truly here in a barely tangible sense but it sure feels like Something Happened Here

seeing as the mangaka apparently confirmed that the story ended exactly as he wanted it to

I've seen smart people i trust say that they could predict this ending as early as like chapters 11 or 12, and I believe them, so I believe what you said is true

I just don't think that means the ending was good

apparently it went beyond being not good and into quite bad

as someone that dropped it quite early i will say that i saw it coming but i won’t be like “i told you so” because somehow it still managed to disappoint me further than i thought i did even though i dropped the series and everything

there is definitely a feeling of... "I don't know what you expected", I think, though i also won't say 'i told you so' because i think people who wanted it to be better were like. seeing potential in the mangaka's storytelling ability, not like, deluding themselves or anything

or even just, similar to the feeling with dangan ronpa, of "these characters were so good, they deserved better than the story you had out for them" i guess

see like. i think even though i saw the flaws from the start i was like “well, it has potential to be good” and then it. oof.

I've seen it compared to the ending of How I Met Your Mother

my biggest problem is just how bland it is, like hell i would have hated it but been kind of entertained by the implosion of the fanbase if it had gone incest route as we got threatened with during the movie arc, but it got dropped so fast and never addressed again??

instead nobody learns a lesson, the suicidal teenager dies and the ending treats it as The Right Thing Actually, and initially went from saying that ai's murderer (who by the way is a victim of childhood SA) is still a human being with complicated feelings, to "lol just kidding he's a crazy person and created a cult around himself??" a few chapters later

like yeah obviously this manga has flaws, but this entire final arc had no bits of writing that could be called good involving any of its characters and proceeded to suddenly walk back on and contradict so many things that was previously established with its characters just to get to this ending

^^^

ohh so it isn't just trashy-bad, it's "ignores its own story" bad
definitely understandably egregious

yeah lol ppl saying "well ~i could see this coming all along~" or saying it was obviously going to end up like this are. well I have nothing polite to say about that so I will not <3

the main issue with it is that Akasaka really obviously had An Ending In His Head he'd decided on too early and was unwilling to compromise it for the way the characters had naturally drifted and become misaligned with it just in the course of X years of serialised storytelling

oh wow it's literally exactly the how i met your mother problem

I think 100% blaming it on Aka also ignores the fact that he was, at some point, very clearly told "okay you have to wrap this up in XYZ amount of chapters so we can fit the whole thing into 4 seasons of anime" and so he ended up with way less time and space to build towards it than expected

*blaming it solely on Aka whoops

its just so absurd

it throws every message that it had so far out the window and it just... agh

YEAH that's my main issue with it

from like chapter 160 onwards you can almost Feel the transition to Akasaka's Planned Ending because there's a sudden shift in how a lot of stuff is being framed and characterised

Akasaka has always had this bad habit of like. writing a character a certain way then getting an Exciting Idea for a role they could fill in the story so he kind of forces then into that role and patches up the characterisation afterwards

& apparently this is something he's done as far back as Kaguya

Damn so it really IS like HIMYM

YUP...

I think the series overall is still broadly good and even the ending has some interesting ideas it just doesn't really get the space to work through

it's just. Akasaka's existing issues as a writer + him obviously being beyond burned out by the weekly manga industry + editorial demands all combining in the worst possible way

i wonder if it had stayed... not indie, but underground, what it would have become
which is not to say that going mainstream ruined it or anything, just more like. i wonder if it wasn't the wrong situation for him on an individual level as a writer

like how some writers do a lot better when there are lots of restrictions on what the content is allowed to be/heavier handed editors

in related news I can't believe hoshino ai is your original character

honestly onk was never "underground", it was just less well known in the west before the anime

that's more what i mean, like, if it had been on a smaller scale at all
cos it's suesha right?? i'm probably spelling that wrong

Akasaka was already a huge name in Japan off the back of Kaguya-sama and the series was doing well enough before the anime boom made it mainstream

tho ig i'm going against my own point in saying 'maybe indie' bc you'd have less restrictions in going indie vs the other way

I think the issue is just. weekly manga industry is hell & Akasaka being unwilling to compromise that envisioned ending no matter how little sense it made for the characters that he had ended up writing

so.... it's a bad time to be thinking of giving kaguya-sama a try?

hell, it's possible he COULDN'T compromise it past a certain point because the anime had committed to foreshadowing certain parts of it

trapped in his own catch-22

lightdrizzel: AFAIK Kaguya-sama is overall a stronger package because it leans way more into Aka's strengths as a writer

I.e, comedy and character drama

aahhh

I've heard people say the ending is kind of whatever but not that it's Actively Bad and plenty of others saying it's fine, he was just obviously burned out and ready to move on when it was done, so the quality isn't quite as high as you'd like

sounds like a theme there....

damn shame about ONK

at least onk got some banger theme songs tho

can anyone truly regret it when yoasobi's idol slaps so severely

I feel pretty confident the anime version of this ending is going to be Fine if not Good because they're already making changes to the material to work towards it and because. tbh after a certain point Aka was really clearly just writing the manga as a first draft for the anime

Which is a shame for the manga but the anime is my preferred version of the material LOL

god if the anime somehow manages to make the ending palatable...

admittedly my hopes arent high, but...