Anime ending that disappointed you

[Jonluw]

What was so bad about the ending?

Spoiler: Spoilers for Death note, obviously

In the first part of Death note, L and Light are two magnificent minds pitted against eachother.
If one of their plans fail, you can rest assured it's because the other saw through it and made an equally ingenious countermeasure.

Now what was it that caused Light's ultimate demise in the end?
They'd already dropped all the excellently intelligent 'battle of minds' stuff at this point, but the ending really infuriated me because:
Light 'loses' because the guy who at this point was doing all of Kira's work wasn't good enough at hiding the Death note when he was asked to.
Well, whoop-die fucking doo. Did I ever feel sorry for thinking they'd come up with some actually clever ending.

In the beginning of the series, L uses logic to work out what Kira is doing and how to stop him, and for the most part, we get to see the entire reasoning he uses. This is great storytelling.
In the end of the series, Light's plan is stopped because the Death note doesn't work.
Why doesn't it work?
Why, because, as we're told in the form of a flashback, N's subordinates looked through Light's assistant's locker at some point in the past and stole the real Death note.
This is shitty storytelling.

They could have done it well. They could have devoted time to showing us how N worked out what Light's plan was and finding a way to counter it through brilliant logical reasoning. N could have dug up clues towards Light's future movements and spent time figuring out his assistant's hiding place and pieced things together impressively, but noooooo. We'd rather just go all deus ex machina and poof a solution to it all out of nowhere.
Instead we just got a pointless reveal "Oh, by the way: N stole Light's Death note while he weren't looking, so N wins. The end."

 

[yamy]

Guilty Crown's ending didn't leave me upset, just let down. It's epilogue doesn't really say what happens to any of the characters, or answer the few plot threads it looked set to answer. Still an okay series, but meh ending.

It was the same for me. The series held good promise all the way up to till when the protagonist (forgot his name) went dark. The plot never went anywhere. I was hoping for the ending to wrap it up at least a little but it was as convoluted and pointless as the rest of the story. Everything about GC was good, apart from the story. And without a story then, well, you don't have anything.

 

[Kalikin]

Since most anime is a partial adaptation of a manga series, I guess most are lacking or plain bad in some way. A recent one that comes to mind, though, is Sakamichi no Apollon, a Josei series that aired last season. The ending scene was actually very good in isolation, but considering the show had been leading up to something the whole time, and then just cuts to the super realistic ending, I wasn't really that happy with it. I suppose it could be taken as a message about shattered expectations, but if that were that case I'd wish we were shown those expectations being shattered. Oh well.
For anyone who hasn't seen it, it's a more realistic romance/drama set in 60's Japan, directed by the same guy who did Cowboy Bebop and Samurai Champloo. Despite being a bit too close to a soap opera at times, it was highly enjoyable.

 

[Jonluw]

Spoiler

99% of Death Note watchers favour L.

Well, that's also a point.

Spoiler

Mello and Near were really shitty attempts at replicating the great character that L was. And they do it in the most two-dimensional way possible.

It's like they took one look at the L character to tried to figure out what made him interesting, and decided that it was his eccentric behaviour and looks, missing the point by a mile.

"Oh, golly what will we ever do now that the quirky super detective is gone? I know: Let's introduce two more quirky super detectives. This one is called Mello: He's the least clever of the three, and is angry because of it. His quirk is eating chocolate all the time.
This other one over here is called Near (Notice how we named them alphabetically, hurr hurr): He's almost as clever as L. You could be mistaken for thinking this is just L with a wig, but look: this boy doesn't like sweets like L did. His quirk is playing with children's toys so he's a completely unique and interesting character. Never mind the fact that we're completely omitting all the brilliant logical resonnements that made L such an interesting character; you'll like this boy because he is L in every superficial respect."

 

[afrojason]

Does Evangelion even need to be mentioned?

 

[Nazulu]

FUCKING ALL OF THEM! Except one. Funny you use FMA as an example because that one was the only ending that actually gave me a little satisfaction.

