Troperville
Help us survive. All donations are anonymous on the wiki and unacknowledged, as we don't wish to create a hierarchy among Tropers.
Editing
Tools
|
|
|
|
"Um, there's some things that are still unresolved here, guys! Was Rei my-my mom? Or a clone? Or, hell, was this all in my mind? Wha-what's an EVA? Is that sort of a Freudian thing? Er… um Am I real? Uhh, is this how you end the series? I mean, is this where we go from here? Okay, the movie sure as Hell better make up for this, I'm telling you right now, 'Cause I'm stuck in Nowhereland! You ran outta ink too, didn't you, ya bastards?"
Studio Gainax has become famous, among other things, for deliberate subversion of the subjects its shows tackle. True to its company's roots, most of its best subtle satire is of its own fans and their expectations. Many of its endings are not light-hearted, though calling them strict Downer Endings is a misnomer here. The more common themes associated are lots of dialogue with obscure metaphor and conversation and a serious treatment. The philosophy of the series is most openly seen here. Indirect or Distant Finales pop up too. Basically a Genre Shift in the last episodes, usually aiming to dark. Expect a Drama Bomb Finale.
Even if another production company has done a story, saying a show has a Gainax Ending is usually a spoiler-free but well understood "warning" to the watcher for a strange ending. While certainly not the first or the only company to do so, this exaggerated stereotype has pretty much been stuck on them since Neon Genesis Evangelion. This also corresponds to such an ending.
A more cynical use of the term Gainax Ending can also refer to running out of budget before the end of a series leading the last episodes to contain lots of Stock Footage, voice overs, unresolved plots, and other tricks -- Gainax once prominently had a Grand Finale done in black and white. How well this works artistically is debatable. However, this is less common nowadays, as shows concentrate their budgets for the first and last sets of episodes most of the time, and the inevitable tidying up for the DVD releases.
See also Outer Limits Twist. Not to be confused with Gainaxing, which is not a downer so much as an UP and downer.
Examples:
- As mentioned above, Neon Genesis Evangelion for both interpretations of the Gainax Ending. This, however, only applies to the original ending (episodes 25 and 26 of the TV series), as End of Evangelion is a much less sophisticated Downer Ending.
- It's still enough to drive people crazy and leave them wishing it had never been released.
- Actually, End of Evangelion runs concurrently with the original ending. The original ending is what's going on in Shinji's mind while End of Evangelion is taking place in the outside world.
- Actually, whether Eo E and original ending are about the same events, or mutually exclusive, is still debated.
- Hey guys, there's this big line of text right above the edit window here, I'll copy and paste it so you can read: "Spotted a factual error? Cool! Either fix it or discuss it on the discussion page. Please don't add a line saying "Actually, ..." to the article. Thanks! "
- They're now remaking the series in the form of four movies, which will apparently have yet another alternate ending.
- And we can assume that there will be yet more alternate ending action if the manga is ever finished.
- Video Game Example: The Final Fantasy series is notorious for endings and final acts that will absolutely make you go "Buh?" at some point. Time loops and clones and people made of dreams and unresolved hanging threads and various other Mind Screw techniques have been employed from the very first game.
- Mahoromatic seems to end every episode in this manner. In fact, the entire premise of the show is that as a non-rechargeable combat android, Mahoro can literally number the days till she deactivates, and the viewers are constantly reminded of this fact.
- Yami To Boushi To Hon No Tabibito had a rather disappointing ending to what some would consider a classic yuri series.
- The black and white "We ran out of money" series was Top wo Nerae!, also known as Gunbuster.
- Ironically, the black and white final episode actually was more expensive to produce than the ones before it, but Gainax's bad reputation causes many people to believe it was a money-saving scheme.
- A rare Western live-action example: The Prisoner.
- Creative differences caused a Gainax Ending in Kare Kano, causing the popularity of the manga series to shoot up considerably.
- Probably the most famous example in gaming culture is Metal Gear Solid 2. It owes a great deal to The New York Trilogy, Paul Auster's mindscrew on the distinctions between author, character, reality, and fiction. Much it takes place in cheap talking heads CODEC sequences to boot, although it's not clear whether the game's production had any budgetary problems (it was certainly pressed for time and had the backlash of 9/11 to deal with). There is no way to summarise the key events in a reasonable amount of space, so you can look here if you want to know what happens. There was a point to all the meandering, but the end result was not popular.
