Quotes Ahoy! A thousand chips delicious!
Now I'm wondering:
It was confirmed a while ago that the show went through substantial re-writes and changes in the plot, and one of the original plans was that Date would die and be revived as an evil homunculus. They got rid of that (seemingly because of the character's popularity.) It appears that would have set him up as a villain character to be killed off properly later, but it means that either way, Date was going to be brought back after dying. So what would have been worse: The original plot, or what we got?
Long story short? There's no way to objectively judge that.
When you have a plot synopsis like that, it tells you what could have happened without telling you what would have happened. There's a thousand ways that a plot like that could be done, each one could be considered better or worse than the last. Without more information on just how that would have played out, I don't think it'd be fair to hazard a guess on whether it would have been better or not.
For example, how did Date become a homunculus? Did Kougami go: "We messed up LAST TIME, but THIS TIME we'll get it RIGHT!"? Did Maki decide that he needed to replace Gamel and Uva and pick Date for the job? Was it something randomly spontaneous based off of the way that Data originally 'died'?
Character development and actor portrayal are needed to be known as well. What would Date's storyline have been, what would have been the point of the arc, and could the actor have risen to the role? Those things can have a huge impact in likability. It'd be hard to judge them now.
I can't really see any other way W could have gone. I think there was too much build-up to Philip vanishing for it not to happen, but I also think that it would have been a huge downer to end on that would have been at odds with the tone of the rest of the show. And it would completely go against the theme of them being the ultimate partners and all that. I guess the best possible outcome would have been to have got an extra episode to wrap everything up so it wouldn't be quite as rushed ...
Probably. But I would be tempted to argue that the 'ultimate partners' theme could have carried past Phillipe's death as well. They were partners because they cooperated, respected and trusted each other. Phillipe trusted Shotaro enough to carry on protecting Fuuto and finish their work; Shotaro respected Phillipe enough to let Phillipe go on his own terms. Showing how that lived on after Phillipe's death (Shotaro honoring Phillipe's memory, no pun intended, Phillipe giving a quick ghost appearance of approval) would have been an interesting thing to explore-- especially if you set up the tease that Phillipe would return one day.
Funny how close that would put W to OOOs ending, isn't it?
Don't get me wrong. The argument that Phillipe should
never have returned to the show isn't what I'm making. I'm glad that he's around again. I'm just spinning devil's advocate lines off of my initial objection to character deaths being cool.
I'm afraid I'm not familiar with Ryuki. Could you elaborate a bit?
It's just 20 something minutes. Watch it and judge for yourself.
Something W did really well is taking an unappealing idea, and make it work with great execution. The last episode is the best example of it. Reading it on paper, bringing back Phillip the episode after he died does seem to cheapen his death. Emphasis on the "on paper" part.
I probably will sometime. I just haven't gotten around to it yet. Sooner rather than later if this conversation is anything to go by.
