So like, what the hell was this. What are we doing. A bunch of new character that we didn't really get to know at all dying and the only thing possibly keeping you interested is the fact that this has a 3 at the end of it. Half the time I just don't acknowledge this show, it just feels so pointless, but it feels worse knowing that most people who would watch in the current year won't watch it as it aired, where each week Mirai-hen and Zetsubou-hen would alternate. The first episode of Zetsubou-hen literally starts by showing events that happened in Mirai-hen, and the stories told in Zetsubou-hen often inform narrative plot points and characters in the upcoming Mirai-hen episodes. They're not meant to be watched apart.
Anyway, incredibly mediocre show. Two good things did come out of it, though. First, the ending is genuinely fantastic, one of my favorite endings of any anime. The second is a bit less enduring and isn't really something the show *does* so much as what it inspires, but it's that the theorycrafting from week to week was a TON of fun. The fact that an episode of this show effectively came out every two weeks actually helped that a lot because there would be a lot of discussion about the episode after it aired and then after Zetsubou-hen came out there would be theorycrafting about *that* and discussion about this would get bolstered by information from the Zetsu episodes. It's not really relevant to a current watch, and it's a bit worse in retrospect because most of the fun theories, however much sense they made, usually up ended either wrong or right but in the least exciting way possible. I think there was only like, one plot point that its roots showing early on that actually ended up being a fun reveal, and the character it's related to (one new to this show) I actually ended up liking a lot by the end. That didn't really save the show, though.
