As the end of NouCome aired about a week ago with a rather unconventional amount of episodes -- that being ten rather than twelve or thirteen -- I wanted to look a bit more deeply at the central idea of the anime. Of course choice was displayed as the center piece to NouCome, to the point of basing a lot of it's comedy on that one thing via the curse of "Absolute Choice". I've always had an adverse opinion of choice based on preselected options, because you aren't necessarily making a choice from something you want, but rather the person picking out each option ends up being the one in control; it's almost like being in a maze, you can make the choice of where to go, but the eventual exit was up to the person who made such a maze. This is pretty much the basis of what NouCome is, the curse called absolute choice but that choice is -- or at least it seems to me -- simple an illusion.
Now, going into this anime -- and knowing full well it was a harem -- I kind of expected that Kanade would have to make a choice between the girls in his harem, based on the curse he suffer from. And because so many harem end in no real conclusion, it was something I was looking forward to but those hopes were thoroughly crush in the last episode. Sure there was a three people choice, however the random four option came in at the end and this is where that falsehood of all decisions being made in the show wrap itself up quite clearly. Whether it was minor or major choice, Kanade would easily go for the selection that would be most harm to him and least harm for an unexpected third party; this carries over to the final decision, and ended rather abruptly without much of a conclusion to what was started.
Don't get me wrong, I had a good time watching NouCome overall, but with an anime that is so heavily focused on making choices it almost felt like the end was parodying the no conflict main male character in many harems. There wasn't a real explanation for Kanade's decisions, it was just that he didn't want to hurt anyone -- and by abstaining from any real favoritism, it could potentially hurt everyone involved. So in essence most harem, more specially NouCome, has his delusion that by pick no one they are making everyone happy; because not giving clear answers to anyone -- with the exception of Chocolat -- Kanade has convinced himself that they will keep everything that same, but it that simply isn't the case. Though we wont see those complex types of conflict, because NouCome has ended.
Whether you are looking at the importance of choice throughout the series, choices made by our main character Kanade, or the idea of choice in the context of the "Absolute Choice" curse, they were all covered under a thick layer of fog that hides NouCome true self. At it's core, NouCome was a generic harem with a no doubt entertaining gimmick, but it quite easily crumbled under the very lacking ending -- which failed to explain a lot of crucial points and left a handful of characters development unresolved.
There could have been a lot more to NouCome will that much build up, but the anime chose to stick to the standard harem formula, no matter how far they deviated initially. The ending was a very poor wrap up to something that showed a lot of potential and if I didn't watch the last episode, this series would have probably had a better impression on me. Either way, if NouCome gets another season -- which I kind of doubt it -- I really want them to tie up some loose ends because that ending was pretty lackluster and makes me a bit more skeptical of the series if I see it pop up at a later date.
On a side note, I have a head-canon that Kanade chose Yuuouji Ouka. Since Chocolat was pretty explicitly rejected out right, and Yukihira Furano isn't that close to Kanade in the first place, Ouka seems like the logically choice. She obviously isn't my first pick -- because the beautiful student council president Seira is the way to go -- but Ouka is really the only one from the main cast left, since I'm not a fan of Furano anyway.
Orginally posted to the now shutdown sekijitsu.com: Archived Page
