Ten great series with nerfed endings
Rachel's post on "anime ending rewrites" got me wondering about the anime endings that I'd love to see refined and boy, I was surprised at the names that came up. Some of them happen to be my all time-favourites. I suppose love for these series compels my seeking for their perfection. XD Surely, you wouldn't see me clamouring for a rewrite for Yumeria. And so, here's a list of good series that, in my personal opinion, could use a little tweaking at the finale or concluding episodes to attain that next level of greatness.
AIR - Less cryptic pseudo-Shinto masquerades and more concrete closure.
Asatte no houkou - Needs something with more poignant to surpass its climatic ep 8.
Claymore - Less shounen power-ups and more character closure.
Escaflowne - Needs another ep or 2 to ease the inertia of the end.
Evangelion (TV) - Need a real ending.
Fullmetal Alchemist - Needs another cour to resolve mysteries.
Gundam SEED - Another 2 wrap-up eps instead of Destiny would have sufficed.
Infinite Ryvius - Needs another cour to flesh out the well-crafted but undeveloped chars.
Mai HiME - There should have been a real death. Preferably Mai or Mikoto's.
Sola - Matsuri and paperboy's motivations needs to be checked and made more consistent.
Note that series like Mahoromatic and Zero no tsukaima don't need better endings, they need 2nd season rewrites. Fate/Stay night and Tsukihime also don't need improved endings - they need Heaven's Feel and Kohaku's arcs respectively.
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January 25th, 2008 - 12:31
I thought that My-Hime’s ending was fine, but My-Otome needed another cour to properly pace out the series.
January 25th, 2008 - 13:20
you’re missing DNA^2. ending SUUUUUCKED.
January 25th, 2008 - 13:29
Good List
I had forgotton about ryvius. It was too upbeat? (not the right term) of an ending.
Seed destiny needed a wholesale slaughter of the rest of the main chracters such as shin and lunamaria etc etc in the final episodes.
The Mai hime ending pissed me off so much I almost broke my monitor.
Strain was another one that had potential that could have been salvaged if the writers had continued the Tomino kill off at the end.
Nice boat endings should be the standard for all dramas and harem animes!!
January 25th, 2008 - 13:59
Escaflowne was originally supposed to be longer, too. The production team did a good job with the less than budgeted episode count.
The ending was fine, but the reconciliation has always left me scratching my head. To this day, I think colliding wishes is a bit of a cop-out.
January 25th, 2008 - 14:14
Nice idea for a feature.
My poster boy for the whole “nerfed ending” banner would be Code-E; a slice-of-romance that was good until the last drop…that came way too soon. Then again, it’s getting a second season, so life is good.
Can’t speak of a lot of the shows on your list, but regarding the visual novel shows (of course XD), AIR’s ending was a bit off-putting for sure; but I always tell myself that’s because I don’t understand the true depth of ‘the cycle continuing on’ or something. i.e. I hated the sadness of it, but figured it was a ‘fulfilling’ ending.
I thought the ending for sola worked very well, with the exception of the tomato juice mindscrew at the end (it felt like it was forced), but I can see where you’re going with the motivations of Yorito and Matsuri, who were pretty all over the map for most of the series. Again, I’m not sure if that is because it is realistic portrayal (hey, I’ve never been told I’ve been made out of PAPER and don’t really exist, personally), or just poor storytelling.
January 25th, 2008 - 14:23
Fate needed UBW, imho. That shot in op 2 of Shiro vs Archer was cruel. Fate needed better pacing and more narration/explanation. Too much reliance on previous game knowledge and all that… it’s been said before. Tsukihime just needed to be done better period. Twice the episodes may have helped. Pacing was totally off. They bastardized Nero. And, as with Fate, they messed with parts of different game routes. But yeah, i guess it kinda goes without saying that Tsukihime Anime is “Kuro Rekishi” and JC Staff dropped the ball bigtime.
January 25th, 2008 - 16:11
Great post, couldn’t agree more…and yeah, Mahoromatic S2 did need a rewrite–I brought the first two R1s but skipped the last volume of the series completely thanks to the trainwreck of an ending…
January 25th, 2008 - 17:51
Asatte no Houku: I thought the ending was just right.
