on endings
Nov. 6th, 2003 09:46 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
xparrotThere's been some discussion of late about the possible ending of the GetBackers manga, which may or may not be approaching, and I was thinking about what I wanted to see myself...
There are 3 basic types of endings to a TV series or manga (or any story told over time). First - depressing. You know how everything turns out, because everyone ends up DEAD. Western TV shows sometimes end like this, either because they're out of ideas, or the creators don't want any chance of the show coming back. Or else one really wants to make a point. This is Eva and Forever Knight, also the sitcom Dinosaurs.
Second - epic. The arc is resolved, villain is defeated, chars celebrate, get married and sometimes you get a flashforward to see their kids or whatever...and you always are left wondering, what does really happen in the end? Can those heroes ever have a normal life, after what they've been through? Epic endings are often bittersweet. Everyone who went through the story is changed, the world itself often is irrevocably altered, and while overall it may be better, the fact that not much you knew from the story exists in that form anymore makes the farewell a little painful.
Lord of the Rings is the classic example; Escaflowne, Babylon 5, The Sandman. There can be super-happy epic endings - Fushigi Yuugi comes to mind.
Third - status quo. This is the ending that's not so much possible in a limited format like a book or a single movie. The heroes continue on just as they have been through the course of the series, and maybe if you look closely, you'll see the faintest outlines of their adventures beyond the final page or last credit screen.
Examples include Star Trek: TNG, and the GetBackers anime.
A lot of finales have a mix of these. X-files *a moment of silence for the downfall and death of a once-great show* tried to change some things in an epic manner, but in the end mostly kept the status quo; Mulder & Scully are always gonna be after that dang conspiracy, or it's gonna be after them, or whatever. Generally shows that hope for a movie series to follow will maintain much of the status quo.
In some ways, epic endings can be the most satisfying - because something happens, there is change, the story has consequences. But especially for fans, status quo endings can often be the best. Because we've fallen in love with the chars - we want to see them happy, but we also want them still to be the people we love, with the relationships we love.
However your life is now, whatever you feel now, it won't be the same in a week, or a month, or a year, or a decade; for good or bad, it will never be quite that way again. You drift apart from people, you make new relationships. There's something comforting in fiction's permanence, in knowing characters still are as you've always known them to be - even if your own feelings for them change. Maybe we'll make up stories about how everyone turns out, much later...but no matter what we imagine, the 'real chars' will always be there, comforting in their consistency.
If Saiyuki has an epic ending, even a happy one, with the Sanzo-ikkou defeating Gyuumao and returning home as heroes to live out their days rich and satisfied - it will still be somewhat sad, to know they're not traveling together anymore, crammed in that little jeep together. (...not to mention, unless all four of those boys join hands in a polygamous wedding, not everyone's favorite pairings will be fulfilled...) On the one hand, that in 50 eps of the first TV series they didn't get to their goal is terribly frustrating to consider - and yet on the other, there's something reassuring in that they're still jouncing along in that jeep, eternally westward ho.
The GetBackers TV show had a classic status quo ending - Ban & Ginji are still broke, off on yet another mission with all their friends and rivals and the rest. And that's how I'd like to see the manga end as well. There's a lot of epic story to be resolved, a lot of questions which haven't been answered. But when that's all done, at the end of the day - more than I want answers, I want Ban & Ginji to still be partners, best friends and more, still a couple of crazily-powered, happy idiots helping people. Forever, in my imagination.
Enough procrastination...the NaNo awaits!
There are 3 basic types of endings to a TV series or manga (or any story told over time). First - depressing. You know how everything turns out, because everyone ends up DEAD. Western TV shows sometimes end like this, either because they're out of ideas, or the creators don't want any chance of the show coming back. Or else one really wants to make a point. This is Eva and Forever Knight, also the sitcom Dinosaurs.
