This year is chock full of good anime, but all of it is missing the most important thing -- an ending. Even Fairy Tail doesn't have a proper ending. After the Alvarez Arc comes the 100 Years Quest, which isn't going to be animated. So even the series that look like they have endings don't.
Index had a nice ending, but only of the old testament, there's still 23 New Testament books out there. Zokuowarimonogatari looked like an ending, but there's actually 10 books after that.
It's hard to believe we could go an entire year and not receive a single ending to a single anime, but here we are. The proliferation of sequels, prequels, and spinoffs, means nothing ever receives closure.
As for books, we received Zero no Tsukaima's ending, but it was one of the worst endings I've ever seen to any story ever. That's hardly a plus. Rokka no Yuusha received an ending of sorts, but hardly a satisfying one. Their confrontation with the demon general was resolved, but not with the Dark Lord himself. The author just arbitrarily stopped writing the continuation.
On the manga front, Sakura Trick's ending was translated, but it was nothing special. The story dropped off in quality immediately after where the anime stopped.
The prequel work, Akame ga Kill! Zero is slated to be fully translated in October, but that's meaningless because the sequel work, Hinowa ga Crush!, is still being serialized.
Avengers: Endgame isn't really the ending, because there's still tons of MCU movies going forward. The same for Game of Thrones, there's still plenty of spinoffs and prequels planned so even this show isn't over -- nor are the books upon which the tv series is based.
Even if we receive the ending to the Skywalker Saga this December, it's by no means the end to Star Wars in general. This franchise intends to continue indefinitely.
Perhaps we'll get to see the ending to Dimension W by year's end. That would be nice. It has to be better than Sakura Trick's.
This is why video games stand out so much compared to all my other experiences this year. Tales of Vesperia, Valkyria Chronicles 4 and Dragon Quest XI all have definitive endings. They wrapped everything up in a beautiful and moving fashion, leaving no regrets. These three games are my three favorite experiences of the year, outside of the 100 Waifus book I wrote myself. I've gotten really lucky in my game purchases recently. Dynasty Warriors 9, Utawarerumono 3 and Star Ocean 5 from last year were also perfect. Tales of Berseria from the year before that was also perfect. You can safely say that video games have actually been the premier entertainment source for a long time now.
They all had endings. They all were satisfying in themselves, they weren't just part of something bigger leaving you asking for more. They stood and delivered.
Perhaps this is why I'm so sick of WoW. Even after the Legion and Sargeras were defeated the game randomly continued on anyway. There's never any ending, the war just rages on forever. No plot progress is ever made. You always have to keep leveling because you can never reach the top. Compared to the plot of Dragon Quest XI where you actually get to defeat the last boss (not just once, but twice!) it's not even close. I will always prefer a closed story you can actually beat over an open ended one. After finishing Dragon Quest XI, I determined that two of its characters are worthy inclusions in my fictional character hall of fame, found at the end of my newest book, 'In Another World With 100 Waifus.' The two, Erik and Jade, replace Ren and Ninako from Strobe Edge, who aren't remotely as deserving. WoW, meanwhile, can't contribute a single character to this hall of fame, because WoW's story is a complete mess, nothing but a garbage heap, due to its insistence on nothing ever happening. Characters who can't make decisions, and decisions that can't make impacts, aren't worth their own salt. WoW survives in terms of quality on the basis of gameplay and aesthetics alone, there sure as hell isn't any lore worth following. Even Magic: The Gathering has a more interesting storyline.
Due to the fact that I've only added 31 (I dropped Fooling Mode due to it being too silly, so I'm down to 5,399 songs in all now) songs to my music hall of fame since the start of the year, I've been able to make genuine progress on my 100 times over listening project. For now I'm trying to get all my newly added songs from last year up to 40 times listened through. For that benchmark I only have 952 songs to go.
For a brief moment, until Kimetsu no Yaiba's release, I'd finished my all great anime watched and rewatched project. It was a nice moment of closure while it lasted.
Neither of these projects look to be ending any time soon though. Sadly, if I want to experience closure, the only source is PS4 games. They're the only artform with the concept of an ending remaining.
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