- Depends on who you asked, and it's very much explained in Metal Gear Solid 4. And originally, it was supposed to be a simple story of Snake taking on another set of terrorists. And, yes, the ending was supposed to be a lot more explained, but Kojima cut it out after 9/11.
- Another video game example: Xenogears, starting somewhere along the second disk, replaced virtually all overland map movement and scenes with the characters sitting in chairs narrating everything that happened. This actually is an openly admitted case of a low budget and forced rush to market causing a Gainax Ending.
- See also Monty Python and the Holy Grail. However, this might have too simple an ending for this to count. Everyone gets arrested. Interesting note: The original scripted ending was to have a large battle that the English begin to lose, but they are saved by swallows dropping coconuts. This editor thinks that would have been far better, but considering how much of a horrible time everyone had working on the movie, it's not surprising they wanted to finish it quickly.
- This troper's brother has a book written by the Pythons that explains the reason for the changed ending--all the actors were being used as the English side of the fight, so there was no budget and no cast to be the French. One of the Pythons suggested, "Oh, let's just have everybody get arrested."
- Excel Saga actually subverts this trope; in the last few aired episodes it suddenly gets a real plot going and is much more serious. Then in the final (albeit unaired) episode, it returns to its normal wackiness.
- The Wachowski Brothers refuse to explain exactly what's going on with Neo and Smith, the Source, flaming truth vision, etc. etc. in the sequels to The Matrix. The fan theories are a bit odd, but that's unescapable given what they've got to work with.
- The Video Game "Path of Neo" gives the trilogy a alternate ending - which manages to be even stranger...
- What? Except for the change in the fight between Neo and Smith, it's the same...
- Chobits starts out as a typical Magical Girlfriend-cum-Moe Moe show, then, about halfway through, gets...er, weird. And to top it off, after spending half the series contemplating the sentience of persocoms, the single most advanced persocom in existence states that she isn't really sentient, and neither are any of the other Chobits - they're highly advanced, naturally, but when you get down to the nitty-gritty, they're only following their programming. Most of the fans interpreted this turn of events as a gigantic middle finger from CLAMP.
- Lawn Dogs is a fairly realistic and depressing movie about the friendship between a 10 year old girl, Devon, and a 21 year old lower-class outsider, Trent. You know it's going to end bad, when after Devon shoots the man who is beating up Trent and helps him to his car, she gives Trent a comb and a mirror and asks him to throw them out the window as he drives away, to cover his tracks. When he later does so, a river rises up underneath him, and a forest sprouts up behind him. This actually makes some sense metaphorically and was slightly set up, but still seems to come completely out of nowhere.
- Western literature example: In Nuklear Age by Brian Clevinger (who makes Eight Bit Theater), most of the book is a comedic parody of the superhero genre, somewhat akin to The Tick. The last section of the book, however, turns quite rapidly to dark, with a villain killing off main characters, extremely large segments of the world's population, and injecting a bunch of philosophy based somewhat off of Norse Mythology into the mix. It was an elaborate joke played on the readers.
- And speaking of works of Western literature whose final chapters are markedly different in tone and style given what's come before, Deathly Hallows anyone?
- Even before that, if you take a look a the differences of the writing styles of the last two books compared to the first, it's as if they were written by a completely different person
- The ending of Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge. Even for a game series that thrived on absurdist humour and Star Wars references, the mixing of the two with presumed Lotus Eater Machine involvement created a true masterpiece in confusing endings which was only explained by the next game that was released six years later.
- Well, more "retconned" than "explained." Series creator Ron Gilbert insists that he has his own idea of what MI 2's ending means, and he's not telling.
- Since he's no longer involved with the series, maybe he should...
- The ending of the movie adaptation of Silent Hill was quite opaque.
- The film of Being There ends when the main character, with no explanation whatsoever, walks out into the middle of a lake and, just so there's no mistake, fully submerges his umbrella.
- After a series of voyages to societies with satirical iniquities, the fourth book of Gulliver's Travels featurs a trip to a Mary Suetopia of sapient horses who define all evil through a race of bestial humanoids. It ends with the heretofore inquisitive and tranquil Gulliver falling into despair upon realizing that the English are more like these beasts than the horses.
