Summary
Everything eventually comes to an end, but how it ends can leave a bad taste in people’s mouths.Erased’s conclusion wasn’t as satisfying as the manga’s equivalent.Inuyashadidn’t have a proper conclusion at all until it got itsFinal Actseries.The Promised Neverlandhad enough issues with its second season without bringing up its questionable ending.
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However, that doesn’t mean it has to stay that way. There’s always the chance they’ll get a fresh adaptation to retell the story, or an extra movie or OVA to tie up any loose ends, or they’ll rewrite the problem ending to fix things up. For better or worse, these anime shows tried to retcon their endings, with mixed success.
Warning: Spoilers Ahead
6Fist Of The North Star
The anime expanded onFist of the North Star’s first arc exponentially with some storyline rearrangement and fresh scenes that fleshed out its villain Shin and his hostage Yuria. He attempted to win her heart, and she attempted to escape until, driven to desperation, she leaped from the tallest building to end her life. It showed as twisted and wrong as he was, Shin genuinely loved her, and the series’ lead Kenshiro couldn’t solve everything with his fists.
Fast-forward a few years to its final series, where Kenshiro and his evil half-brother Raoh seek out the true identity of the mysterious Nanto General. They turn out to be…Yuria! She never knew it, but the men fated to be her guardians got there just in time to rescue her mid-fall, rendering her unconscious. Then they told Shin they had to take her away to keep her safe from Raoh. It ensured the series would end happily with Kenshiro and Yuria reunited, but it undercut one ofits saddest moments.
5Space Battleship Yamato
It may not be a household name outside Japan, but withoutSpace Battleship Yamato, people may not haveMobile Suit Gundam,Neon Genesis Evangelion, or other mecha/space-based series. It saw humanitytake to the starsto rescue Earth from the Gamilas, aliens who seek to wipe out life on the planet. Its first feature-length adaptation actually managed to outdrawStar Warsat the box office in 1977.
So, directors Leiji Matsumoto, Toshio Masuda, and Tomoharu Katsumata made a sequel,Farewell to Space Battleship Yamato, where nearly everyone dies, and the ship is destroyed in a suicide mission to save the cosmos. It was so poorly received that it was readapted into a new series,Space Battleship Yamato II, that changed the ending to a happier one that wipedFarewellout of the continuity and led to a new movie,Be Forever Yamato.
4Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam
TheGundamfranchise is a mess ofalternate timelines, scenarios, and series. There’s the original 1970s show,Gundam SEED,Gundam Wing, andMobile Suit Zeta Gundam. The latter was the sequel to the 1970s show in the “Universe Century” timeline. It, too, ended on a downer, with most of its leads dead and another, Kamille, left a psychological wreck.
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To make things happier, the series got turned into a movie with a less morbid ending:MS Zeta Gundam: A New Translation. But it was made twenty years after its original Japanese broadcast. There had been a whole series,Mobile Suit Gundam ZZ, based onZeta’s grim ending. It also led to theMobile Suit Gundam: Char’s Counterattackmovie. The simplest answer is that the happyZetaending created another continuity for fans to deliberate over.
3Gatchaman Crowds
Science Ninja Team Gatchamanis another old-school classic that’s received multiple adaptations. Largely of the same 1970s series, which was released inthree different forms across three decadesbefore getting a straight localization in 2005. To freshen things up, Tatsunoko madeGatchaman Crowds, where a new team of science ninjas protects Earth from alien monsters called the MESS, and the enigmatic villain Berg Katze.
However, its final broadcast episode ended on a weird note. Much of it recapped the penultimate episode, and its fresh scenes didn’t quite fit properly with each other. It turned out the animators couldn’t finish the episode in time for the deadline, so the editors had to make do with what they managed to put together. The episode was properly finished in time for the Blu-ray release, where it made much more sense.
2Fullmetal Alchemist
The 2003Fullmetal Alchemistseries andFullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhoodhave their own merits, but most fans tend to gravitate towards the latter. Mainly because it’s more faithful to Hiromu Arakawa’s manga, as 2003 writer Shō Aikawa, the man behindUrotsukidoji: Legend of the OverfiendandAngel Cop, spun the tail end of the series off into more Teutonic territory.
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Edward risks his life to save his brother Alphonse and ends up in 1920s Germany in the real world, where alchemy doesn’t exist. He tries getting into rocket tech to find a way back to his world but, in the follow-up movieConqueror of Shamballa, he has to stop the Thule Society, a real pro-Nazi occultist group from the decade, from reaching it first. While the series and movie did okay at the time, fans on the whole are gladBrotherhoodstayed in Amestris.
1Neon Genesis Evangelion
Depending on who one asks, the ending of theNeon Genesis Evangelionseries was and wasn’t retconned. The simple answer is to say it was, as theEnd of Evangelionmovie essentially remade episodes 25 and 26 with altered plots. Yet the more complicated answer says no. The original ending is just a more figurative representation of what goes on inEnd of Evangelion.
Considering one had series’ lead Shinji being congratulated for overcoming his neuroses after humanity gets turned into primordial goop, and the other with him weeping alone over the same goop, it’s hard to see how they blend together. Then theRebuild of Evangelionmovies retold the series andended on a happier notewith humanity being restored and Shinji getting to grow up and move on. Which one is canon? At this rate, it’s whichever one the viewer prefers.
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