Here ends the last proper episode of Darker Than Black season 1. There's one last episode to the season, but it's just a fun side-story and it doesn't take place after the end of the season events. I have a lot to say about this one, but to do it without spoilers would require me vagueing things up to the point of ridiculousness, so I'll just go ahead and bust out my trusty spoiler tags.
» Major Spoilers Under Here «
In my last recap, I mentioned that I hoped that some of the characters we'd lost would get a little time devoted to them as there wasn't time to focus on much of anything in the previous episode. When I said that, I never imagined that every character who was gone in the series would make a comeback. I loved seeing November 11 in particular, of course, and I'm glad he got some nice dialog, but I also found the appearance of many other characters to be particularly touching. The inclusion of the doll from the very first story arc was especially nice.
I'm really impressed with how they ended this one, overall. The major questions presented in this series, like how Li got his powers, were clearly answered, but many things were left open ended. I love how they handled the fate of Mao, and until I'm proven otherwise I'll choose to believe that he got himself back somehow. I feel like there's a million ways this next season could go- I'm not sure how many, or if any of the major characters from this one will be big players- and not being predictable is always a good thing.
All in all, I thought this was the perfect (sort of) end to the series. I'm really grateful that I was able to
watch Darker Than Black online free and legally so that I could catch up with this before the second season started. I plan to do a review of the entire series as soon as possible so that I can go through everything else I want to say here. I'll be posting up a recap of the actual last episode soon as well.
Rating: 95/100
