Considering the treatment that The Usual Suspects Ending recently received, may I suggest The Ending Explains Nothing?
Really, I do think there's a solid argument here for a rename. We've got two tropes named for Studio Gainax that have absolutely nothing to do with one another: one refers to jiggling breasts in animation, the other to an ending that raises far more questions than answers, if not throwing the plot out the window entirely.
No they were separate before but I thought they were going to be merged . The ideas the same an undue effort being put into Fanservice.
The Crystal Caverns A bird's gotta sing.Jiggle Physics unlike Gaingaxing isn't just about breasts though. It's anything jiggling in video games. Tits, ass, fat...
Reality is that, which when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. -Philip K. DickStill Gaianxing is a terrible name . How about calling it Extea Animated Mammaries?
The Crystal Caverns A bird's gotta sing.In regards to a rename for Gainax Ending, it has already been determined in this very thread that the current title has an exceptional number of inbound links (as stated by Fast Eddie himself
), a good number of wicks, and a low percentage of misuse.
This is not Fan Myopia or the Grandfather Clause that is keeping the name as it is... the title is working by every metric we currently have to measure it.
It seemed that there were no objections to reworking the definition to make things more clear. However I do not see any compelling reason to rename this in the face of evidence showing that it is working just fine as it is.
In regards to Gainaxing, if you feel that trope needs to be renamed please take it to another thread.
edited 29th Oct '10 5:11:34 AM by Meeble
Visit my contributor page to assist with the "I Like The Cheeses" project!When I first arrived, the two things that confused me the most were the odd use of the word "ship" and the multiple meanings of the term "Gainax". When it comes to Gainax Ending, though, I suspect we're a victim of our own success. TV Tropes Will Ruin The World. I think it was probably a terrible title when it was first introduced, but, thanks in part to this site, it's becoming a widely accepted term, so it's steadily becoming less terrible as time passes.
The other similarly-named trope will have to be evaluated separately, but I hope it doesn't prove as intractable as this one.
Speaking words of fandom: let it squee, let it squee.Gainax Gambit? is that the one where the creators design the work such that no matter how the audience interprets it, we'll never get it right (and then they appropriately sit back feed off our never-ending confusion)?
I'd bet a million yen that more people in the Western world have heard of The Usual Suspects and it's (in)famous ending (and often nothing more than that) than have ever heard of this Gainax or their Neon Genesis Evangelion (which I thought was a rock band until very recently). I'd bet another million yen that the wicks are coming from websites populated by fans of anime and manga. The Usual Suspects is up there with Fight Club, Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction and The Matrix as the iconic films of The '90s. If it's fandom doesn't get to keep the name (and for a trope much smaller in examples than Gainax Ending), I don't see why Gainax's fans should.
Can you support this? I can honestly say I've never heard of The Usual Suspects, but I've heard of the others and seen The Matrix. But this is beside the point. The Usual Suspects Ending didn't get to keep its name because it A: blocked anyone who hadn't seen the movie from using it B: did not have the sufficient in bound or internal wicks to justify having latched on.
Fight smart, not fair.Well, YMMV on the 90's icon point, but as far as I'm aware, it's well known in Western pop culture for it's twist ending. The average Westerner has never heard of Studio Gainax (and neither had I until I read this wiki), let alone their alleged reputation for producing deconstructive works with confusing endings. The impression I'm getting, at least from the comments here, is that Gainax is known within the anime and manga fan subculture for this, but said subculture is obscure compared to that of mainstream Western popular culture, and it's far more likely the average English speaking netizen will be familiar with the latter than the former.
As suedenim put it, if you asked the average man on the street his definition of a "Gainax Ending", he'd probably ask you what the heck a "Gainax" is. A "Mind Screw Ending" would elicit much clearer responses, most likely to Inception (if the respondent is under 30) Twin Peaks and The Prisoner (if the respondent is over 30).
edited 2nd Nov '10 5:11:29 AM by Praetyre
This is the point I've been trying to make. There may be eleventy kajillion billion inbound links to Gainax Ending... but if they're all from one insular and impenetrable subculture, is it really all that great for TV Tropes as a whole?
BTW, this isn't an "anime people vs. non-anime people" fight, or at least shouldn't be.
I actually really like finding some new mostly-anime trope, or a general trope that has an interesting permutation in anime. And things like the "Essential Anime" that's being put together in YKTTW now are really neat.
The problem is that an awful lot of the anime-related stuff here is written strictly for the already-initiated. And in other cases, trope descriptions are written as if they're anime-only when, in fact, they aren't, or at least aren't necessarily.