I just really wish HXH and Beserk didn't end where they did. Just as things were about to step up another level of awesome.

 

[Trasch17]

I'd say Beelzebub. Normally your anime ends with a bang, but not Beelzebub. Never saw a more boring end.

 

[karamazovnew]

Does Evangelion even need to be mentioned?

Apart from Shinji's yelling, Evangelion became a religion because of its ending. Without that, it would've been just another mecha anime. If you want rosy petals, you stop at the TV series. If you want the full psychedelic horror, you watch the movie too. Choice is always good

For me, Chobits departed from the ending in the manga just enough to make the whole story irrelevant. Yeah, Chobits, problem?

Death Note became silly in the last episodes, putting too much emphasis on demonizing the main protagonist.

But I reserve my top spot for Full Metal Alchemist. About 6-7 episodes from the end you get a superb climactic encounter which absolutely ROCKS and would've worked great as an ending by it's own. But then they continue with "that thing we never actually cared about" and mess it up completely by the end. Too bad.

The exact reverse for me happened in Cowboy Beebop. You get a boring anime, turn it into an even more boring anime, then finish it in style and turn it into a classic. TV is weird.

 

[SckizoBoy]

Claymore - so crap it turned me off the manga... *strangled noise*

Yomigaeru Sora - the series just ended with... well nothing, just nothing... and it was a fucking awesome series, too...

Can't think of anything else atm...

I thought that Blood: the last vampire was a bit of a let down. I couldn't understand why such a short anime with little plot & mundane finish got so much hype & advertising.

Well, it was supposed to lead into Blood+ (as a flashback) and it served that purpose quite well... however, Blood+ rather sucked so... *shrug*

 

[Shadowstar38]

Death note comes to mind.
Although the ending wasn't exactly the worst part.

What was so bad about the ending?

A lot of people ***** about how a certain character from the first season is gone by the ending. I'm actually okay with season 2. The problem for me was.

Spoiler

They changed it from the manga. In the manga, Light begs for the shenigami to save his life, and cries like a pathetic child when he says his name is going to be written in the death note.

In the anime, they changed it to Light getting up and running away first, with no one trying to stop him. His name still gets written but the emotional impact is gone.

The ending I hate the most in anime is Elfen Lied. Reason being, there's still a villian walking about who can unleash more monsters against the hero. And they pull a plot twist at the end as if it was going to get more episodes.

 

[razer17]

A lot of animes that ended before the manga they were based on ended. Hellsing was good for the episodes it stayed on track then went to shit. Theres a bunch of others but I can't think of names right now.

 

[FDLinc]

Gurren Lagann... you know what I'm talking about...

 

[Jonluw]

A lot of animes that ended before the manga they were based on ended. Hellsing was good for the episodes it stayed on track then went to shit. Theres a bunch of others but I can't think of names right now.

Oh gods, Incognito...
[sub]Or as he's also known: Dr. Vamphattan (sans dick)[/sub]
I'm so happy the OVAs are remedying that atrocity.

 

[Sunrider]

Pretty much every anime I've watched. It's like the japanese are completely unable to write endings to my taste. I'm not saying they are all BAD, I just more often than not want different endings than what I am served.

Desert Punk.
That ending was a 180 leap into the toilet.

Oh fucking hell, I didn't think anyone would point this out before me.
This anime is one of my all-time favorites, but the ending.... Oh fucking Batman, why would you do this to me. ;_;

 

[Scrustle]

What was so bad about the ending?

Spoiler: Spoilers for Death note, obviously

In the first part of Death note, L and Light are two magnificent minds pitted against eachother.
If one of their plans fail, you can rest assured it's because the other saw through it and made an equally ingenious countermeasure.

