 Uh-oh. Solty Rei has earned itself a tick in the negatives column by carrying on after the main storyline has finished - one of several aspect of this final volume that didn't impress me. That said, we also get a believable end to the main storyline with most loose ends properly tied up, so it's far from being all bad...
23 - Farewell Message
The battle with Accela has taken a lot out of Solty already, but her work isn't over yet. This time, at least, she won't be on her own, as Rose has decided to join her. Ashley, meanwhile, has Roy cornered, but rather than use the opportunity to get rid of an adversary, decides to tell Roy what he's planning. A crew member of the colony ship that brought humanity to this planet, he was one of the first to land and start building facilities for the humans who were coming down from the colony ship. One day, though, those humans stopped coming, with only one-third of those who were due to land having done so - and leaving Ashley's lover, Illumina, on the colony ship. Everything he's done since then has been with the aim of being reunited with Illumina - and the consequences to other people be damned...
24 - The Future
Three master computers were part of the colonisation project: Eunomia in the city, Eirene in the colony ship.. and Solty. With Eunomia deactivated, Eirene has decided that humanity is now a threat, and the colony ship has been set on a collision course with the city - and Solty is now the only thing that stands in the way of the coming destruction. Her best chance of stopping Eirene is by flying up to the colony ship and taking control of it herself - a mission that may well be a one-way trip, a notion that Roy in particular doesn't like at all...
25/26 - Opportunities Missed / Love Shared
Rewind, to Appreciation Day - a public holiday that gives people the chance to remember and thank those who they appreciate most, whoever that may be. Roy, though, is waiting on a client - and is thrown off-balance when she arrives, as she bears a striking resemblance to his dead wife, Sarah. The situation becomes doubly surreal when she asks him for help with her daughter. Kasha, meanwhile, is being quizzed on the meaning of happiness, and whether she feels happy or not - a question that seems to be the theme for the day - while Rose finds herself on the other side of Roy's case when the daughter comes to ask her for help...
Let's get that OVA episode off my chest first, I think. GONZO were one of the first companies to shift from the usual 26-episode '2-cour' season to 24 episodes, and that's the number you expect from them now in any series. Here, the story ends within the 24, as you'd expect - only for a double-length flashback filler episode to appear at the end to mess things up a little. Why is this a bad thing? Mainly, we've said goodbye to the characters already, Solty in particular, at the end of episode 24. Also, going back in time in this way takes us back in the development of the characters, to how they were before they grew and developed - and there's a mental clashing of gears as you try and get back to how they were then. On rare occasions, this sort of episode works - the Mahoromatic Summer Special would be my favourite example - but most of the time it just doesn't feel right, and that's the category that Solty Rei's 'bonus' episode falls into. Personally, I would have liked it to have been slotted into the proper place in the show's timeline, but then there's that group of fandom that would get all worked up about the running order. Sometimes, you just can't win.
So we'll put the bonus episode to one side, and get back to the main event. Ashley, for all his long-lived years (the advantage of being a full-body Resemble) clearly hasn't used any of those years to go and read the Evil Overlord's Handbook. If he had, he would know that when you have your main adversary backed into a corner, you just shoot them, dammit!, and don't start into your tale of woe. Yes, I'm sure you are just a heartbroken man, but we're not going to take that as a valid excuse for trying to destroy the world. Sheesh. Fortunately, all that talking gives Rose time to come to the rescue, allowing us to move on to Solty saving the world.
I mentioned in the introduction that most of the show's loose ends were tied up, but Solty herself is the noticeable exception. The other two master computers were in static locations, as super-computers should be, and had defined roles: Eunomia in the city, Eirene in the colony ship. What, then, was Solty's purpose? How did she come to be in a Resemble body? Why did her programming clearly contain an emotional element that the other two didn't have? All this goes unanswered, despite being they mysteries of the show that I really wanted to see answered - Solty was, after all, the star of the show, and I couldn't help but feel she'd been hard done by.
She does get given a suitable send-off, though, and the epilogue to episode 24 gives the series a suitable feeling of closure - only for the bonus episode to come along and undo it. Bah. Over the course of its run, Solty Rei has been a series that has had its ups and downs, and overall it comes out at the end as simply okay - there's enough about it to make it worthwhile, but I'd class it more as a rental than one to rush out and buy. This volume ties off the series nicely, but sticks to that overall 'okay' theme. Good, but could definitely have been better.
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