== A thought on the problem of endings

One of the things that I've gotten used to as I watch anime is that
many anime shows have unsatisfying endings. The show will go along
decently or even great in the regular episodes, building up mysteries
and intriguing events, and then they reach the concluding episodes and,
well, people wind up sitting around going 'that's all? that was their
explanation for everything?'

(This is so common that people have coined terms like 'Sunrise ending'
and 'Gonzo ending' to summarize how certain studios always seem to end
shows badly.)

In thinking about this I've come to an obvious realization; a good
part of the problem is, to put it one way:

> ~~It is much easier to come up with intriguing mysteries than
> convincing explanations.~~

Anime loves throwing intriguing mysteries into its mix, I think partly
because it's a simple way to build viewer interest, but over and over
again it fails to come up with really convincing explanations to them.
And while not everything has to be explained, the shows have generally
put the mysteries in the foreground (it builds more interest) so they
can't just leave them unanswered because that would make the ending
equally unsatisfying in a different way.

(I don't think that this is just the writers writing themselves into a
corner as the show goes on, because my vague impression is that most
fixed-length anime is completely plotted out beforehand. I could be
totally wrong about that, though.)

Naturally this strikes certain sorts of shows more than others, because
you generally don't get peculiar mysteries in, say, romantic comedies.
The more ordinary the show's setting is the better, at least for
avoiding this particular problem. Going the other way, it's reached the
point where I've started to actively expect to be disappointed by the
answer to any mystery a show raises, which means that I generally expect
shows that have a lot of central and important mysteries to wind up
being not very good.