geri_chan | Manga series that end without really ending

I've been meaning to rant about this ever since finishing the Shaman King and Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle manga series. What is up with manga series that end without really ending? I don't mean series that were cancelled or put on hiatus due to poor sales or the author's health issues, or even if the author just stopped mid-series and left it as a work in progress. (CLAMP, I'm looking at you--does Legal drug or X/1999 ring a bell?) No, I mean series that are intentionally concluded by the author with the main conflict or plotline left unresolved.

Note: Do NOT read any further if you don't want to be spoiled for the endings of the above titles!

I had been reading both Shaman King and Tsubasa, and had been looking forward to seeing how the stories wrapped up with the "final volumes" (which were officially advertised as such). I guess Tsubasa sort of concluded...most of the secrets behind the main characters' pasts were revealed, and the bad guy was defeated. But it's a rather unsatisfying conclusion: "With their creator's death, both clones fade away leaving behind two feathers, while Syaoran and Watanuki escape from the void for a price: Syaoran must continue traveling through the dimensions forever, while Watanuki must forever stay in Yūko's shop." (It's been awhile since I read the final volume, so I brushed up on the plot with the Wikipedia chapter summaries.) At the end of the manga, the old gang (minus Sakura) sets off to find a way to bring back the clones and find a way for everyone to live happily with each other. So basically the story "concludes" but comes full circle back to where it started--with the heroes going on a journey to set things right!

I guess it's a YMMV thing, but I prefer a story where things end more clearly (and happily). I don't mind a few minor loose ends left unresolved, but I got a bit irritated when I finished a 28 volume series only to have it end with friends and lovers separated from each other, and the heroes setting off to essentially start the same damn journey all over again! (Although since Tsubasa is a crossover with xxxHolic, which has not yet concluded in the US, it's possible that we might still learn more about what happens to the characters.)

But still...it is an ending. The heroes at least had their final confrontation with the main bad guy, which is more than I can say for Shaman King. For 32 volumes, the hero Yoh has been fighting to become the all-powerful Shaman King, and for most of those volumes, trying to defeat the main villain Hao (who turns out to be Yoh's twin brother). In a surprise twist, it is Hao, not Yoh, who becomes the Shaman King, but since Hao will sleep for 15 hours before he awakens as the new Shaman King, Yoh and his friends still have a chance to defeat him before he wakes. Killing Hao is not a permanent solution, since Hao keeps reincarnating into a new body every time he is killed. Because of this, and also because Hao is his brother, Yoh resolves not to just defeat Hao but to redeem him. Yoh and his friends set off to find Hao, fighting other enemies along the way, and some of Yoh's companions fall in the battle. And then the story concludes just before they reach their final confrontation with Hao--I found myself yelling at the book, "What the hell kind of ending is that?! How can you stop just before the final battle?!"

Well, actually, that is not quite the end. There's an epilogue in which we see a child waiting for his parents to come home--and it turns out that the child is Yoh's. Since the parents return at the very end, we assume that their mission concluded successfully...but it still completely mindboggled me that the main conflict that the entire series seemed to be building towards was completely skipped over. I'm very glad that I borrowed the Shaman King books from the library, or I would be really pissed off that I spent so much money on them!

Strangely, the Wiki entry summarizes what happens after Yoh and his friends reach Hao, but that definitely did not happen in the manga. Maybe it was something that was only shown in the anime? Ah...just read a little further, and it seems that there was a "Perfect Edition" reprint released in Japan that included "the never-before-published 'true ending' to the series." But why write a story without a "true ending" in the first place? It seems particularly odd for a shonen battle-style manga, which would usually have a more conventional ending, as opposed to a more artsy or experimental type of manga.