Hey everyone. What’s up? It’s Deven once again with a Speculation. It’s already a season passed? Wow it’s been some time. Time to revisit something from the Spring of 2014 anime! No it’s not Date A Live. Patience brothers and sisters all good things come to those that wait. I’m talking about Akuma no Riddle.
Now that the anime is over and I finally got some extra time on my hands(read: no internet so I have no choice but to work), I can finally get this Speculation done.
As you all know I did my first Akuma no Riddle Speculation while the anime was still airing so I didn’t really get to do all the characters and their flowers. I promised myself that after the anime I’d get to it but you know. Life gets in the way sometimes. But now I’ve got the time and more importantly the downloads so I’m adding all the ending songs for Speculation too!
Big thanks to Funimation for picking up Akuma no Riddle and subtitling all the endings! I’m going to one more Akuma no Riddle Speculation on who I think will get parts in this anime!
So let’s get going!
The beautiful Otoya(voiced by the even more beautiful Manami Numakura) will go first!
These are mountain lillies which mean joy of life which now that I have some hindsight works with Otoya’s personality. Someone that takes so much live would get their own jollies off killing.
At the beginning of Otoya’s song with that guitar rift(sorry if I got the term wrong. I don’t know music terms) it gives me a sight of a spider walking along a web. The theme of the song is basically you’re going to die so you might as well let Otoya have her fun with you. And Otoya’s fun hurts…a lot…all the time. Stay away until you want to die!
My cute little academic is second.
These are red spider lillies which have two meanings ‘looking forward to seeing you again’ and ‘sad memories’. We really get this a lot with Kouko because she really cared about her senpai Irina. Also to the fact that she was raised by a Christian orphanage so she must be a Christian so she would see Irina in heaven I guess. Sad memories also works since Kouko regrets her mistake with the car bomb that ended up killing Irina.
Kouko’s song quite simple in design. It’s her walking through in pace with the music. However the words are what get you. They describe Kouko’s life after she killed Irina, how she became so driven. Yet the song says that she wants to be saved from the life that she lives.
The better big sister is third and she’s really cool.
These are Verbena flowers which symbolize familial love. That fits perfectly with Haruki who loves her family so much that she became an assassin. You can guess that with the way she acts that if she wasn’t aiming to kill Haru then she’d be a pretty good person.
Now I look at the terms and searches that bring people to my blog and the most used one for Akuma no Riddle is Haruki Sagae!
Haruki’s song has a lot of yellows, blacks, and reds to it. However that’s not as important as the lyrics and the pictures. Haruki talks about how she wants to be free from the assassin life and is willing to give up her life to keep her promise to be there for her siblings. Now I said it in the original version of this post and I’ll say it again. This girl is the best big sister I’ve seen in an anime for a while. Now how many sisters are ready to kill for their siblings?
Every anime has one, the designated loli at fourth and her princely lover at fifth.
These are white and red roses which symbolize love for the red roses and purity for the white roses. You can see it in their relationship even without the yuri. Chitaru loved and respected her master so much that she joined the Black class to track down the girl that killed her daughter. Hitsugi has in her personality which is very innocent and kind minus the whole Angel’s Trumpet thing.
Even I can’t mess this up! It’s a tragedy song. It’s all about how Hitsugi and Chitaru are star-crossed lovers. Nothing else matter other than their pure Yuri love! I love it! It also talks about how if the world would reject them and their angels turn into demons they’d plummet into Hell. Sounds great!
She didn’t get much but here she is as number six.
These are thistles which symbolic of revenge. Now in the anime we can’t see this but in the manga we can see this through Shiena’s conversation with Otoya about how she hates bullying. So she could have been bullied while she was little so she could have become an assassin to kill the people that bullied her.
Note: Shiena did not get an ending song or a song on any of the character CDs which is odd since she was on the cover of the second one.
The Immortal Highlander comes in at number seven!
These are Red Tulips which symbolize declarations of love. It works well with Suzu because her life is all about love, losing it ,gaining, and losing it again. Seeing as she lost her first boyfriend because of her Highlander Syndrome and she has a massive shiptease with Kouko. I approve! Two of my favorite girls on this show with beautiful Yuri action? I’d faint from happiness! She also shows moving on pass lost loves. At the end of the anime you see Suzu moving on pass her lost love and vowing to make the best of her immortal life.
Now I look at the most popular posts on my blog too, And How Old Are You, Shuto-san? is one of the most popular post dealing with Akuma no Riddle. Thanks!
Now this song just puts all of Suzu’s feelings in one song and just goes all out with it. The image while she’s singing is of Suzu in her old Meiji Restoration kimono holding hands with her old boyfriend and as the song ends she shifts to the clothes she wears now. The song talks about how much she hurts about losing her lover because of her disease and she hasn’t forgotten him no matter how many years pass.
The girl with two minds is coming in at eight!
These are Moonflowers and Japanese Bindweeds which symbolize bewitching and ties respectively. You can see the bewitching part very clearly with Mahiru. No one seems her a threat. They’re all afraid of Shinya who they think is the real killer. However Mahiru’s the one that wants to do all the killing. Shinya just does the deed. The only person that figured this out was Otoya ironically saying they have more in common during the day that what appears. As for ties, she wears a tie in her uniform…hahaha . I had to do that. Anyway ties represent how Mahiru and Shinya are tied together spiritually and emotional as well as physical all because they are two halves of the same person. One is dependent on the other.
