The decision of how to end a story can be quite a complex one and plenty of wonderful stories have ended up tainted by an ending that casts an unpleasant experience over the whole series (I’m looking at you Bunny Drop!). However, there are times where an ending hints at something fascinating but, possibly in the interest of concluding the story, decides to leave it unexplored. Therefore, I thought it might interesting to discuss some manga series where I wish that certain aspects of the ending had been expanded.
As you might imagine from the title, this article will contain spoilers for the manga series that I am going to discuss and I am going to try my best to provide a structure so that you can avoid encountering these spoilers for any series that you are interested in reading. Each manga series will be given a title to indicate where the discussion begins and will only end when the next title appears. In order to comply with this structure, I will also be providing a title to the concluding paragraph, something I don’t typically do, in order to differentiate it from the preceding manga discussion.
Girl Friends
I have spoken before about my adoration of the series Girl Friends by Milk Morinaga, a series that follows a shy girl called Mariko (typically referred to as Mari) who encounters the outgoing and sociable Akiko (typically referred to as Akko) and quickly become friends. Eventually Mari realises that she is developing romantic feelings for Akko and the confusion and fear surrounding these emotions come to dominate the relationship. As far as I’m concerned, this series is not only the best yuri manga I have read but the best romance manga as well!
However, as much as I love this series, a common consensus is that the ending feels rushed and underdeveloped. To expand, the series is set across three years of high school with the first two composing the vast majority of the manga. Throughout the series the characters of Mari and Akko struggle with their emotions but eventually come to grips with their feelings and decide to establish a romantic relationship during their second year, albeit secretly so as not to earn the disapproval of their peers, family etc. Rather than following their relationship over the course of their third year, however, we are treated to a time skip which sees the cast graduate from high school. While establishing some direction of their relationship, I could not help but be a little disappointed that we skipped what I think would be a very important year in their lives where they continued to develop and explore their emotions while making sure that as few people as possible were aware of their relationship. I still consider the series as a whole to be a masterpiece, there is no doubt in my mind that this is one of the few manga series where I wish the ending had been expanded.
Message to Adolf
It should be of no surprise to those familiar with me that I’m a fan of the works of Osamu Tezuka. One of my favourite Osamu Tezuka manga is a series called Message to Adolf primarily set in Germany and Japan. The story follows the intertwining tales of Adolf Kamil, an Ashkenazi Jew living in Japan, Adolf Kaufmann, a half-Japanese, half-German boy who’s friends with Adolf Kamil but is pressured to join the Hitler Youth and a reporter called Sohei Toge, a Japanese reporter covering the Munich Olympics who learns of documents that could prove that Adolf Hitler had Jewish ancestry.
The vast majority of the story runs from 1936 to the end of the war in 1945. However, the penultimate chapter begins with the arrival of Jewish refugees in the British Mandate of Palestine (also referred to as Mandatory Palestine) and the igniting of the Israeli War of Independence which took place from 1947 to 1949. Many years later in 1963, Adolf Kaufmann, pursued by Nazi hunters, finds himself in Lebanon. He comes across a group from the Palestinian Liberation Organization and is invited to join them in their fight against Israel. The story then cuts to the Palestinian insurgency in South Lebanon in 1973 where it turns out that Adolf Kaufmann has married a Palestinian woman (who is worryingly accepting and even enthusiastic about his Nazi history) and has a daughter. His family is killed during an Israeli attack led by his childhood friend Adolf Kamil and he declares that he shall have vengeance. He challenges Kamil to meet him and is slain during the ensuing duel.
While I still enjoyed the chapter, I can remember thinking to myself how rushed it felt when I read it for the first time. All we know about Kaufmann between 1945 to 1963 is that he has been on the run from Nazi hunters and I felt that even a few pages expanding on his journey would have been very interesting (as well as answering how he found himself in Lebanon). Regarding the time skip from 1963 to 1973, I felt that Osamu Tezuka could have explored the Palestinian’s situation as well as their attitude to Adolf Kaufmann and his past (as well as how he met his wife, whether she knew about his past before marrying him etc.) We also hardly see Adolf Kamil throughout the chapter and I would have liked to have seen his journey to Israel, how he got involved in the Israeli army etc.
Conclusion
The two manga series that I have spoken about are amongst my favourite manga of all time and I think it is because of how much I enjoyed them that I wish each ending could have been expanded upon. Let me know your thoughts on both Girl Friends and Message to Adolf, whether you agree or disagree with me about their endings and what other manga has made you wish their ending was expanded.
Hopefully you have found this article interesting and informative and, if you wish to seek any of the works I mentioned, don’t hesitate to use amazon.co.uk or amazon.com for all of your needs!