Second - epic. The arc is resolved, villain is defeated, chars celebrate, get married and sometimes you get a flashforward to see their kids or whatever...and you always are left wondering, what does really happen in the end? Can those heroes ever have a normal life, after what they've been through? Epic endings are often bittersweet. Everyone who went through the story is changed, the world itself often is irrevocably altered, and while overall it may be better, the fact that not much you knew from the story exists in that form anymore makes the farewell a little painful.
Lord of the Rings is the classic example; Escaflowne, Babylon 5, The Sandman. There can be super-happy epic endings - Fushigi Yuugi comes to mind.
Third - status quo. This is the ending that's not so much possible in a limited format like a book or a single movie. The heroes continue on just as they have been through the course of the series, and maybe if you look closely, you'll see the faintest outlines of their adventures beyond the final page or last credit screen.
Examples include Star Trek: TNG, and the GetBackers anime.
A lot of finales have a mix of these. X-files *a moment of silence for the downfall and death of a once-great show* tried to change some things in an epic manner, but in the end mostly kept the status quo; Mulder & Scully are always gonna be after that dang conspiracy, or it's gonna be after them, or whatever. Generally shows that hope for a movie series to follow will maintain much of the status quo.
In some ways, epic endings can be the most satisfying - because something happens, there is change, the story has consequences. But especially for fans, status quo endings can often be the best. Because we've fallen in love with the chars - we want to see them happy, but we also want them still to be the people we love, with the relationships we love.
However your life is now, whatever you feel now, it won't be the same in a week, or a month, or a year, or a decade; for good or bad, it will never be quite that way again. You drift apart from people, you make new relationships. There's something comforting in fiction's permanence, in knowing characters still are as you've always known them to be - even if your own feelings for them change. Maybe we'll make up stories about how everyone turns out, much later...but no matter what we imagine, the 'real chars' will always be there, comforting in their consistency.
If Saiyuki has an epic ending, even a happy one, with the Sanzo-ikkou defeating Gyuumao and returning home as heroes to live out their days rich and satisfied - it will still be somewhat sad, to know they're not traveling together anymore, crammed in that little jeep together. (...not to mention, unless all four of those boys join hands in a polygamous wedding, not everyone's favorite pairings will be fulfilled...) On the one hand, that in 50 eps of the first TV series they didn't get to their goal is terribly frustrating to consider - and yet on the other, there's something reassuring in that they're still jouncing along in that jeep, eternally westward ho.
The GetBackers TV show had a classic status quo ending - Ban & Ginji are still broke, off on yet another mission with all their friends and rivals and the rest. And that's how I'd like to see the manga end as well. There's a lot of epic story to be resolved, a lot of questions which haven't been answered. But when that's all done, at the end of the day - more than I want answers, I want Ban & Ginji to still be partners, best friends and more, still a couple of crazily-powered, happy idiots helping people. Forever, in my imagination.
Enough procrastination...the NaNo awaits!
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2003-11-06 08:35 am (UTC)...and Emishi and Amon to hook up. Add that and that'll be the perfect ending for me too ^_^;;
no subject
Date: 2003-11-06 12:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-11-06 08:58 am (UTC)The "epic" ending description makes me think of Digimon 02, wherein it did show characters getting married and having kids and stuff, and my reaction to that was mostly "WTF?" thanks to some of the pairings, which were just really random... so my immediate thought on an ending like that for GB is like "Nooo, they'd probably make Ban hook up with that Maryudo bunny-girl and Ginji with Maria or something similarly random!" And as far as I'm concerned, I don't really want to see anyone "hook up", it's fun to have ambiguity to play with.
I say this, of course, as a selfish fanficcer who doesn't want canon interrupting my plots. (Heck, I live in terror that someday we actually will find out where Tir and Gremio went in the Suikoden series, and tons of writing will be rendered useless.)
no subject
Date: 2003-11-06 01:13 pm (UTC)I'm really curious if there'll be any significant hooking up by the end of GB...I'm sort of doubting there will be, because A&A-sensei just seem so aware of the fangirls, and know that if they, say, have Ban & Himiko settling down and raising little witch moppets while Ginji...uhh, goes back to Mugenjou?...they'd immediately have a mob with pitchforks and torches outside their studio... And since I don't think GB is going to go officially yaoi (umm. probably. maybe.), they'll likely leave it ambiguous. I hope.