Now this song is a contraster type. Mahiru’s voice is very soft and feminine. However the beat track is a strong drum beat with rock guitars. I kinda would call it techno. Of course it works with her voice but the idea is the constrast. For her voice you’d expect a ballad like music but we’ve got techno. As for the lyrics, she talks about lack of hope and trying to escape only to break down in tears at the hopelessness. Then it has the sound of glass breaking and the style of the lyrics to a lot more dark stuff. So it’s safe to say it’s Shinya’s lyrics.
The sex symbol for this anime comes in at number 9.
(Side Note: Some of you might not think that Isuke’s the sex symbol for this anime. Let me remind you of some facts. She wears a mini-skirt, thigh high boots, shows her middrift, wears a leather top, has some of the biggest boobs in this anime, and she’s the only one that jumps into a bikini when they go to the pool. Yep she’s sexy!)
These are Red Carnations which symbolize believing in love. However what’s unique about Isuke’s flower is that it’s a bud and not a fully grown flower. You can make the logical guess that Isuke’s still young about love. But you clearly see that the main reason that she came to Myojo Academy is to win money so her parents would have a nice life after they retired. However I guess it’s a young love because she thinks that money can buy happiness. It can but it only last so long.
Side note: Don’t tell me that new PS3 or PS4 you got didn’t make you happy! You know you’re lying if you said it doesn’t.
So she’s trying to make her parents happy by giving them things when she could just be spending time with them. Esuke outright said that they missed her while she was at Myojo Academy. So instead of doing the quick assassin jobs and being able to spend more time with her family, she did a long job with the possibility of getting paid more and stayed away far longer and nearly got killed by Tokaku.
This song does Isuke well. It’s perky and her Seiyuu has such a sexy voice. It’s talks about how basically how badass she is. But it also talks about how even Isuke has people she cares about. The ending really conveys Isuke’s personality.
The princess comes in at number 10.
These are Iceland Poppies which symbolize comfort and relaxation. Now for Hanabusa this is pretty easy to see. She’s rich so she can afford to take it easy and not have to stress herself. Also the fact that she can bring in her own furniture so she doesn’t have to be uncomfortable. She even rented an entire floor of Myojo Academy and altered it to suit her tastes. She’s used to living in comfort.
Hanabusa’s song has to be the best song this anime made! It’s freaking badass. The music is awesome rock but Hanabusa’s voice is just so calm and chill. This ending basically says what I’ve been saying since Hanabusa went after Haru. Sumireko Hanabusa is the princess of badass and we should all start bowing down. The song does talks about how futility of situations and how cruel life is. However Hanabusa ain’t going to give up. She’s going to fight and pull out her trump card at the last minute.
That’s it for the flowers since Haru, Tokaku, and Nio do not have any. I’m not going to do Haru or Tokaku’s endings since this was supposed to be a flower and song update thing.
The final ending goes to the the Queen of Misdirection and the Unexpected at number 11.
Nio’s Seiyuu is Yoshino Nanjo, also the Seiyuu of Eli Ayase and she’s the lead singer of FripSide and a member of Lantis’s Seiyuu made Muse. So it’s not any shock that she can sing like a goddess!
Nio’s song…just Nio’s song. Note that’s shivers of fear. The song makes excellent use of dark pauses and then Nio’s face comes up smiling with that toothy grin she’s got. A bit frightening.
Now this song has some stuff that you can speculate about. One scene is Nio on a stage being controlled by puppet strings. You can clearly see that means Yuri’s controlling her. My guess is with her Queen Bee ability. Some of the lyrics talk about how Nio wishes she could fly away from where she is. She talks about how no one ever was kind enough to tell her the truth. So that makes me guess that even at the end of the anime Nio still doesn’t know that she’s under Yuri’s Queen Bee ability.
The final part of the ending is the clencher. You see Nio at the top of some type of platform and then a scene or two later you see Nio’s shoes on the ground. Now that doesn’t mean anything in the western world but in Japan people take off their shoes before they commit suicide, particularly jumping in front of trains or buses.
Wow. She killed herself. You can clearly see that Yuri uses Nio and in some part of herself Nio wants her independence. So she takes back the only way she can.
Also I’m guessing Yuri has sex with Nio. Mostly because a lot of the promo shots that have Yuri in them have Nio in them as well. So we all know how this turns out in the manga(Not the anime, they were too scared to give the real yuri), all girl school, servant that will do whatever you say, freaking Yuri manga! It’s obvious.
So on that happy note, I’ll end my Akuma no Riddle Speculation now.
I need some brain bleach after that one. And I’ve got the good stuff! Love Live…wow I’ve done a lot of Love Live Posts lately. Maybe I should do something else? Nah you guys love Love Live. Next Love Live post will be about the OVAs that came with Love Live Endless Parade Concert.
So until then,
Later Days
You can ask me as many questions as you want on Ask.fm and you can follow me on Twitter to know when my new reviews are coming out. You’ll also be update on what’s happening.