Now what was it that caused Light's ultimate demise in the end?
They'd already dropped all the excellently intelligent 'battle of minds' stuff at this point, but the ending really infuriated me because:
Light 'loses' because the guy who at this point was doing all of Kira's work wasn't good enough at hiding the Death note when he was asked to.
Well, whoop-die fucking doo. Did I ever feel sorry for thinking they'd come up with some actually clever ending.

In the beginning of the series, L uses logic to work out what Kira is doing and how to stop him, and for the most part, we get to see the entire reasoning he uses. This is great storytelling.
In the end of the series, Light's plan is stopped because the Death note doesn't work.
Why doesn't it work?
Why, because, as we're told in the form of a flashback, N's subordinates looked through Light's assistant's locker at some point in the past and stole the real Death note.
This is shitty storytelling.

They could have done it well. They could have devoted time to showing us how N worked out what Light's plan was and finding a way to counter it through brilliant logical reasoning. N could have dug up clues towards Light's future movements and spent time figuring out his assistant's hiding place and pieced things together impressively, but noooooo. We'd rather just go all deus ex machina and poof a solution to it all out of nowhere.
Instead we just got a pointless reveal "Oh, by the way: N stole Light's Death note while he weren't looking, so N wins. The end."

Spoiler

Lotta spoilers.

But more seriously...

Spoiler

I see what you're saying about Near and Mello being crap compared to L, and the story telling being worse compared to the first half, but that's not necessarily about the ending. I thought it was quite powerful.

It didn't matter how clever anyone was or how much anyone thought they could control the Death Note, or the reasons they were using it. In the end everything ended up how Ryuk warned it would us right at the beginning. Being faced with the utter futility of defeat reduced Light to a pathetic jibbering madman. Someone who was originally a genius and had everything thought out far better than any of us ever could was still utterly destroyed by it.

Even though you can kind of see it coming towards the end, as you see Light becoming more and more insane, and making minor slip ups, we still expect him to win or be redeemed somehow at the end. We expect a good ending because we're rooting for him. And let's be honest, he was mostly the only reason anyone watched the show at that point. To have it end the way it did, with the hero of the story running away and cowering, and eventually succumbing to the very tool he had used through the whole story because of his failure made a huge impact. It's not a happy ending, but it's damn powerful. Or at least to me it was. Although I see your point about Near pulling that shit out of his arse at the last second. That should have been handled much better.

 

[renegade7]

Legend of Korra Season 1 (ok not technically anime but still). WTB closure, seriously.

 

[Soviet Heavy]

R Fucking 2.

R2 was flatlining by its third episode, but the ending was still one of the stupidest, most moronic things I have watched. So, Lelouch dies for world peace, eh? Right, so the leader of the world dies, and his death will apparently cause all fighting to stop.

He told the world to obey him. He's dead now. You know what would realistically happen in that situation, rather than the saccharine shit we got left with? A power vacuum. Without his leadership, tyrannical and despotic as it was, the entire world is going to erupt into civil war. The Britannians Darwinist philosophy was not dissolved. The nobility is going to start tearing each other apart vying for the throne.

China and the EU are going to secede and start the war up all over again, and the arms race that resulted in mechs moving from ground based to gigantic fucking air fleets in two years time is going to end up with WMDs being fired into space before long.

That happy "everybody lives in a peaceful world now" ending makes no sense. If anything, his death would cause more chaos than any other event in recent history.

 

[Shoggoth2588]

Demon King Daimo: A HaRomCom which plays out like Harry Potter and GTO only it isn't as good as either of those. I liked all of the set-up but the last five episodes were just stupid. It's on Netflix if you're interested in watching it and it's good up until the end but the ending is just kind of lame.

Shuffle also had a stupid ending but that entire anime was stupid and made me want to write a scathing review.

 

[maxben]

I thought that Blood: the last vampire was a bit of a let down. I couldn't understand why such a short anime with little plot & mundane finish got so much hype & advertising.

You mean the anime movie or Blood+ the anime series? I was a big fan of that

Does Evangelion even need to be mentioned?