The trope names are just one aspect, really. Whether Gainax Ending ever changes or not, I'd love to see more anime-centric stuff on TV Tropes written as if a general-interest audience might be reading it too... because it is.
Jet-a-Reeno!but see, this is not about being fair to the fandom or to the subculture, it's about what's working and what isn't working for the wiki. Gainax Ending is working. rather spectacularly, i might add. The Usual Suspects Ending was not quite in the same situation.
now, i don't know why that is. The Usual Suspects MIGHT be more well-known in the western world than Neon Genesis Evangelion is, for all i know (mind you, i think that's a gross generalization... it's certainly not in my neck of the woods, but considering most people consider "the western world" as "the united states (and maybe europe)," it's not surprising to hear). perhaps it's just that animanga subculture is more pervasive on the internet as opposed to in real life. but well, that happens, and like suedenim said, this shouldn't be an "anime fans vs. non-anime fans" thing. regardless of that, the trope, as it is, is drawing people in, and it has certainly made its way around the site as well.
also, backing up what deboss said, The Usual Suspects Ending was renamed not because the movie is "obscure" or "not well-known," but because a) the trope itself was a massive spoiler for the movie, which meant basically that you couldn't even read the trope definition if you didn't want to know the ending of the movie (Gainax Ending is an ending trope, so it's inherently spoilerish, but it doesn't have one particular movie in the name), and b) people kept confusing it with Unreliable Narrator, which is another one of the things The Usual Suspects' ending is remembered for. as far as i know, Gainax Ending doesn't have significant misuse. if anyone wants to tackle a portion of the 694 wicks and check, though, that would be very welcome.
Please see Everything You Wanted To Know About Changing Titles regarding whether to rename a trope that's in heavy use in a specific fandom or subculture.
Please see Fast Eddie's post on the last page regarding whether this rename has any chance whatsoever of going through. Given that the rename discussion really finished two months ago with that post, this thread should probably be closed.
Torment liveblog is still hiatusing. You can vandalize my contributor page if you want something to do.I think the title works. thanks to both Grandfather Clause and the fact that it's well used aroundd the wiki. and honestly comparing this to The Ending Changes It All is preposterous (the Name was a big spoiler, and we don't need that around here) what we need is to change the description and sicuss some of the example (how come Lost ending was a Gainax Ending, when all it did was rework one of the most famous fan theory and incorporate it into the myth of the show)
PS: also reading the Laconic bit, it says that this involves genre shift. but few of the examples dohave such a thing as a genre shift
It's not exactly naive. And it can happen. But it's tough. And definetly worthwhile.That description really needs a rewrite.
The only way I was able to figure out what the heck a Gainax ending is was by looking at potholes to the trope (I hadn't discovered Laconic yet). The definition given on the page seems to encompass many factors unrelated to being a Mind Screw.
Maybe we could move the Studio Gainax stuff to the bottom of the description and just use an Alice and Bob example at the top?
Fight. Struggle. Endure. Suffer. LIVE.It's a godawful name. As are all trope names that take obscure anime terms that 99.99% of the readership doesn't understand, and use those obscure names to identify broadly used tropes that apply to many different forms of art. Horrible, horrible name, and a no-brainer to change it to something that makes sense like Mind Screw Ending. Why are questions like this hard? Does your average person have any earthly idea what Studio Gainax is?
It's a horrible name, I agree. Unfortunately, horrible names will stick on occasion, and then you have to live with it. Description could use a pruning though. The history of Gainax is unimportant to the trope.
Also, I realized upon reading the page, the trope hadn't been explicitly defined. Rewrote the first two paragraphs to include some options and cut the brief history of Gainax.
edited 27th Dec '10 6:08:45 PM by Deboss
Fight smart, not fair.

definitely should keep the name. Fan Myopia FTW!
what i do agree with, though, is that the description needs work. it doesn't even directly state a Gainax Ending is basically a Mind Screw Ending, the closest it gets is the part where it says "most series don't throw a bunch of curve-balls at them during the series finale." and "curve ball" can be interpreted so many different ways. any unexpected ending might work using that definition— not just Mind Screw-y ones. and later on when it says labeling a work as having a Gainax Ending is a "warning" to the watcher for a strange ending. it could be better defined than that, i think.
not to mention the "more cynical use of the term" isn't directly related to the trope. yes, in gainax's case budget cuts led to a WTF ending, but you could just as well have one of those even with the biggest budget ever, and you could have a straight-forward ending with barely a penny (a sucky one, probably, but straight-forward). this second definition could very well be a separate trope on its own.