The author says he'll throw in some after stories and side stories at some point, but basically the tale is done. It's pretty unclear what exactly happened. Did Satou make clones of himself for each interested girl and have each of his clones marry one of them? Or did he just do that as an experimental joke and, since he didn't really have feelings for any of them, later got rid of all the clones? The epilogue doesn't show any clones around, just Satou going back to his favorite job of video game creation. The one true Satou has returned to his roots -- so did he marry Aze? Did his clones marry the rest of his companions? I guess it's up to the reader, in which case I may as well give it the best possible interpretation -- his clones do indeed exist and did indeed marry all the actual heroines in this story, while Satou went ahead and married his dream girl Aze. Everyone lived happily ever after.
Is there really a need to restore the outer space shield when the space jellyfish have already been defeated? Again it's unclear. Maybe there are still more jellyfish out there somewhere, I guess I'll interpret it that way.
All I really wanted was for Satou to choose Sera. Since there was a sentence devoted to Satou x Sera, albeit with a clone, I'm content.
Near the end of the story there were some wild fights full of excitement, with Parion and the Demon God and Chaos Jellyfish. It was imaginative in how wild the power levels were. Satou would be a good match for Goku. . .
But the thing I always loved most about this story wasn't how strong Satou was or the crazy fights he got in, but how much he cared for his underlings and took care of them. Especially Arisa who was always getting into trouble. Under the 'his clones married everyone' interpretation he loved and took care of his underlings to the highest extent of their dreams. Well done, author -- though in the end you're such a coward you had to rely on the reader's interpretation and couldn't just spell it out that polygamy was good. Unlike my book which announces that truth in the very title.
Going back in time, when Satou had more close run pinches and challenges, I still liked the story more back then -- against the Boar Headed Demon -- saving that village from the zombie hordes -- overcoming the twin menace of Zaikuon and the Weasel Emperor. . . Everything felt more emotionally charged when Satou wasn't strong enough to assuredly save everyone and everything. But I guess the original premise of this story was that Satou was brokenly strong, so in a sense the ending was necessary as is.
My biggest regret is all the best parts of Death March occur right after where the anime ends, meaning with just one more season, even just 12 more episodes, the anime could have been so much better. That will always rankle me. For such a popular web novel, I believe the most popular web novel of all time, couldn't they have made a 2 cour series to begin with? The quality of the 2nd cour would have won the audience over permanently, instead of the ignominious death of that stupid potion arc.
Well, it's all too late now. One more tragedy among a graveyard full of them -- Haruhi Suzumiya is wondering why it never received a sequel too.
Koutetsujou no Kabaneri is available in blu-ray, but the filesize is a little much. I hope someone else will remux it and tone those gigabytes down a bit.
A new Honzuki no Gekokujou ova is available. It's okay, but I'm looking forward to the plot progressing in the 2nd cour this spring.
Re:Zero's 2nd season has been delayed due to coronavirus. I have a feeling many more series will be delayed before April actually arrives. Possibly Honzuki and SAO, so don't get your hopes up for anything going right.
It's funny, the ending to Death March was supposed to be this major historical event, but now that I've actually reached it I feel nothing. It's a dumb ending that's too cowardly to even say what actually happened. Plus, the idea that life isn't worth living unless you're on a violent quest to destroy villains is a terrible ending message. If war is preferable to peace then aren't the villains heroes for stirring up carnage and heroes villains for making life boring? That sort of attitude goes in direct violation to everything Satou's been working towards from the beginning. You can say that's just Kagura's thinking, not Satou's, but the fact is Satou is stronger than Kagura and did nothing to stop her, so that's an implicit approval of manufacturing crises just for the fun of it.
Verily, the quality of a writer is in direct correlation to the amount of interest they can generate about precisely the peaceful life all the heroes say they love so much and wish would occur. If you can't even imagine the attractiveness of said peace, then don't write about heroes trying to attain it. It's a betrayal to turn around and say -- actually it was better when Demon God was stirring up trouble for all these millennia.
You can say that wasn't Death March's genre, it's an action adventure story. Okay, fine, but couldn't even the epilogue not involve endless warfare? Surely a good writer could have painted an appealing picture of peace in at least that last moment? Look at the ending of DQ XI! The hero takes walks with his beautiful wife and dog, greets all the rest of the villagers with a pleasant conversation, reads books to his kid, meets up with his old friends to go on journeys, and has a picture mounted on the wall of his wedding reception, complete with a healthy Mia (Erik's imouto) smiling for the very first time.
It was a short epilogue! But it encapsulated so many great things about peace that it left you smiling for years afterwards. Dragon Quest XI leaves this franchise in the dust.
Not to knock on Death March, but when I compare the emptiness I feel for this ending with the 18th time I just read through my own novel, it's like a flickering candle exposed to the burning sun. Love is such a more interesting topic than DBZ type ki beam clashes. Community organizing is infinitely more relevant than adventuring. And an author who honestly bucks taboos and says straight out what they really think is always more appealing than someone running and hiding from the censors. There was nothing stopping Satou from having a steamy sex scene with one of his many girls -- except the author's cowardice. Death March is a web novel just like mine. No editor got in his way. Only his cowardice. Do you know how absolutely unrealistic it is for a guy to travel with dozens of beautiful girls, all in love with him, all eager to marry him, and for him to do nothing the entire time? It's an insult to all those girls' feelings, and an insult to all the readers who never got such luck in their own lives, and here's this dog in the manger who won't even enjoy it when he has the chance.
Due to his fear of censorship, the entire story was distorted beyond belief and turned into an insulting joke. All he had to do was romance even one of the girls and it would have made perfect sense -- look at Kenja no Mago for example. I ignored all the rules and crafted the best sex scenes in history. I let the feelings of the characters explode to their natural limits and consume each other with passionate intensity. I let them live and breathe. I didn't shy away even from the forbidden loves.
Every chapter, every paragraph in my book is solving real problems, like how to connect two people's hearts, how to raise good children, what a nation's law code should be, how to impress a woman, the nature of the afterlife, what work will look like once artificial intelligence joins the scene, mankind's reason for existence, or how God can exist in a fallen world. Death March starts with Satou at max level and then, miraculously, manages to end still in the midst of eternal conflict and Satou still not clearly married to anyone. He took that miraculous birthright and, like Esau, traded it away for a mess of pottage. A million Death March chapters aren't worth a single one of '100 Waifus.'
And yet, for all my efforts, I still haven't earned my first positive comment for my book, while Death March continues to run up accolades. What a world.
Again, this isn't to knock on Death March. It's in my great anime hall of fame, my great books hall of fame, and in my fictional character hall of fame within '100 Waifus' itself. A song from it is even in my great music hall of fame. I love this franchise and have honored it time and time again. But you could put all that praise together and it would be like the mass of the Moon compared to the Sun, what I think of the truly best story ever -- 'In Another World With 100 Waifus,' and the amount of glory it deserves.
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