Forum - View topicThe List - 7 Frustrating Anime Cliffhangers
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Greed1914
 Posts: 4486 |
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I'm surprised Tokko topped the list. I suppose it is accurate to say that the ending of that show left a giant feeling of "What was the point?" but I would say that Berserk is the definite winner here for me. We clearly reached the end of an arc, so it didn't fell pointless, but the events of the Eclipse made me desperate for more. I don't read a lot of manga, but the end of that show made me immediately start the manga since I refused to leave it where it was.
I'd also nominate The Irresponsible Captain Tylor for this list. Not for the end of the series, since that felt quite like a natural stopping point. I'd say the OVAs changed that with regressing a lot of the character progression and then getting all serious without a real payoff. But I suppose this thread could go on practically forever for as much as we've all been left hanging. |
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Hardgear
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As a few have already pointed out, Shikabane Hime should definitely be on this list...
That has to be the only anime that ever flat out pissed me off with its "ending". It gets to the cliffhanger, there is still one more episode left, I'm all excited to see the ending.... Only to have the last episode just be a flashback to the past of 2 characters who have been dead since the first season. Talk about a metaphorical kick in the nuts! On the other hand, the writers did kind of write themselves off a cliff at the end there, they probably had no idea how to finish it... |
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Ali07
 Posts: 3333 Location: Victoria, Australia |
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After a few years of just being a lurker...I found something I would like to post on. So, made an account
While making posts that turn into long ones, I can be a bit of a scatter brain. Apologies in advance. 
Looking through what's been mentioned...SKET Dance hasn't been touched on. I've only been following anime for a few years (outside of watching DBZ and Pokemon as a kid). I got into SKET Dance when it was around episode 50 or so? Ended up catching up when it was in it's 70s, only to see it end at 77. With the manga finished, I don't know if I will ever see the end animated. 2 more that are "special to me", as they were 2 of the first titles I jumped into when I decided to follow anime closely, are Dream Eater Merry and Aria the Scarlet Ammo. I don't think DEM will be touched again, but am hanging out for the Aria announcement I read about on ANN from awhile back. After my experiences with Dream Eater and Scarlet Ammo, whenever I decide to go back to check out an older anime series, I always check forums to see comments on the last episode. 
My biggest one, which I don't see being knocked off top spot any time soon, is Haruhi Suzumiya. But, I'm working my way through the novels (and reading the Yuki-chan manga <3). Currently, I'm waiting on the last few Haruhi books to arrive. And, yeah, I know I'm not alone in wanting more Haruhi. Number 2 would be The World God Only Knows. I checked out the manga ending, and was very happy. I hope the end gets animated, as I'm unsure if there will ever be a license for the manga (would love to own the manga!). Now, while some may just go "jump into the manga or LNs to see the endings" I'm not a huge manga reader (I do read some). But, it seems like a lot of the series I would like to follow in manga aren't licensed (like TWGOK, and I'm not big on scanlations). A more recent anime would be Nisekoi...I jumped onto the manga for that one. Same goes for Noragami. Another recent series would be Seitokai Yakuindomo with s2's wacky "loop" ending.
I think that it's pretty obvious that this is a "thing" for me. I could go through more anime (yes, I do indeed have a list) that I want to see endings for...but I think that this is a long enough post for my first on ANN... PS: Seeing the ads for Hanabee's Medaka Box release hurts PPS: I know many read scanlations due to lack of licensing of a series. I'm just old school when it comes to reading. Which, may mean that I miss out on reading a whole series' run (with TWGOK, I only checked out the ending). I spend enough time looking at screens at work, watching TV, and using my laptop, that I enjoy an entertainment medium where I'm not looking at a screen (manga, comics, and novels). |
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Tuor_of_Gondolin
 Posts: 3524 Location: Bellevue, WA |
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I'm going to be honest here: I think "I don't know how to end it" syndrome is way more common than it maybe should be. Lots of authors get these interesting ideas, and they see dollar signs or whatever, and they're off to the races! The beginning is awesome! The hook is set and we're on for the ride! Then... then it just sort of goes on, loses its focus, gets caught up in its own hype, or some other thing, and then it either continues on like a run-on sentence (which this is, BTW) without ever reaching any real conclusion, or it just abruptly ends, and we're left with this mess and we the audience wonder what happened, though some defend it by claiming its an intentional "open" ending rather than simply admit that the author didn't know how to conclude his story. Of course, I *am* a Westerner, and I *do* like my stories having a conclusive ending, so it's possible that I'm just biased against "open endings". But regardless, I would *really* like it of more anime series did a better job resolving the issues brought up in their stories. Yes, that sure would be nice. |
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Hitokiri Kenshin
Posts: 291 |
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With Fruits Basket, know some guys were conflicted on wanting to continue as while the manga had a happy ending the anime ended before the Cerebus Syndrome as tvtropes puts it, really takes off and you see how much the Sohmas' lives suck due to the curse.
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grooven
Posts: 1426 Location: Canada |
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Gakuen Alice really needs a remake. The anime explained nothing and left you with nothing.
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Hagaren Viper
 Posts: 774 |
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Alien Nine was kind of a weird one. It wrapped it's arc nicely enough with the group saving one of their own from an alien, and even though there are still questions it's an okay stopping point until spoiler[one of the characters is shown dead with no context during the credits.] Ending without finishing the story is one thing, but casually throwing in such an important moment in the show's final seconds threw me for a loop. But hey, it made me buy the manga.