(trying to think of other fight shounen endings, but half the series I'm coming up with are ongoing - HxH, Naruto - and the others - Kenshin, YYH - do end with the major guy hooking up with his girl. Tho' in both cases that's a clear romantic relationship from very early on. Also GB has two equally main heroes, which is not that common a thing. And A&A-sensei cannot always be counted on to follow cliche anyway; they're so easily distracted by shiny things.)
And yes, it is nice when canon doesn't trample all over one's fic XD
no subject
Date: 2003-11-06 09:26 am (UTC)Except with the GB anime, I couldn't be sad, because I was too busy grinning and turning into a little pile of fangirlish goo. Happy goo.
Status quo is the most desirable of the types of endings from a fangirl perspective. It probably wouldn't work as well if a mystery-novel or show like B5 ended up not going anywhere (Chris Carter... WHY??), but with a show like Saiyuki, that's the perfect ending.
GetBackers - I would like some answers, thanks. Because I've been waiting for a couple for as long as I've been following the show! (Manga, now.) How Ginji and Ban went from "Leave or die" to "Ban-chaaaan!". I love speculating about it, but I want Ayamine and Aoki's version. A couple of other things, like more of Ban's background (the thing with the Mirokus come to mind, as does his very early years), and what the promise to Yamato meant...("So that it won't become my second dance... get it back... her.." - or at least that's what
My curiosity is killing me! ^^;;; After that's dealt with, though, an ending like the anime's would make me very, very, very happy. ^___^
And now I'm off to write you a mail, and stop occupying your LJ. ^^
Random thoughts
Date: 2003-11-06 10:56 am (UTC)I haven't been enough into anything anime/manga to comment on those multi-arc ending scenarios, but I can tell you that when one of my all-time fave TV shows ended, I was RELIEVED that it ended status-quo. This was a show, after all, that had killed off two previous female leads with utter impunity (they just weren't "working out", so there they went) and I truly feared the kind of cataclysmic ending TPTB could come up with if they wanted to go out with a (probably literal) bang. Instead, the ending we fans did get could not have been more low-key and, even more beautifully, OPEN. (TPTB were expecting renewal, but they didn't get it.) No one died. Life - as messed up as it was - went on. And there was something truly mythic in its own way, almost Zen-like, in the hero riding off into the twilight on his motorcycle, his stalwart friends watching him depart. We - or, hell, at least *I* - can imagine him to this day, still riding, still banding together with his loyal team of "Night Watchmen" who step in to fix the system when it doesn't work....
And yeah, the fanfic. :) No nasty little impediments like character death to have to work around (unless of course you were a fan of either of the two women who were killed off in the first season, which I wasn't since I didn't watch the show then anyway). The neutral ending allowed us to go ANYWHERE we wanted to. For all I know, some of the fans might have written their own cataclysmic endings - but hey, if it's not canon, I don't have to listen!
(FWIW, the show was one in the CBS Crimetime After Primetime late-night block - "Dark Justice", about a judge-by-day, vigilante-by-night. Cool bikes! Cooler leather jackets! Coolest hair!)
no subject
Date: 2003-11-06 11:41 am (UTC), only with excessive BanGin pr0nuh... i mean... *cough*
no subject
Date: 2003-11-06 11:45 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-11-06 11:46 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-11-06 04:13 pm (UTC)Really, the MaLoki anime did the same kind of status quo ending, though I felt they left it dangling WIDE open for possible future continuation. (Especially having read some of the manga now, and seeing how the little maid-girl fits into the whole mythology of things.)
