WARNING: The following article contains SPOILERS for Wolf Girl and Black Prince Episodes 10, 11, and 12. If you don’t want to be spoiled, please stop reading. You have been warned.
So Wolf Girl and Black Prince has come to a close. Despite the fact that this series has continually outdone itself up to this point, I was admittedly a bit disappointed in the final two episodes. They were not bad by any means, but they are just not the type of episodes that I feel would be appropriate for a finale. I am still unsure if this series is going to get a second season, or if it would be appropriate for it to do so, but let’s stick to these three episodes for now.
Episode 10, unlike episodes 11 and 12, followed the series’ pattern of repeatedly outdoing itself. This episode is about Erika’s birthday, and what she wants for it. In particular, Kyoya overhears that she wants his love. Considering his antisocial nature and hesitance to swallow his pride, this actually turns out to be difficult for him; yet he is actually determined to make it happen. While this series has already proven that Kyoya was genuine in his feelings, it still does an amazing job at showing that Kyoya is a very multi dimensional character. This episode has Kyoya trying to tell Erika straight out that he loves her, but having difficulty with it multiple times. Yes this is a typical scenario in love stories, but it is given a unique twist in that Kyoya is telling his feelings strictly to make Erika happy. There are also some pretty depressing moments when Kyoya overhears people saying that men who are incapable of telling a woman how they feel are pathetic, or when a young child got scared of Kyoya because he looked “scary”.
This really shows just how far the series has come. Initially, Kyoya was shown as a sadist, yet now we see a much softer side to him. What really makes this episode is how Kyoya’s confession is delivered. It comes at a point when you think he is not going to say it and that he will chicken out. Afterwards Erika states that this was the best birthday she has had due to how Kyoya made her feel. Specifically, she said that others have made her feel happy, but this was the only one that she did not want to end. Really it just goes to show that companionship is a better gift than any physical object.
Episode 11 is where my thoughts start to get jaded. This episode starts by introducing us to Kyoya’s sister Reina. More specifically, Kyoya runs into her on the street and she decides to stay at Kyoya’s apartment without his consent because… honestly I don’t know. This is a key problem with this episode; they clearly try very hard to set up Reina as an unlikable bully who acts nice to everyone except Kyoya, but they do so by making Kyoya painfully out of character. Yes, I know there is the idea of bully types being that way due to being unable to stand up to people who are stronger than them; especially when it is an older sibling.
The problem with this approach is that Kyoya is not a typical schoolyard bully. He is the type who despite being a prick earlier, is far from being a coward. The idea could have been that he was more hesitant because it was his sister, but I find that hard to believe considering that his sister has no leverage on him. Kyoya does not live with his mom and can easily say no to having Reina stay with him, and I would not have blamed him if he did. It is downright inconsistent that Kyoya can constantly display a “don’t give a fuck” attitude and, let’s not kid ourselves here, be kind of a dick to even his own girlfriend; yet the moment his sister gets involved he suddenly loses his stones. Not to mention that Reina threatens to go into Kyoya’s drawer and cut up all his clothes which is enough to make him go along with what she is doing. I don’t know about Japanese law, but I am pretty sure that going into someone’s house and vandalizing their property is not something you can get away with.
This has always been something that bugged me about these shows. They always have it so that a character can get away with something that would get them in serious trouble because… once again I have no clue. It certainly is not funny seeing as how it is always done to make a character look annoying (which is a horrible way to write a character, by the way) and people cannot typically laugh at someone they sympathize with. Yet these sequences almost never add anything of real significance to the plot either, so it basically is just derailing a character for no reason.
What makes this even worse is that they flip flop on this and try to tell us that Reina is well meaning and is looking out for Kyoya. If they made the episode about Kyoya standing up to her sister, I may have been able to tolerate it. However, the fact that they try and brush Reina’s abhorrent and dickish personality under the rug is what makes this the only episode of the series that I would say is legitimately bad. You do not just introduce a character, have them be a complete asshole, and then throw in some sappy lip service development and expect that to qualify as good; especially in a series that has done an amazing job with its implications up to this point. Honestly, there are a lot of other little things that bug me about this episode, but that is the main problem.
Our final episode is, thankfully, a serious improvement over the last one. This episode continues after a cliffhanger about Erika meeting Kyoya’s mother. Granted the cliffhanger was an obvious troll in that it showed a transvestite wearing hula clothes at the end. It turns out that Kyoya’s mother is actually a very nice woman and raised them both well. It is also worth mentioning that Reina is not nearly as bad in this episode as the last one. Anyway, you hear about how Kyoya has shut off all his emotions ever since his parents got divorced, seeing as how he was too young to process it properly. So Kyoya’s mom is happy that Erika is with him simply because that means she can open up Kyoya’s heart again. The episode then takes place at a fireworks festival that Kyoya, Erika, and Reina went to. Erika gets Kyoya’s mom to come so that they can all enjoy it together. The main conflict ends up being that Erika drops her necklace, which Kyoya gave her, and is trying desperately to look through the garbage to get it. Once Kyoya finds out, instead of giving any snarky commentary, he simply helps her look for it as well. It ends where people eventually find that it fell between the two dumpsters. Afterwards they just go home.
This episode was a pretty good one for the most part. It did well to develop Kyoya’s character and back story. The only issue is that this episode doesn’t seem too fitting for a finale and it just feels like an ordinary episode. Granted that is still a good thing in overall quality, considering every episode in this series aside from the one prior. However it feels a bit half-assed considering that there were multiple episodes before this one that would have worked as a better finale. This is all with the view of this being a finale though, and if this series gets a second season then this speculation won’t really hold any meaning. So we can just leave it at episode 12 was a good episode that was far better than episode 11, and hopefully episode 11 does not repeat itself if there is a second season.
