Rooster Fighter

Episode 12

We've finally come to the last episode of this season of Rooster Fighter, and boy, was I wrong about Hikari's relationship with the main lady villain. Last week I confidently said that I wished the show would've spent more time diving into why Hikari's relationship with his mother had soured to the point where she was basically okay with sacrificing him, but I should've just been patient and trusted the show. She's about as “mom” to him as I am to my sourdough starter, including the part where I order it to its death.

In my defense, they did try to make it vague, and I am but a simple creature that is entirely too trusting of everything I see on screen. Also I see now that Hikari's mom looks nothing like his demon “mom,” but you could've convinced me that was just her evil variant—see exhibit Demon Hikari vs. Normal. But in this episode, we do finally get his complete story, and it is pretty tragic and messed up. What we don't get is any insight into who or what the devils are, where they came from, why they've been warring with an ancestral clan of chickens, and why they're different from the demons. I know, I know, we have to be patient about this too, but we've come to the end of the season and we haven't come much closer to understanding some critical pieces of lore in this world. I can't complain, considering how long it took for other similar shows (if I even dare compare a show about a super-powered rooster to, say, Attack on Titan), but when your whole shtick is rather satirical in nature, you kind of owe it to your viewers to do a little more world-building upfront.

That said, it always did feel as though series like Attack on Titan had a plan, whereas I'm not sure Rooster Fighter has always felt this way. And I'm saying that as an anime-only viewer who isn't caught up on the manga, so I'm mostly flying blind. It's been fun not knowing how each battle would resolve, or what the next twist and turn would be, though many of the resolutions in this show seem way too convenient. Just in these final warehouse episodes alone, the story has hand-waived away several major points, including Morio and Hikaru's continued presence, and especially Piyoko's whole power development. The latter can be forgiven—the series deserves to save that for the second season, even if it's weird that they just never alluded to it ever again, but the former… let's just say it feels a little cheap. How many times are we going to try and tug the Morio heartstrings, only to pull a reverse. Tragic events are starting to feel like crying wolf around here.

Ultimately, this didn't really feel like a season finale. Things are semi-wrapped up, in that all the chickens have been reunited and they're all in one piece, but the episode mostly played out like an epilogue to a mini-boss fight. The backstory of Hikari is good in isolation, but putting it in the finale isn't necessarily the best place for it. It would've worked better in the previous episode, freeing up more time this week to properly chart a path towards the second season (which is in development!) and properly tease both Keiji and Piyoko's new powers beyond a cautionary throwaway line about the final boss (the White Demon) being stronger than all the previously ones combined. Yeah, we know.

Still, although this first season of Rooster Fighter has certainly had its ups and downs, it's been an overall solid season. It's been fairly consistent in terms of quality—the battle scenes and 3D modeling have been on point, the chicken-related visuals have been outstanding (forgive me for laughing out loud at the way Elizabeth gave Keiji and Keisuke's dad chest compressions), and all of the bad guys have been extremely glorpy in the best way possible. The only negatives were some of the pacing decisions. I appreciate an ebb and flow in storytelling, especially in action-heavy shows, but Rooster Fighter could do well to better balance its chicken gags with some of the more monotonous fights. At the end of the day, though, it accomplished something spectacular, which was to make a highly watchable show about chickens trying to save the world, and that deserves its own accolades.

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Rooster Fighter is currently airing on Toonami and streaming on Disney+/Hulu.