Synopsis

In this world, there exist brave heroes known as Periods, who fight against the monstrous Spirals. Haru and his teammates Choco, Liza, and Gajeru are four such periods, and they work studiously for their beloved Arc End Branch Office #8. Unfortunately, upon returning from vacation, they discover their office’s fortunes have been stolen, and the branch closed entirely! Now it’s just up to the four of them to make their leader Erika proud, and perhaps one day restore their noble branch office’s fortunes. Of course, it would probably help if their leader assigned them any missions with an actual profit margin.

Review

The best way I can describe Last Period is that it’s Konosuba for gacha games instead of isekai light novels. It starts out with a giant info-dump of information about how Periods are warriors who fight Spirals and a few details about the world, but the plot quickly becomes less important than the little (and sometimes not so little) asides with gacha game references and meta commentary. These asides vary from a character suddenly showing up with a gacha for the main characters to roll in (which gives them a one star) to one of the characters complaining that having a mayor who only talks in money puns is lazy writing. The meta humor and gacha references are far and away the funniest part of the show, although a lot of it requires at least some basic knowledge of gacha games; I probably wouldn’t have found it as funny if I didn’t spend so much time playing Fate/Grand Order. The meta-jokes generally land, but Last Period’s regular humor is a lot more hit or miss. Some gags are pretty funny, like the villains’ overblown introduction and the Periods getting to keep their pet by calling it an emergency food supply, but too much of it is just generic yelling without much to support it. It doesn’t help that the main cast is almost universally generic. Haru, the main protagonist, is the most generic nice guy imaginable, and the others fall into the standard “tough guy best friend” and “mildly tsundere girl” archetypes. Choco stands out a bit more since her only reason for existing seems to be providing dry commentary and meta jokes, but the rest of the cast doesn’t do anything to stand out. The show does very little to establish who they are, and there isn’t any indication that their generic personalities are part of the joke. It’s not a completely fair comparison, but Last Period just doesn’t have the comedic bite or memorable cast that made Konosuba stand out so much. It’s not bad-more jokes hit than missed-but it’s nothing too special overall. It’s just average.

Recommendation: Wait and See