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jymmy
 Posts: 1244 |
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Regarding the poll, I never find myself that bugged about non-endings. If I really care about the series, I can look up the source material. And if it's not available in English, I'm good at making my peace with that. Actually, my single highest-rated manga adaptation is Usagi Drop, where from what I hear it's a mercy that the anime ended where it did.
I'm not going to tell you that the start of the series was garbage and that it became god-tier after Kumagawa turned up, but Medaka Box did improve significantly after Kumagawa turned up. What hurts here is how much Megumi Ogata's performance as Kumagawa charmed me in the four minutes and one episode he was before the anime ended forever.
Each of those clauses is added in a grammatically-acceptable way. Actually, a run-on sentence has nothing to do with length. They can be short, for example this is one. |
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tangytangerine
 Posts: 439 |
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The Ambition of Oda Nobuna is one recently that bugged me. As it's obviously got more to it, especially since it teased right at the end with the appearance of spoiler[another Warlord] and saying to look forward to more.
Although judging from the DVD/BR sales, it only did decent. So this might be one of those sales where sales just don't warrant another season. |
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Top Gun
 Posts: 4639 |
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This phenomenon is one of the most frustrating parts of being an anime fan, because it feels like utterly botching adaptations in various ways is something that's just endemic to the entire industry. For your usual long-running Shounen Jump property, there are far too many anime adaptations that started up way too soon into the manga run, and thus get bogged down in filler right away, even though it was obvious that problem would arise; some of them never get past that point and just wind up fizzling out. There are times when a longer series does reach a good stopping-point, but even when it was fairly popular, it never gets picked up again for whatever reason; Kekkaishi was a recent example of that. More recently we've seen a number of shorter adaptations that are intended from the start to be no more than commercials for the source material; I find those especially frustrating because I have no real interest in manga, and even if I did, why would I be content with having to switch media mid-stream in that manner? All of this is why I almost universally tend to prefer anime-original works: they can have their own ending issues, but even in that case you know it wasn't the result of some adaptation fail nonsense.
As for the article, I was amused to see Tokko take the top spot...not because it wasn't a terrible cliffhanger, but because the entire series was so bad that I felt like it really didn't matter.  Trinity Blood is another I'd put in that category: the show was already a pretty big mess which featured every single negative GONZO tendency you could think of, so the combination of a non-ending and a major flashback pulled out of nowhere just felt in keeping with that. (I've heard that the original novels were far better, but the author unfortunately died with them unfinished, so there you go.) Deadman Wonderland was an unfortunate one, as I rather enjoyed that series; I was hoping its success on Toonami might foster hopes of some sort of co-production on a second season, but I guess not. Inuyasha absolutely would have qualified if not for the existence of the Final Act, which I need to watch one of these days just to finish the damn thing off.
And then there's Berserk. From what I've seen, I feel like one of the only people who loved the hell out of the original anime...but has little to no interest in picking up the manga to continue things. I thought the whole Golden Age arc was a masterwork of dark interpersonal drama and political scheming, something that's very rarely pulled off well in anime. But then we take a hard right turn at the Eclipse into a literal blood orgy, and I was just like...yeah I think I'm okay with leaving things here. |
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CrownKlown
 Posts: 1762 |
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For those who mentioned Captain Tylor, that one ended probably due to the same reason as Kaze no Stigma. I think the main guy, who was pushing for more anime at the time was hit by a car and killed, afterwards they kind of just dropped it.
Also for those stating Spike died as fact, I don't know how you can say that as a fact, and generally solely on some star allegory. As far as I know Watanabe has never made a concrete statement one way or the other, and looking online apparently in a 2006 interview he was at least considering a second Bebop film with Spike. http://bebopattic.weebly.com/watanabe-interviewtoronto.html Personally I think he died, but nothing in the show or outside comments has made that definitive. |
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vanfanel
 Posts: 1247 |
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It's been over a decade since I saw Lodoss TV (too long to remember it well), but I wonder if the TV version took care of that? The novels certainly did, and the TV series does follow the books more closely. However, the TV series is also a really awful adaptation. It skipped books 1-2 and wrote around a lot things in them that might have needed explaining, so it might have not dealt with Woodchuck's fate either. But this is a happy day for Woodchuck! Somebody cares about him!
The Hyoka anime got through book 4 and stopped. There's a fifth book that hasn't been touched. The author says he wants to write more, and end the series at graduation time. My feeling on the Hyouka anime is that it should have ended about 10 seconds sooner than it did. That would've been a perfect ending, but instead it reset to the status quo. If they must undo that beautiful moment, they should wait until the first ten seconds of a SEQUEL series! |
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Gina Szanboti
Posts: 11438 |
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They did the same thing with Aku no Hana, but what made that so rage-inducing to me was that every episode of the series they made a point of how many episodes the series would have, implying they had planned for a 13 and done script, rather than being cut dead beyond their control halfway through. Not only was it a cheat to end the way they did, but it was the false advertising throughout that made that cheat all the more bitter. |
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belvadeer
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Good thing the manga wrapped everything up and was quicker to get through than a whole episode of the TV series. Dragon Century also ended on a pretty ambiguous note, despite 80s OVAs tended to have clear cut endings. I wasn't sure if spoiler[Carmine was going to return after flying off to lead the dragons to fight the demons]. The ending song also didn't help me think of a happy ending. I wasn't sure if I was supposed to believe: spoiler[He's an awesome badass dragon and the main protagonist! He'll come back!] or spoiler[He was badly wounded. He might not come back. The dragons' mission to fight demons is a sad fate and some of them do die.] |
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timesteel
 Posts: 202 Location: California |
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Tsubasa chronicle: they seriously need to finish the show or just do a reboot
Guyver: same as Tsubasa chronicle finish it or reboot |
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