Parallel World Pharmacy

Episode 12

As a title, "Those He Couldn't Cure" seems like a bit of false advertisement so far as the finale of Parallel World Pharmacy goes, because it appears to imply that Farma's efforts to protect his loved ones and his new world from the Black Death will, in fact, fail in some capacity. That couldn't really be further from the truth, though, since Farma's eventual victory doesn't just come with virtually no casualties (aside from what we've already seen), it feels like a really easy win, given the circumstances. Sure, the title is more explicitly referring to the nefarious (and ridiculously named) Camus de Sade, who earns the dubious honor of being the first person Farma has had to kill in his role as this world's protector, but de Sade's reform was never on the table to begin with, since he was afflicted with a terminal case of Being Really Evil.

I don't want you to get the impression that I was massively disappointed with this season finale, because it was honestly perfectly serviceable. Farma fights the bad guy with the help of his dad, saves Lotte and Cedric from being poisoned to death, and prevents the mass death that might have been caused by Camus' flying plague squirrels (which will never not be hilarious, to me). All's well that ends well, and I'm certainly glad that our beloved PWP crew didn't all get horribly murdered by a crazy necromancer and all. I just wish that this last adventure of the season had a little more weight to it. A little more bite.

The core issues can be boiled down to two core areas in which "Those He Couldn't Cure" struggled to live up to the expectations it was trying to establish for itself. The first is purely a matter of production. While there are some solid cuts of animation throughout the episode, particularly during Farma and his father's fight with Camus, the product as a whole suffers from the same limited animation and middling direction that has always held Parallel World Pharmacy back. Far too much of this finale ends up feeling like a slideshow, especially in its final third, and the art can't make up for the animation's deficiencies. For instance, Camus de Sade should be an unholy terror ripped straight from the frames of a gore-soaked horror movie, but what he actually resembles is a guy who took two really cheap Halloween masks and clumsily stapled them together. He's less threatening than your average Power Rangers villain (and that's coming from a big tokusatsu fan).

Unfortunately, I'm not sure that de Sade ever would have felt like a truly worthy foe for Farma, because the episode's other major fault is that it never does enough to make you feel like Farma is in any danger of failing. I was surprised for a minute or two when the show actually had Lotte get stabbed right after Cedric did, but it only takes a minute or two for Farma to figure out the poisons and magic them out of existence. Since he's only had one episode (and a single pre-credits scene from another) to be introduced at all, Camus never comes across as a legitimate threat, because his entire shtick boils down to him being a raging psychopath. The only barriers to Farma's victory were those of space and time; once Farma figured out what was going on and simply made his way back to the Parallel World Pharmacy, Camus was done for. This half-rotten madman never going to outwit Farma, or outmatch his magical strength, and all it takes is one magic blast of energy on Farma's part to put Camus down for good. That same blast also manages to cure the whole capital of any pesky plague, which really makes all of the hubbub from the last couple of episodes feel a bit hollow.

Still, all this really confirms is that action and spectacle are not Parallel World Pharmacy's strong points, which we all knew already. The show is in no danger of being spoiled by a lackluster finale; it is still as charming and engaging as ever when it focuses on character work and world-building. I hope we get a second season of this one, someday, though I would also hope that it scales back on the Saturday Morning Cartoon villainy and spends more time educating us on things like pharmaceutical economics and the merits of well-regulated laws and equitable business practices in a burgeoning industrial revolution. It may seem strange, but that's when Parallel World Pharmacy is truly at its most exciting.

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Parallel World Pharmacy 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 Twitter, his blog, and his podcast.