I love-hate anime. I love watching anime and i can get quite obsessive whenever i find something that I like. But I hate the feeling I get whenever a series ends.
Is it about the endings that usually leave me so dissatisfied? What attracts me the most about anime is that they do not have “formula” endings. The stories and premises may be common, but unlike most stories, the endings aren’t usually tied up neatly. There’s no such thing as “they lived happily ever after” in animes, and if there are, I wouldn’t like those so much. For this reason, no matter how outrageous the premise of the anime is, I still find it more grounded in reality than other modern tales. No story really ends in real life.
Take Nodame Cantabile for example. After three seasons it’s not clear whether Nodame and Chiaki really hooks up. Another classic example is GTO where by the end of the series, Onizuka is wanted in Japan and went into hiding in the United States.
I know that when the series ends, I would have to make my own ending to the story… something I sometimes find to be anticlimactic. I never watch anime series one after the other. I always need some time in between to think things through and formulate an ending. Like I said earlier, I can get quite obsessive about animes.
For me, a good ending is a good beginning of a new journey… an opening for a new story that only my imagination can tell. And whether the new story is going to be a good or bad one, only I can control it. This is why I love-hate anime.
