If you haven’t watched the previous three seasons of this franchise, I’d strongly suggest this isn’t the place to start. That said, if you’ve been onboard through Selector Infected WIXOSS up until now, you will probably quite enjoy the latest round of Selector Battles.
Review:
Where many continuing series go wrong is they end up either feeling totally disconnected from the previous story or they feel like a complete rerun of the original story with maybe a new villain tacked on. While they might end up feeling better or worse than the original, the fact remains that they don’t really need to exist as they don’t add anything more from a thematic or world building point of view and ultimately it just depends on whether they have a more interesting character or a bigger budget as to whether people enjoy it or not. WIXOSS avoided this handily when it first moved to Lostorage Incited WIXOSS through introducing new protagonists and very much focusing on the relationship between Suzuko and Chi and changing up the rules of the game sufficiently that it added new threats and new considerations.
Lostorage Conflated WIXOSS then makes the bold move of fusing together characters and ideas from the original two seasons with the first Lostorage season and it does it in a pretty interesting way. The rules of the game are murkier than ever, and that’s kind of the point that the anime is ultimately making. The game isn’t fair and the rules have always been open to exploitation. Through this approach, Lostorage Conflated WIXOSS has managed to avoid feeling like a tacked on extra and feels like a genuine conclusion to a story that started three seasons ago.
It isn’t all smooth sailing. The inclusion of Carnival as the primary antagonist for most of the season is a definite hang-over from the prior season and it almost feels at times like Conflated doesn’t really know what to do with this character other than have them be horrible to everyone else. While the Bookmaker was a fantastic character for stirring things together in the previous season, Carnival lacks subtlety and while they are the catalyst for so many events in this season, they are definitely a weak link and even their appearance in the final episode felt more obligatory than necessary.
Fortunately, the rest of the cast are working hard to overcome that weakness. It is clear even early on that the greater challenge is the system that allows the Selector Battles in the first place and that is what they are fighting to overcome, Carnival is more an obstacle to that. In this season we see old relationships re-examined and the impacts of prior battles on characters. It feels satisfying and these characters don’t remain stagnant in this season but continue to work towards becoming the people they want to be.
Perhaps the biggest issue remains the WIXOSS game itself. As I mentioned earlier, the rules are even murkier than normal, and normally it is hard to follow what the rules are as sometimes the characters take turns and other times they just annihilate each other. There are also more random power ups and sudden victories that seem unwarranted here than ever before. While emotionally it makes sense and if the game just serves to show the mental state of the characters it works fine enough, but it really doesn’t lend itself to making the game feel like a real game. It is ultimately just a plot device to get the characters to where they need to be.
The other overall issue I have, on looking back, is that WIXOSS has always gone for a bittersweet ending. Things are gained but things are lost and that which is lost is gone for good. It makes a nice change to the overly twee endings found so often. This most recent ending however actually undermines that by essentially resetting things. The characters still have their memories of the painful times, in fact they’ve gained memories of pain back, but so much of the damage of the prior seasons is erased in this ending. It almost feels like a cheat this late in the game and it takes a lot of the weight of the prior battles away.
Still, WIXOSS is a great franchise. While it isn’t as exciting as some and doesn’t quite pack the punch it might, season after season it has provided fairly consistent and decent story telling and this latest season does that again and provides some closure on this franchise. Is it the complete end? It feels like it should be but you never know with some stories.
As always, I’d love to know your thoughts so please leave me a comment below.
Product Link:
Lostorage Incited Wixoss Official Fan Book
Previous Reviews:
- Episode 12: A Solid Conclusion
- Episode 11: The End of The Battles?
- Episode 10: Battle, Battle, Battle
- Episode 9: When Worlds Collide
- Episode 8: The Condition To Win
- Episode 7: It’s Going To Be Fun When These Groups Converge
- Episode 6: It’s Totally Unfair, And That’s The Way It Is
- Episode 5: The Rules Are Breaking
- Episode 4: It Just Got Real
- Episode 3: New Rules; Same Trauma
- Episode 2: There’s Just No Escape
- Lostorage Conflated Wixoss First Impressions
- Lostorage Incited WIXOSS Series Review
Thanks for reading.
Karandi James
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I firmly believe that explaining the rules of WIXOSS in the series would have been a detriment to all of the series simply because the game isn’t the focus; it is merely a vehicle to drive the plot forward. Heck, it’s shown time and time again to be broken and rigged. The show proves the point when it deliberately avoids showing us climactic battles and shifts to other characters’ interactions.
That said, the characters are where all four seasons shine, and I think Conflated did an amazing job bringing all of them together.
My best girl has and always will be YukIona, and it’s not because I main her Black/White decks in WIXOSS. I promise. I’m still miffed at her super minor role in Conflated.
Yeah, but the lack of any explanation just makes it feel kind of cheap when someone wins because they can literally just pull any random move out of thin air and the audience just has to go with it.
I like Wixoss, and I don’t really need it to get bogged down in long winded expositions about the game, but a few more grounding details would be nice so at least the rule breaking or clever moves might have been more obvious because we understood a context for it.
More or less my thoughts on the series also. I also didn’t like Carnival much as the main foil, although I was even less of a fan Layla who didn’t have much to her. Aside from the villains, I did enjoy the other characters. Heck, even Suzuko didn’t have me rolling my eyes as much in season 4. Of course the star of the season was Kiyoi for me. I’m surprise how well she developed from season 1 all the way to season 4, and all feeling natural.
Totally agree about the new rules to the card games. It felt convoluted so it never felt like strategy was involved in winning the games. They were still fun to watch, but they definitely convince not to play the actual card game any time soon lol. I liked this season of WIXOSS, though lets wait, and see if there’s anything that comes next.
Kiyoi really did end up being the MVP of this franchise and her progress was great to watch.
I didn’t pay that much attention to Layla, but I agree she was mostly just there and didn’t have all that much to her.
Still, a very decent season and I felt this was a good conclusion to the franchise. Whether this is actually the end remains to be seen, but I’d be pretty happy to end it here.
Well, as you know this is another one that is on my to watch list, so I hope to get to it eventually 😊 And as I love cardgames (even though I know it’s not the focus of this anime) I want to check it out anyway. After I have seen the show, I promise to return to this post and let you hear my thoughts 😊
Hopefully you have some fun with this series when you get to it.
Is this the type of anime where it’s like Yu-Gi-Oh but it’s card game isn’t as popular here so I don’t understand exactly how it’s played?
I don’t think anyone who has watched this anime knows how the card game is played. The game exists but it is more a setting rather than a focus. This anime focuses very much on the characters and their interactions and how they deal with the consequences of the game, rather than on the actual playing of the game.