Im mentioning it! Horrid horrid horrid

 

[Jonluw]

Spoiler: Spoilers for Death note, obviously

In the first part of Death note, L and Light are two magnificent minds pitted against eachother.
If one of their plans fail, you can rest assured it's because the other saw through it and made an equally ingenious countermeasure.

Now what was it that caused Light's ultimate demise in the end?
They'd already dropped all the excellently intelligent 'battle of minds' stuff at this point, but the ending really infuriated me because:
Light 'loses' because the guy who at this point was doing all of Kira's work wasn't good enough at hiding the Death note when he was asked to.
Well, whoop-die fucking doo. Did I ever feel sorry for thinking they'd come up with some actually clever ending.

In the beginning of the series, L uses logic to work out what Kira is doing and how to stop him, and for the most part, we get to see the entire reasoning he uses. This is great storytelling.
In the end of the series, Light's plan is stopped because the Death note doesn't work.
Why doesn't it work?
Why, because, as we're told in the form of a flashback, N's subordinates looked through Light's assistant's locker at some point in the past and stole the real Death note.
This is shitty storytelling.

They could have done it well. They could have devoted time to showing us how N worked out what Light's plan was and finding a way to counter it through brilliant logical reasoning. N could have dug up clues towards Light's future movements and spent time figuring out his assistant's hiding place and pieced things together impressively, but noooooo. We'd rather just go all deus ex machina and poof a solution to it all out of nowhere.
Instead we just got a pointless reveal "Oh, by the way: N stole Light's Death note while he weren't looking, so N wins. The end."

Spoiler

Lotta spoilers.

But more seriously...

Spoiler

I see what you're saying about Near and Mello being crap compared to L, and the story telling being worse compared to the first half, but that's not necessarily about the ending. I thought it was quite powerful.

It didn't matter how clever anyone was or how much anyone thought they could control the Death Note, or the reasons they were using it. In the end everything ended up how Ryuk warned it would us right at the beginning. Being faced with the utter futility of defeat reduced Light to a pathetic jibbering madman. Someone who was originally a genius and had everything thought out far better than any of us ever could was still utterly destroyed by it.

Even though you can kind of see it coming towards the end, as you see Light becoming more and more insane, and making minor slip ups, we still expect him to win or be redeemed somehow at the end. We expect a good ending because we're rooting for him. And let's be honest, he was mostly the only reason anyone watched the show at that point. To have it end the way it did, with the hero of the story running away and cowering, and eventually succumbing to the very tool he had used through the whole story because of his failure made a huge impact. It's not a happy ending, but it's damn powerful. Or at least to me it was. Although I see your point about Near pulling that shit out of his arse at the last second. That should have been handled much better.

Spoiler

In regards to the whole "Light going mad and Ryuk finally writing Light's name in the Death note" and all that stuff, yes that was actually pretty good from a dramatic perspective. Were it the ending to something like a slice of life or ordinary drama series, I'd have liked it very much (well, except for the deus/diabolus ex machina bit).
However, Death note was a suspense/thriller series.
The suspense is what defines the series. The premise could potentially have been used to create an interesting, more serious, dramatic story, but that wasn't what Death note was trying to be.
The reason I was watching it was that "Holy fuck, this is awesome! I wonder how they're going to circumvent this and that, and how in the world will this unfold?"
It has you asking questions, and it gives you answers you never suspected. It's brilliant, and it's surprising, but it never feels like it's not playing by the rules, e.g., solving mysteries with information you don't know of.
The second half of the series just shat all over that.

In fact, the ending was pretty much the best part of the second half (if we ignore the moment when Light gets his powers back), but it still completely missed what made the beginning of the series so damn good.

I can bear it when they aren't doing so good at suspense at some moment in the middle of the series, but when they just crap all over the series' genre's defining aspect in the finale it just settles it.
They just decided to not care about the 'mystery/crime' aspect of it and instead focus on the drama, and that's just not what Death note was originally trying to be.