- The first episode prologue from Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann counts as a Gainax Opening. Instead of cramming all the weirdo darkness at the end of the series, they instead packed it at the beginning (see elsewhere for theories) and did instead a straightforward, fairly cheerful ending, provided you ignore the last few minutes, anyway.
- Super Mario Galaxy, surprising for a series that's usually known for shallow plots. It usually takes at least two viewings of the ending for players to figure out just what happened, which is convenient because you need to see the ending four times for Hundred Percent Completion.
- The ending of the first Dungeons and Dragons movie has the remaining main characters standing over the grave of the comic relief. They hold a stone over the grave and turn into little balls of floaty light and float away. I Am Not Making This Up.
- Chrono Cross: The main character is supposed to be dead. A computer that controls destiny. The computer kept humanity safe from a race of dragon people, Nice Job Breaking It Hero. Everybody from the last game is inexplicably dead and your actions may or may not have actually done anything about it. Schala Lives! Then finally, a credits sequence of a girl running around in Tokyo with a necklace that has nothing to do with anything. And good luck figuring out if you actually accomplished anything from playing the game.
- Kamen Rider Ryuki managed to pull off an Everybody Lives ending without ruining its There Can Be Only One premise, and while justifying the alternative continuities of the movie ("Episode Final") and the TV special ("13 Riders"). It's just damn confusing the first time you watch it, mainly because it's something of a Jigsaw Puzzle Plot.
- The ending for the Gantz anime is very bizarre and generally very unpopular as well, resulting in many fans to disregard it completely.
- Vanilla Sky, based on the Spanish Abre Los Ojos (Open Your Eyes), has a pretty strange ending. It appears to be something along the lines of a sci-fi All a Dream ending, except that, when he wakes up, just before cutting to credits, we clearly hear the voice of someone who shouldn't exist outside the dream. Or maybe that wasn't it, but there was some sort of contradiction in that final line that couldn't be explained.
- On the original spanish film they make it clear it was all a simulation, he was connected to a machine dreaming until his body could be repaired, and the film ends when he accepts this as a reality. The last thing heard after he decides to go back to the (now future) world, on the black screen before the credits, is "open your eyes". Also, those last thirty minutes are the only good part of the film.
- Revolutionary Girl Utena. Of course, compared to the rest of the series...
- The makers of the Air anime were likely shooting for a Bittersweet Ending, but the ambiguity of what happens after Misuzu's death leaves many viewers in the dark.
- A Series of Unfortunate Events. Basically every single plot point in the series was left unresolved at the end. The last book can best be summarized as "Ha, ha! In life, there are lots of mysteries you'll never know the answer to. So long and thanks for all the book sales."
- This Troper thinks the ending was left open for interpretation. The reader themself could decide what happened. Whether everyone died at sea or lived happily ever after or somewhere in the middle is entirely up to you.
- Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull - an alien skeleton comes to life and merges with a roomful of others to get its skin back, then El Dorado turns into a giant flying saucer and goes into an Alternate Universe. It's slightly less insane than it sounds.
- Any video game ending with a strange glitch can be perceived as one of these in the right light. For example, the way you knew you'd beaten the original arcade version of Donkey Kong was that Jumpman/Mario died a few seconds into the 22nd level due to memoryspace running out. This has become known as the Kill Screen.
- Most famous for this is Pac-Man. Level 256 is a warped morass that looks like two mazes crammed together. There are no confirmed cases of the level being beaten.
- Twin Peaks, after the killer was discovered.
- 2001: A Space Odyssey, the film. We spend a couple hours dealing with a homicidal computer, and he's taken care of. And they all lived happily ever after? Not exactly - Dave goes on to get his body absorbed by some alien monolith, then we get some bizarre imagery, followed by an image of a fetus floating in space in an orb of light.
- Two Words: The Bible. For most of its length, it seems to be a fairly straighforward story of the history of the Jewish people. Then, in the last third of the book, the personality of the major character totally changes, completely twisting the meaning of the story. (This is so abrupt that many fans do not consider the end canon.) If that wasn't enough, you have the last
episode chapter, Revelations, which is a bizarre and trippy (if evocative) Mind Screw set in the far future. Just deciphering its meaning has led to quite a bit of Wild Mass Guessing and not a little Fan Dumb. (This troper is of the opinion that the author was simply making it up as he went along, until time constraints forced him to Wrap It Up.)