Seriously, the more I think about it, the less I think Ayamine-sensei and Aoki-sensei really WILL hook Ban and Himiko up officially, no matter how much they seem to follow the typical "main hero + main heroine" pairing in lots of shounen series. The only explicitly stated coupling is Shido+Madoka, and that was blaringly obvious from the beginning--but in a very different way from Ban+Ginji or Emishi+Amon. (Granted, I think it has as much to do with the type of people Shido and Madoka are, compared to those others, but even so.)
Epic endings make me sad--in some ways, even more than depressing endings. I don't like to see the adventure over, the journeys done and everyone settling down. While it's good balances are restored and mysteries solved, there's a tremendous letdown in realizing that these people you've been through SO MUCH with will part ways from you--and especially in the case of high fantasy epics, you may honestly never see those people again.
The ending of the GetBackers anime, in terms of how the last fifteen minutes or so were executed, were brilliant, i.m.o.--there are still secrets floating around, there are still all the people Ban and Ginji have worked with, plus others, and it had them driving off right into another series. Giving the series an 'epic' ending would feel completely off--somehow untrue to the sense of fun I get from the series.
Then again, we've seen evidence that maaaaaybe Ayamine-sensei and Aoki-sensei aren't completely pulling everything out of thin air, and there are some small things that come back as valid plot points later--we never know! But we can hope. <3
no subject
Date: 2003-11-07 06:48 am (UTC)the MaLoki anime's ending [spoiler warning for rest of paragraph] was totally status quo, which comes as a pleasant not-quite-surprise because they're setting it up as if it's going to be epic, and then - PSYCHE! But you're pretty sure it's coming because the light & happy mood of the series. Worked great, I thought. Very curious what the manga's going to do...I've noticed, often anime series based on ongoing manga have status quo endings, possibly so they don't interfere with the manga's eventual conclusion? Like MaLoki and GB - the anime creators didn't know how the manga's going to turn out, so they don't tinker with much.
Epic endings often break my heart, but some stories, that's the only way to end them. Lord of the Rings would not be nearly as powerful if everyone made it unscathed - I cry at maybe one movie every few years, and it should be Return of the King this year, if it's done right. But GB...shouldn't make me cry. Unless it's tears of laughter. That's not what it is.
(I keep thinking of one of Watsuki-sensei's freetalks in the final revenge arc of the Kenshin manga, in which he said he had thought that to be true to the theme of that arc, he should have actually killed Kaoru. But he was writing a boy's shounen adventure story and it wouldn't be right. So he didn't. Which I think was ultimately much truer and fitting to the story as a whole.)
And I honestly don't think they'll actually do Ban/Himiko, at least not outright. The one thing that really convinces me? They don't have ANY potential love interest for Ginji. (Except Ban-chan...) Most shounen that the hero goes off with his girl, his buddy gets one too. True in Kenshin, YYH, City Hunter...but unless I'm missing something, there hasn't been any girl Ginji's been sweet on since Madoka, and she's the most taken char in the show. And no girl's fallen for him, either (unless you count Maria. And, uh...I don't think they're on THAT much crack. One hopes.)
...this doesn't preclude throwing a new chickie into the mix, but considering how the mangaka seem to get a charge outa smacking down possible het couples (Ren's hopeless crush comes to mind...) it's unlikely to happen.
Besides - Kagami/Himiko, all the way! <3 <3
no subject
Date: 2003-11-06 08:55 pm (UTC)(I'm leaving that crack!jar out in the open, Waitotochan is starting to get into it now >_>
(I'm leaving that crack!jar out in the open, Waitotochan is starting to get into it now >_> <_<)
ANYWAY, the ending >__> Well, to be honest, I'm expecting something similar to the anime ending, i.e. the status quo. GetBackers isn't about endings -or- beginnings. We see these through how the pacing is arranged (i.e. through acts) and, well, how the beginning is more or less ignored.
I mean, how Ban and Ginji met, or everyone elses pasts for that matter. A lot of it is left in shadow--and what keeps this series going is the small insights we get INTO those pasts. So, theoretically, what'll *end* the series is when the audience manages to understand all the secrets in what already happened. And then the characters will still do their thing and get on with their lives, but after all's said and done it won't have to be WRITTEN anymore.
