of Toonami by HBO Max plugging Wonder Woman 1984? Well, we’ll just play our episodes the next night on Adult Swim all in quick succession! Whether people liked it or not, and I saw plenty of people who didn’t, this show was gonna get its finish before the end of the year. And these last four episodes do feel like they were meant to be split up the usual way, with the first two being about Bendy Rivers, a returning character from the first season, facing death and entering the afterlife, while the last two are clearly the final battle. As such, it’s a bit of a whiplash to bring Bendy Rivers back just to see him killed off twice within three episodes, or at least more whiplash than I imagine was originally planned. He made a good addition to the team and I wish he had been included earlier. It also kinda makes the last couple episodes about that Perfect Human stuff from last time end up feeling more out of place with how little it really factors into everything (aside from a little mention here in a flashback).

But I will say that Bendy’s inclusion ended up making this feel a lot more like Season 1 than it had in awhile, which is both a blessing and a curse. The first season felt a lot more free with its art style and fitting in lots more esoteric references, where as Death Beats has a more streamlined style that almost feels like an uncanny valley between a shitpost and a real show and ends up feeling like neither. Still, even if it almost feels like I shouldn’t give it this kind of dignity, it does actually feel like there has been a recurring theme of redemption for past actions throughout the season, which naturally culminates in Makasu sacrificing himself for the good of all. Oddly good timing since Christmas is this Friday, so yeah I’m saying that Makasu is Jesus. Heck, did the real Jesus have a talking robot frog who liked to smoke menthol cigarettes? No? Then I think it’s clear that Makasu is even better than Jesus. And we’ll get into why he’s so much better along with looking back on everything else in the Season Review next week.