Anime Discussion Thread - Page 4500

except the end which felt like a huge copout unless I missed something

The ending is by far the most controversial part of the show. there are also many different speculations that try to make sense of it

I think these are the three most popular ways to look at the ending at the moment since the staff are obviously not helping here

1) Yuuna became a sort-of divine figure theory: This speculation is based on the Shinto religion where heroes can become gods and when Yunna touched the vertex core without her magical armor. In that moment, she communicated with shinju and asked that shinju return the offerings to the other heroes and to change the mankai system while she would eternally be stuck as a yuusha defending Shinju and this is speculated based on the fact that after The Sun exploded and they laid in a flower formation, Yuuna's fairy did not appear on top of her and Yunna was not covered with petals unlike her friends which suggest that she can still go yuusha. This theory would also explain why she was in a coma (because the wall needed to be rebuilt and yuuna would need to defend it until so), why she could hear Togo(who is a miko as stated in the prequel LN) and how she heard everyone else (pressed flowers) and why Yuuna was hurt when fuu squeezed her shoulder just a little (a scene that was replicated in episode 2 after defeating the first vertex) and how the story(to the hero of tomorrow) that Togo read to Yuuna at the end connect to them as people.
Also, this theory further speculates that when Yuuna fainted during the play, it was because there was a Forethize warning.

2) Misunderstanding theory: In episode 7, there was a seemingly throwaway line when they were eating dinner that went along the lines of "offerings can be eaten after they have been out for a while right?". This speculation goes with the idea that the characters, including sonoko, had the wrong ideas about the system to begin with. That the offerings are permanent until the shinju arbitrary decides to return them. This speculation is based on the fact that Sonoko and Togo nearly destroyed Shinju and wiped out humanity and that it made evaluations to the Yuusha systems to prevent such things from happening in the future because the mindset that Fuu, Sonoko, Togo, and Karin had were all destructive. Another thing to note is that they drove back the vertexes so the heroes wouldnt be needed for a while so it would only make sense to discharge them. The faint in the play was a troll.
This is the more optimistic and happy resolution for the characters as opposed to theory 1.
"shinju-sama is a god, it isn't that straightforward" - sonoko

3) Deus ex / asspull theory: uhhhh Yea, you can guess from the name. This is the completely happy ending at the cost of unintelligent writing.

Do note that none of these endings resolve the fact that the world around is all fire. This is a character driven show and not a plot-driven one so the character resolutions are more important. Also, gods don't have infinite energy in this story.

And this show has apparently been in planning / production for two years


Edit: oops, I left one theory out.
4) shinju is an asshole that loves torturing little girls. This one is a bit funny if you think Shinjuu didn't need to take offerings to begin with.

I'm fine with a happy ending for this show because it fits the themes and general mood better, I just wish they had explained it a bit better. Maybe it's just 2deep4me. So yeah, I guess for me it's a combination of being angry, happy and confused.