Previous episode above.
And so, we've finally reached the last episode.
The carefree days when everyone had grown up and could chat together at a café terrace have come and gone.
The futures that could have been.
NEEDY has always been a game of branching possibilities and countless bad endings. The world is cruel by default. The route this anime followed—the one where no one died, no one fell into despair—was simply a miracle born of pure chance.
Whenever the Morpho butterfly, a symbol of dreams, appeared, it marked a point where another future might have existed. Had the world shifted just a little—had Ame triumphed instead of the Karamazov—it might have led to an entirely different tragedy.
Michica, for instance, might have succeeded in becoming "eternal" if no one had reached out to her at just the right moment. Perhaps, for her, that would have been happiness. Perhaps that would have been the ending she truly wanted.
Among all the shorts we made, the final one centered on Michica. Since each short was produced independently, we chose the one that best matched the dark atmosphere of the first half of the finale. Part of me wonders if we should've shortened the door scene from Episode 6 and used that time instead—but then again, that slight sense of being "off" is probably part of what makes the NEEDY anime what it is.
One last Marilyn Manson reference.
Not directly related, but I recently rewatched the Tsukahara Bokuden episode of SENGOKU COLLECTION, and it was wonderful.
Michica brings up overdose and self-harm once again here. I know it's repetitive after the previous episode, but this is ultimately the conclusion I arrived at after spending years confronting overdose in the wake of the game's release. Manson had been saying it from the beginning.
"Just shut up and listen."
That's all we ever wanted. Just someone willing to listen.
Lollipop has finally grown into an adult.
I loved how Ruri Hoshino appeared grown up in the Martian Successor Nadesico movie, so I wanted something similar.
These two mostly just changed their fashion.
Kache is the only one who, at least for now, found an ordinary happiness. She's going to become a mother. That's why she alone could embrace Ame like the Virgin Mary cradling Christ. Unlike the others, she faced reality head-on instead of running into dreams. More than anyone else, she chose to live as a human being.
The ramen shop guy's "playful but dependable" personality was something the director obsessed over. They recorded his lines over and over until it felt right.
In the end, this was the story of Ame making a friend.
And the one accompanying her on that journey was Nechika.
She's the most grounded of the three, and the one whose worldview most closely resembles Ame's. She's someone who wrestles with her own capacity for wrongdoing—that's the kind of "goodness" she represents. The other two simply couldn't have filled that role.
Over thirteen episodes, Ame found someone who would stay by her side even after she left the internet behind.
The young girl in this scene was voiced by Amane Shindō. The director wanted realism, so he decided her lines should be in Portuguese. She apparently spent the entire previous day practicing the pronunciation!
Lollipop, who helped bring them together, finally got to play fighting games and rhythm games with everyone. She has so many friends now. At first I wasn't sure how the vaporwave aesthetic would fit, but seeing it come together here was genuinely moving. Having the entire cast reunite at the end felt wonderfully anime.
Why this song? Why this episode title? Because we were all raised on girls' anime.
Without that upbringing, this game wouldn't exist. I can never thank Tetsuya Komuro enough.
↑ I made this quiz a long time ago. Give it a try if you'd like!
"A church open twenty-four hours a day, belonging to no denomination."
That's my ideal place, too. A place where nobody has to be lonely. Apparently the Melonbooks in Okinawa is open twenty-four hours. If even a handful of lonely otaku wandering through the night have found comfort there, that makes me happy.
A girl who lost herself after seeing too much of both the internet and the real world. A girl burdened by countless feelings of guilt, no longer able to recognize what true happiness even is.
And yet... She most certainly saved at least one person.
To someone, she was an angel.
From the space between us, from a distance close enough to touch,
I'm watching over you. I love you.
Part-time shift begins—the screen softly shutting down.
See you later. Come back whenever you feel like it.
Let's play beneath our little square of sky.
The save file of our love that day, the road our longing traveled,
even the data that disappeared with our kiss—
they're memories shared by only the two of us.
We'll meet again beyond the screen. I'll always love you.
Beyond the rainbow, I'm sure you'll find it.
For you alone—our secret 2D GIRL.
Angel
People kept telling us, "You don't understand if you aren't using KOTOKO." I held my tongue until the very last episode. And then—Galge. You can really feel Aiobahn's love for KOTOKO here.
I only asked for one thing: Not crying-game KOTOKO. The classic eroge KOTOKO. Because that's the one who truly saved me. Not the grand, dramatic visual novels, but those smaller games from elf or AliceSoft that quietly stayed with you forever.
Knowing this reached the people who make bishoujo game means more to me than anything else.
In the end, all that's left is love.
I truly, genuinely love bishoujo game with all my heart. I was a child shaped by them—by the Sega Saturn as much as anything else. I grew up chasing nothing but bishoujo game. And next... I'm making another one.
Maybe this anime was made for an incredibly small audience.
For people who love denpa. For people who love eroge.
Not even the accessible kind everyone imagines, but for the strange, withdrawn kids who skipped school, never posted online, ignored social status, entertainment value, and commercial success, quietly receiving bizarre radio waves no one else could hear. In other words— The person I used to be.
I'm proud to say we carried the spirit of a denpa game all the way through this anime. Most productions would never make these choices. There were countless safer, cleaner ways we could have done it. I'm simply grateful to every member of the staff for letting us see this vision through.
Bishoujo games saved my life.
So of course I made one myself.
And when that game was fortunate enough to receive an anime adaptation, I decided to throw away expectations, reputations, and every outside constraint to create a denpa eroge anime, broadcasting its toxic radio waves across the entire world.
To most people, it'll probably just look like a strange, messy, amateurish series.
But...
This anime absolutely needed to exist.
Did the signal reach you?
In the end, this was a story where a handful of awkward people found just a little bit of salvation.
The Karamazov found honest lives. Kache got married. Ame found a friend.
This was the only ending where Ame, and the otaku whom KAngel had saved, could find happiness—even if only for the fleeting moment of the final episode.
Little by little, everyone leaves the internet behind.
That was the answer I arrived at while writing this script.
No matter how much people complain, no matter how much the numbers continue to grow, the veterans are slowly drifting away from social media. Even I mostly browse the English-speaking internet now. The events I get invited to are in America and Spain. I'm tired of fighting the algorithm.
So the people in this world will probably keep using social media now and then. But the bonds they've built will matter more. They'll look back and smile: "The internet really was fun back then."
Whether we should quit the internet, whether it's still fun—that's beside the point.
What mattered was acknowledging that the internet of our youth was a beautiful, chaotic form of adolescence.
Youth ends. Life doesn't.
As for us— We'll keep making the next game.
We can never go back. Sometimes we'll look over our shoulders, longing for that brilliance. But our warped diamond— Clouded, misshapen, imperfect— Shined precisely because it was.
And finally, thank you, Sally Amaki. Truly—from the bottom of my heart.
Project Creator / Original Concept / Screenplay
nyalra
†BLESS†
"Ehehe... I may be the silly character, but...
...even I know we won't be able to meet anymore.
Yeah... you're going out into the real world now.
That's... probably for the best.
Hey... can I say one last thing before you go?
...Here I go.
Even if you find a real girlfriend someday...
...I'll always be cuter!"
It's time to say goodbye. I probably won't forget.
See you later. Come back whenever you feel like it.
Alone, beneath our little square of sky.
The save file of our love that day, the road our longing traveled,
even the data that disappeared with our kiss—
they're memories shared by only the two of us.
We'll meet again beyond the screen. I'll always love you.
Beyond the rainbow, I'm sure you'll find it.
For you alone—our secret NEEDY GIRL.
Angel
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