SOLA : Need better ending. I wonder what will happen if someone makes a 26 episode remake of this. They also need to give Koyori more screen time.
Fruits Basket: They have to overcome their difference and do the 2nd season, 39 episode long.
January 25th, 2008 - 18:10
Air’s ending was fine.
January 25th, 2008 - 19:14
Lot’s of anime have bad ending because they wanted to make the anime abit open ended so they can add new seasons after that.
So far the worst ending for me is Evangelion (TV), but there’s alternate ending version from the dvd (and I heard that the new rebuild movie will have different ending too ^^)
January 25th, 2008 - 23:35
jpmeyer: I was just hoping the series continue its tragic thrust following the Hime-lander tone.
Still that didn’t stop the series from clinching my favourite anime of all time 
CS: I haven’t seen DNA2. And after your comment, maybe it’s good I didn’t
hhkolb: Soukou no Strain almost made this list. I was disappointed at invincible onii-san’s poorly motivated betrayal. Destiny massacred the great characters in SEED (Cagalli and Athrun) and underdeveloped (or misdeveloped) the new cast (think Lunamaria). Glad Lacus was still as cool though
intro: Escaflowne was typical GREAT Sunrise pacing. The series just sucks you in but it also suffered from typical Sunrise closure. It felt really rushed. A great series nonetheless.
CCY: My main lament with Matsuri and Yorito was that I thought they actually managed to put the existentialism silliness behind them when Maturi impressed upon Yorito that the fact he was ‘there’ was what really mattered. Then they decided to disappear from the world. It didn’t gel.
shiki: Ah.. kuro rekishi..
Yeah Tsukihime would have done well if they had 24 eps and focused on the ‘far side of the moon’ arcs which was far and away the more intriuging of the tales.
suguru: Mahoro S2 retained the humour of S1 but lost the heart which was what set Mahoro apart from the other maid pretenders
I’d love Mahoromatic rebuilt XD
maglor: My wife asked me how I would have wanted to AnH to end? Hiro-nii with Karada aka non-blood related incest? And I knew I couldn’t argue with that XD
Koji Oe: maybe it’s because I can’t fully grasp the implications of the 2 kids on the beach to fully appreciate the finale.
ron~ : yeah kind of like Zero no tsukaima 2. I wouldn’t mind so much if the sequel come to redeem it except that most sequels don’t XD
January 26th, 2008 - 00:54
Yeah, maybe. I was at first going to comment by saying something condescending but I decided against it because maybe it just isn’t your cup of tea, the Shinto/Buddhist symbolism.
January 26th, 2008 - 03:42
I’ll say AIR had an “interesting version” of shinto/buddhist motifs it used … but it wasn’t really cryptic or pseudo…. I will agree that someone going expecting a straight ‘harem’ romance who hadn’t played the game will get blindsided when the supernatural stuff starts spraying (though you get a nasty little foreshadowing that “this ain’t Kansas, Toto” early in the series).
That aside, I think its easier to list the few series that DON’T need minor or major tweaks to their endings. Its like the anime industry invents these marvelous premises, stellar character designs.. gets rolling ……. and then they freaking don’t know how to end a series so it trainwrecks.
In the last five years I’ve seen maybe…..five or ten series out of several hundred that were fine just as they were. The rest had me pulling hair in various degrees.
January 26th, 2008 - 03:50
argh.. dropped my last paragraph…. sola is a posterchild example of what we’re describing. I was quite disappointed with their …. well, it might as well have been a forgotten dream kind of twist. Dammit and I liked the OP and first part of the series so much. Shuffle! was also a breakdown for me…. it wasn’t that Asa was selected.. I was fine with Asa or whatever (though S+N+K for the polygamous win) — what annoyed me was HOW they got to it. It really required some torturing of character design (what I call the “stickpuppet” phenom — you stop thinking of them as real characters because you can see the sticks underneath jerking them from spot to spot).
I was just left feeling the production team did not respect the characters at all (and then I got confirmation with the Memories fiasco).
January 26th, 2008 - 05:20
Yes agree with Sola needing a redo with the ending as i thought it wasn’t fleshed out properly…
Although the Evangelion tv ending was weird, i usually take the movie ending as the canon ending so that’s fine.
