Endings

The Japanese seem to have trouble with decent endings (ok, a little exaggeration) so here’s some stuff about endings, loosely lumped into categories (we’ll try to avoid spoilers).

I’m putting these here because I’m sick of inconclusive or just plain gutting endings to otherwise good series ;-).

It should also be noted that quite a few series have endings best summarised as:

1. Everyone except the protagonist dies/the world is destroyed/reality is completely FUBAR.
2. The protagonist discovers his destiny and reshapes reality so step 1 didn’t actually happen.
3. Everyone lives happily ever after. But is it real?

This seems a lot like cheating, but they seem to make it work.

Good/Happy/Satisfying Endings

• RahXephon
• Vandread
• Trigun (although a pretty gutting moment or two near the end)
• Fullmetal Panic (not entirely conclusive, but satisfying enough)
• Love Hina (as long as you watch the extra (unfortunately extra-dodgy) episodes
• Ghost in the Shell: SAC1/2
• Ergo Proxy
• Zegapain
• Scrapped Princess
• Last Exile

Mixed-feeling Endings

(Not necessarily bad endings; some of these are very well executed, just not entirely happy or conclusive.)

• Blood+ {I quite liked the ending to this one -eonsim}
• Fullmetal Alchemist
• Neon Genesis {many people hated the ending, and it felt a little tacked-on, but I thought it wasn’t too bad if you avoided the movies, I seem to remember —mattw; the endings kind of made sense if you could be bothered reading an episode review which explained what the heck was actually going on, apart from that though I had very little idea what on earth was happening for the last 3-4 episodes — eonsim}

Sad Endings (“Everyone dies”)

• Samurai X
• Wolf’s Rain (but oh-so-excellent)

What is this ‘endings’ of which you speak?

• Serial Experiments Lain {okay, not quite true, but I’m still trying to figure out what actually happened, and what Lain is, and what the hey-ull was all that Area 51 stuff about? —mattw}