I think that Kimagure Orange Road<\/i> boasted a fine, fine ending, but there is little that can be said about it without resorting to wild and dangerous spoilers. Here I throw caution to the wind and say what I really feel.<\/p>\n
Series End Spoilers<\/b><\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The conclusion of Kimagure Orange Road<\/I> resorts to something dangerous: time travel. If you make one step wrong, then you’re screwed. The series had experimented with time travel twice before, in two different fashions, and this is the third; it’s definitely rare to see a story that features not one but three variations on the same theme with wildly different results.
\nThe first result was disastrous; the second worked well, partly because it was similar to one of my favourite films; and this, the final frontier, follows my own rules and thus meets with my express approval.
\nMy personal paradox punching theory of time travel is that “whatever happened stays happened”, which I used to some effect in one of my fictional “epics”. Essentially, for cleanliness’ sake, I “believe” that one cannot change the past. I mean, did you ever read Sigmund Freud’s case studies of Bill & Ted? No, you did not. He respected the rules.<\/p>\n
Having given you that set up, when I tell you that Kyosuke wakes up one afternoon to find that Ayukawa had arranged to meet her first love from six years ago on that day, it’s not going to be hard to realise that Kyosuke is<\/I> that first love. Sadly, Kyosuke is not quite smart enough to figure that out even as he’s coming to the story’s conclusion. By telling young Ayukawa what he looks for in a woman, Kyosuke unwittingly creates the Ayukawa of modern times. The fact that he does not recognise Ayukawa is understandable, as she was quite the tomboy in her day, but his other stupidities are not so forgivable: he doesn’t recognise either Hikaru or Yuusaku, despite the fact that they are essentially shorter versions of themselves. Hikaru remained exactly the same to the modern day, but Yuusaku was much more of a cry baby in his youth. If you’ve established that you’re in a time six years previous to your own, in the same place that all of your friends lived in their youths, then there is absolutely no excuse for being surprised every time that you see someone you know.<\/p>\n
After that we have the alternate universe where Kyosuke does not exist. In this universe, everyone is a delinquent, and the gangs rule the streets, and women leave their nemeses to be raped by their subordinates! (how did that become a standard plot in that sort of show?) It would be foolish to treat this as the result of a world without Kyosuke, and Kobayashi does not attempt to do that: he’s simply not that egotistical. It’s simply an extra complication to bring about the Doctor Who<\/i> problem. Despite the fact that the first time travel episode had good Kyosuke and evil Kyosuke fighting all over the place, this episode claims that if someone touches a past version of themselves, they will disintegrate. I suppose that this is a rule that doesn’t apply to ESPers, and I am happy to accept that.
\nI’ve never actually seen that episode of Doctor Who<\/I> (in fact, I’ve barely seen any<\/I> episodes of Doctor Who<\/i>, but its theme always sticks in my mind: a fake race against time to save Ayukawa from herself, as it were, was a fine way to bring about the revelation of psychic powers and the revelation of feelings that have always been painfully obvious to the audience.<\/p>\n
The name of the episode was “Once more from the beginning”, which gave me a terrible, terrible vision of the series resetting. This was not to be the case, though, and for that I was eternally grateful. That’s not to say that there was not a reset of some variety: Kyosuke being transferred back to his waking up and realising at last that he was Madoka’s first love gives him the benefit of another kiss and<\/I> the convenience of Madoka not discovering his power related secret. This is a reset that I can live with: Kyosuke’s learned his lesson, Madoka’s figured it out for herself, and everyone’s happy.<\/p>\n
This is the beauty of the ending: it doesn’t bother with a pesky epilogue because that way madness would lie. Ending a series with two people getting together is a nice place for a conclusion because frequently, especially in a love triangle, there would be terrible repercussions. This is true of Kimagure Orange Road<\/i> more than anything else: I cannot imagine how Hikaru would react. It would be the biggest betrayal in her history and it would be hard for her to get over it. <\/p>\n
That’s simply not in the scope of the TV series: I’m looking forward to seeing it dealt with in the film. Kimagure Orange Road<\/i> is one of those fun, sweet series that I savour. With each day that passes, I lament its loss of licence all the more.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I think that Kimagure Orange Road boasted a fine, fine ending, but there is little that can be said about it without resorting to wild and dangerous spoilers. Here I throw caution to the wind and say what I really feel. Series End Spoilers<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[152],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-659","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-kimagure-orange-road"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/batrock.net\/anime\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/659","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/batrock.net\/anime\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/batrock.net\/anime\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/batrock.net\/anime\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/batrock.net\/anime\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=659"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/batrock.net\/anime\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/659\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/batrock.net\/anime\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=659"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/batrock.net\/anime\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=659"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/batrock.net\/anime\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=659"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}