If that made sense. I'm not very coherent right now <3;;;;
I'll need to bug all my NaNo friends for snippets, really >_> <_<
no subject
Date: 2003-11-07 07:00 am (UTC)...yah, I've been avoiding IM even when I've been home, need the time for writing! but this dream o' yours sounds...umm? isn't anyone having happy smutty non-angsty GB dreams? ^^;;;
Actually that made perfect sense and is a good point about how GB's story works. The one problem being that once everything is understood about a char, it can be seen as that char's life basically being over. If their existence is all about their past, when it intersects with their present it might cancel out their future.
Really don't think that'd fit GB at all, tho'. They're not gonna kill Ginji - and even if they do, it's just "take two kisses of life and call me in the morning." n__n
no subject
Date: 2003-11-07 03:18 pm (UTC)Yaaah, pretty much. But A&A-sama have been very clever about it. They never reveal the full past, and it's never ALL for just one character. They make sure that there's still enough left in shadow to make several pitstops for each character in many, many round trips.
What I mean is, they refuse to let us know SHITE about the important stuff so that they can keep using that character for plot development over and over and over.... <3 The characters are their own plot devices XD;;
The setup for GB story is rather brilliant, *__*
And that's what we're all rooting for. If A&A-sama are going to please teh rabid yaoi fangirls, they have to do it SOME way in which Ban and Ginji don't officially get hitched, after all~
(Since, yanno, this series is supposedly about "male friendship".....>D)
=3
Date: 2003-11-11 08:14 pm (UTC)Anyway. =D
Since most of the comments here reflect what I thought of the GB anime ending, I won't go into that. <3<3<3 The MaLoki ending, on the other hand, left me REALLY unhappy... simply cos it just didn't go /anywhere/ with the whole Odin Bent On Killing Loki issue that seems so /central/ to Loki being stuck in ningenverse to begin with... though, I suppose it might be cos I never went anywhere near the Loki manga so I had no outside info. Or something. ^^; It also didn't help that the last few episodes were all building up to something and it, well, fizzled out. ;;;;;
There's also that thing of... hm, well, the GB status quo being quite happy, versus the MaLoki status quo of general uneasiness and >.> So What's Gonna Happen Now?... cos even if the series /is/ fluff and cute and happy in general, personally, I was bugged by the whole ODIN *CUE DRAMATIC BGM* deal.
... Ok, enough MaLoki yap.
Uhm, btw (so random, haha =D) I heart your GB fics. They made me squee, cackle, sparkle and cry. XD; Damn, I will never comprehend how you writer folk do your magic. <3
Re: =3
Date: 2003-11-12 06:12 am (UTC)MaLoki's finale didn't bother me, but that may be because it really seemed to be a set-up for either another series, or an OAV, or the manga. It was pretty obvious they didn't have time to resolve the Odin issue by the time they reached the final ep, so the only options were either Loki goes off to confront him (but you wouldn't see the confrontation), or he doesn't...and given that said confrontation probably would be Ragnarok, the latter option is definitely the happier of the two. I'd rather have status quo with lots of unresolution, than a resolution that leaves everyone's fates so dismal...
(And I'd have to disagree that MaLoki's status quo is that much less chipper & silly than GB - they've both got some dark themes, but in the end they're comedies. Okay, technically you've got all these gods running around trying to kill each other...but in practice (almost) no one is dying, everyone ends up allies, Fenrir is a puppy, and Thor has a dramatic confrontation with a coffee cup. An evil coffee cup. ^^;;;;;)
That, and I guess I'm becoming used to enjoying anime but going to the manga if I want to find out 'what really happened' ^^;; I like getting answers to questions but I'm not necessarily expecting them...
In other news, glad you like the stories - and I've got no clue how you artist types do it, so we're even <3 <3
no subject
Date: 2004-01-23 06:55 am (UTC)Also, I have to say that most of the series that I'm truly in love with are usually a mixture of 2&3.