Fin

I take back everything bad I ever said about Assassin's Creed's story, because I just saw the last four episodes of Escaflowne.

I was enjoying Escaflowne before, it wasn't exactly genius in the writing department, but it was watchable, but in the last four episodes the writing took a turn for the "amazingly terrible". New plot points and characters are introduced, only to be solved in the next episode. The main character seems to have forgotten everything she has seen and heard up to this point. One of the major plot points is ignored as if it had never occured, and then there's the dialogue, which became cringe-worthy. The real topper though was the ending. I'm not going to spoil anything here, and I don't know how to make a jump, so I can't say my real thoughts, but I can tell you that it is bad. The ending is bad enough that if the rest of the series had been good, and those last four episodes hadn't been terrible, the show would still be terrible. It was bad enough that I wanted to physically harm the writers of the show.

For those of you who don't know me, I really like endings. I like it when things end, and I really like good endings. Good endings can improve a show/game/book's quality in my eyes several fold. On the other side of the coin, a bad ending can ruin a masterpiece. This is probably why I hate most books in the literary canon that everyone seems to love *cough*Hemmingway*cough. I seriously considered not finishing Persona 3 because I was afraid it was going to have a bad ending, and I didn't want to ruin that game.

When I say bad ending I don't mean a sad ending, a depressing ending, or even an ending that isn't an ending at all. A bad ending is one that leaves me not with contentment, excitement, depression, or any other single word feeling. A bad ending leaves me saying, "What the fuck was that!?"

I just don't understand how a writer can get through a series, a game, a book, and keep my interest until the end, and then write at their worst. The end should be when the writer pulls out all of their tricks, and you should be left amazed at what they did. However, I find it is all too common to have endings that just kind of slump over and are done. Even some of my favorite games fall into this category. I loved Dark Cloud 2 to death, but it had one of the worst endings I have come across. I mean really, the final boss didn't even have a unique song!

I wonder if the writers who make bad endings just don't know how to do it. They've been writing for so long, they don't know how to stop. So, rather than taking the time to really think it over and craft a finale, they just stop writing and call it good. Dang, now I'm really curious what the hell the writers and translators of Escaflowne were thinking.