Also I agree CS that DNA2 needs a better ending, both the anime and especially the manga.. Damn after reading the ending it got me so frustrated…
January 26th, 2008 - 07:11
Agreed about Air and Evangelion. But EoE satisfied me, so just Air. I haven’t finished/watched the rest though.
January 26th, 2008 - 11:39
AIR – disagreed. Ending was a damn tearjerker, so it stays.
Escaflowne – disagreed. Nice warm ending is nice warm.
Evangelion – disagreed. The End of EVangelion makes up for it really well.
Full Metal Alchemist – agreed. THe alchemy world was kinda cool.
Mai HiME – agreed. It deserved a darker ending (Tate dead and such).
sola – agreed. Aono living happily after Matsuri and paperboy’s death just doesn’t make sense.
May I add 2?
Mahoromatic – WTF?
Myself; Yourself – And you call THAT an ending? Lost a lot of pace in the last 2 eps.
January 26th, 2008 - 15:30
Air’s ending: You’d have to be a real fanboy to accept that attempt at some psuedo-philosophical ejaculations in the last 5 minutes as an “ending”. It would have been absolutely fine if they didn’t put that in there.
January 26th, 2008 - 21:53
AIR – The whole thing with the Summer Arc and the crow lost me.
Myself; Yourself – Went from being a pleasant romantic comedy to a train wreck to an absolute mess.
And candidate for this season:
True Tears – If they pull the Hiromi ending I would seriously have issues with this show. Noe is so superior that it really looks like a colossal mismatch to me. I know, “first girl wins”, but she didn’t win in Shuffle! or D.C., so still holding out some hope.
Show is quite good so far, so keeping my fingers crossed…
January 26th, 2008 - 22:53
AGREED whole-heartedly with mai hime and zero no tsukaima.
As for DNA^2, I would view the ending as brutal but suiting.
January 27th, 2008 - 03:48
Beowulf Lee: You underestimated AIR. Never underestimate your enemy. ^^
dsong: You’re so tsundere for Hiromi xD
January 27th, 2008 - 09:05
About true tears, I actually think a Shin X Hiromi end is the way to go
I love Noe but she’s way out of Shin’s league. Shin and Hiromi would be the more compatible couple.
As for AIR, I think a rewatch is in order for me
January 27th, 2008 - 09:19
Air(TV)’s ending was fine in my opionion. It got the message across. What was more critical was the feeling that Air(TV) tried to cram too much material within the span of one-cour (less even, if you don’t count Ep13).
With only 12-13 episodes to play with, they should have bitten the bullet and shift all the focus on Misuzu at the expense of the other two girls, instead of bleeding air-time for the secondary girls, only for them to utterly disappear without a trace in the later episodes. A very jarring effect if one pauses to stop crying at those points.
Air(TV) was a great watch… but it has far too much wasted potential. One of the reasons why even though it was a very emotionally captivating anime for me, it will never enter my personal Top10 list.
Cheers.
January 28th, 2008 - 23:45
Indeed, unlike Kanon which still had screentime for ‘expended characters’, Kano and Minagi practically disappeared after their arcs although there was still talk of them. That said, I thought their arcs were already very lean. Each of them took no more than 2 eps. Maybe it’s the ancient and crow segments that need more trimming? I don’t know..
January 30th, 2008 - 17:00
Claymore’s ending was destined to be awful the second they decided to deviate from the manga and then basically go BACK to open-ended ending so they could leech off the manga down the line.
January 30th, 2008 - 18:57
Evangelion (TV): Yeah I think about everyone agrees with you on that.
Fullmetal Alchemist: That show kind of lost me after a while.
I’d have to add:
Trigun: I don’t mind the one character dieing (it was a great story), but I’d rather the show just have stayed episodic.
Chobits: The main character decided to fall in love with a character that was for the most of the show had the intelligence of a pet dog. There is just something very wrong about that. In fact . . why not just scrap everything and make an entire show about Sumomo.
January 31st, 2008 - 08:45
Veggies: I didn’t read the manga so I wasn’t as affected by the anime ending as the manga readers. Am hoping for a Claymore 2nd season if manga material allows.
McHT: I thought the Chobits end was rushed. Another ep to wrap things up would be groovy
As for Chii, I like her Dark Persona better (ie her sister).