- Considering that the bible was written by at least a dozen diferent people living centuries apart, and then compiled between 400 and 1000 years later, it's surprising that it's even readable. And don't get me started on the apacrypha.
- Science-fiction author Phillip K. Dick pretty much made a career out of this and Mind Screw. Ubik is the mother of all Gainax Endings.
- However, if you count the many short stories and The Maninthe High Castle, he's not as screwy as compared to Ray Bradbury. Hell, a LOT of the stories make a lot of sense, especially the collection The Golden Man.
- Our House the Madness musical: was always going to have two endings due to the parallel universes plot. However, even after these are resolved via dual Twilight Zone Twists there's still time for a third 'ending' to turn it all into a Shaggy Dog Story (done by introducing a third option in the life-changing event at the beginning of the play which would mean none of the things we've just been watching happened at all.) Oh well. Song and dance number!
- Ending of the School Rumble manga. Three Words: What the HELL?
- The ending of The Black Hole. The crew go into the black hole and then... they're in Hell? And then they're in space? Wha?
- The ending to the remake of Planet Of The Apes. Marky Mark hops in his spacepod, flies back through the timewarp, and... suddenly he's on Earth what we assume is earth, and apes have replaced humans. Did he just bump his head getting into the pod, and is hallucinating? Yeah, that's gotta be it.
- The first two Earthworm Jim games were near-legendary for their bizarre endings: In the first one, the Damsel In Distressed is killed a mere five feet away from the protagonist's rescue by a falling cow launched by the player way back in the very first level. The second game's ending is even more insane: Turns out the Damsel In Distress was a cow in disguise. As was the Big Bad. And the player. Wait, WHAT?!
- Kingdom Hearts: Imagine: You're a kid or teen or young adult, who bought the game, just because he/she likes Disney. I mean, it got Disney on the box after all, doesn't it? So, what are you exspecting? A nice, happy, "everything's perfect" ending. But you didn't count on one thing: The Final Fantasy elements of the game! Suddenly, you find yourself in an ending, where your best is friend trapped in some scary place, along with Micky Mouse, for some reason you can't comprehend, (After all, he could have just went over to Sora, to the other side of the door, couldn't he?) your girlfriend is suddenly appearing out of nowhere (wasn't in Traverese town when we last saw her?) just to disappear again after two sentences. (one of wich consists of a single word: Sora!) And then, finally, your Party is chasing a dog with a piece of paper in a place, you've never seen ANYWHERE in the game, and there's absolut no explanation, how they even got there! As for me, this ending was the first true "WTF just happened?!"-moment in my whole life! Thanks god, there's a sequel. Two to be exact. The dog is, strangely, obliterated from the first sequel, the piece of paper, that seemed to be SOOOO important, from BOTH.
- Beyond Good And Evil did this to this troper. Having played through the game twice, the second time actively looking for foreshadowing or other explanatory elements, this troper is still confused. It's not helped by the fact that once the final boss fight ends, there is absolutely no explanation of what just happened apart from a Sequel Hook in the form of a Dom Z spore in Pey'j's hand.
- Look at the bright side: At least we're getting a sequel now, maybe they'll explain it. Compare to when we were to believe that this was it and there would never be any more to expand or explain.
- I think I kind of understand it... Basically, Jade fought on to the end, and defeated the DOMZ leader. The thing that was helping it doesn't understand this - how could Jade have done this, even after all their power was put against her? He decides that this mysterious being is something he should investigate further, and offers her his power to make right what he had made wrong, so he can learn more.
- The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion. After finally getting back the Macguffin, Martin is about to be crowned as the Emperor...and then hordes of Daedra appear out of nowhere even though the Big Bad is dead, and said Big Bad's boss arrives, driving you and Martin into a temple. Then Martin breaks the Macguffin, which somehow makes him morph into a dragon and drive off the Daedra, then inexplicably turning to stone. After going through all your trials, it feels like a sick joke and unrewarding, and it practically runs on A Wizard Did It.
|
|
, in a parody commentary track on the final Neon Genesis Evangelion DVD
