Agents of the Four Seasons: Dance of Spring

Episode 14

With that, we have reached the end of Agents of the Four Seasons: Dance of Spring. Did this final episode manage to somehow redeem the past thirteen episodes of meandering, manipulative melodrama? No, of course not. As single episodes of the show go, though, this finale was perfectly tolerable. It had to be, by virtue of being an ending (at least for now). Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, even the most vacuous nothing of a story will have something happening in its final chapter. Agents of the Four Seasons has been a bit more than a vacuous nothing of a story — though not by a whole lot — so we can't be too surprised that it didn't completely whiff its very last episode.

For Hinagiku, that titular Agent of Spring, I suppose the moment of real “growth” comes from when she issues an almost stern sort of command to her Guardian, which the twinkly and overbearing score insists is a big deal. I wouldn't go that far, but it's technically a step forward from just another goddamned flashback. She also confronts her evil Insurgent Kidnapper Mommy, but Misuzu is such a rock-stupid villain, both in concept and in execution, that I'm definitely not going out of my way to give this show any credit where she is concerned. Honestly, everything to do with the Insurgents in Agents of the Four Seasons has been a ridiculous failure, which is a pretty big problem for the series as a whole, since they're the source of every single conflict in the story.

Anyway, as you probably guessed the minute Misuzu was introduced, the villain gets defeated by our gang of seasonal misfits, and it ends up being Rosei who swoops in with Itecho to save the day. Since this is quite literally the only impactful thing these characters have accomplished in this entire season, sure, I'll give the Emo Iceboy some kudos, even though I fully believe he should have disregarded Hinagiku's plea for mercy and dispatched Misuzu right there with his icicle blade. It might not have been a thematically congruent way to conclude this whole arc, but imagine the pure satisfaction of it. Ah, what could have been.

Where I have to fault this finale, despite its most hamfisted and overwrought efforts, is how lame and underwhelming the ultimate reunion between the Spring and Winter duos ends up being. The entire season was spent using those stupid, stupid flashbacks to convince us that this damaged quartet of survivors shared this deep, emotional bond that has only become more vital with the time and distance that has separated them. What does all of that amount to, in the end? The same maudlin platitudes and Vaseline-smeared cinematography insist so desperately that we are watching something that is moving and compelling, despite all of the evidence to the contrary. I don't think I've been so invested in anti-shipping a couple since that terrible final episode of How I Met Your Mother.

Of course, it wouldn't be Agents of the Four Seasons without one final, confused declaration of definitely-for-sure-with-no-takebacks strictly platonic love between Hinagiku and Sakura. And that's it. That's all she wrote. I wish I could say that this finale redeemed Agents of the Four Seasons on some fundamental level, but this anime winds up amounting to less than the sum of its already ill-fitting parts. While it's far from the absolute worst anime to have aired this season, I cannot imagine that many shows beat this one out in terms of sheer disappointment over wasted potential.

Episode Rating:

Agents of the Four Seasons: Dance of Spring is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.

James is a writer with many thoughts and feelings about anime and other pop-culture, which can also be found on BlueSky, his blog, and his podcast.