The Nature of Open-Ended VS Close-Ended Series in Tokusatsu

[sgtrudolfs]

Thats the thing, a closed ending doesnt necessarily mean their wont be a sequel, look at Beneath the Planet of the Apes

[hide]They blew the every loving **** out of the planet at the end[/hide]

As final as that movie was, they still found an excuse to make another. Its just a little bit harder i guess.

that leaves us 2 possibilities for 2nd akiba:
either the plot will be forced, or the writer will wrote it in an innovative way possible
(to be considered that it features the same writer, CMIIW)

honestly, i'm being skeptical for the upcoming season though being curious at the same time

i do agree with araki, though for the preference, i prefer the series to be total closure.
for me it's keeping the value of the series

 

[Midori Ken]

Open endings can be pretty nice and refreshing every once in a while.

Stories with open endings are more difficult to pull off because they require rich world-building to be any good. Without it, one can't really imagine anything happening after the credits roll. And rich world-building usually lends itself to better writing in general anyway.

A lot of stories (good and bad) tend to intimate that you, the reader/viewer/listener are privy to the most important events that are happening in that universe. When that story comes to a close, there's nothing more to see, or at least it's not as interesting.

Even with an open ending, it's the writer's responsibility to close a main arc. This was done really well in The Matrix. The world was built well enough that I can ignore the sequels if I wanted to.

I've heard Daimajin Kanon did this well too.

The journey we take and the sights we see are important because it informs us of how we feel about the ending, or lack thereof.

Getting invested in 555 felt like going in for heart surgery where the surgeon had no time to suture closed the hole he opened up.

I'm really surprised Kenori feels that the ending to Faiz was an artistic move, as opposed to what I feel was the product of an extreme lack of planning.

I could be wrong, but I got the impression that the majority of tokusatsu shows were written by first creating a mould of merchandise, ferment story beats and high concepts before mixing in inventory scripts and stock plots as needed. Bake for however long it takes to make an episode, and then liberally glaze it with CGI after-effects.

Kamen Rider writers know way ahead of time that they get 45-50 episodes and then it's that's it. Joss Whedon has less notice during each and every one of his series cancellations, and he still cobbles together rather decent open-endings most of the time.

 

[kuroihikari]

Endings with questions left unanswered may be considered open, but the plot is still resolved.

Let's take for example OOO's plot. The main crisis that defined OOO's plot was Dr. Maki's ambitions. That was resolved at the series ending, and therefore, OOO's plot is complete, even though people would call that ending as open. Ankh's situation is irrelevant, because Ankh was not the problem Eiji had to solve. Dr. Maki was.

A story that lacks that concrete idea of what the main crisis is and its resolution is not complete and therefore fails as a story on the most basic level. Like the Decade TV series.They built up to the problem of Decade being the destroyer of worlds, and then just ended it right there.

 

[KingRanger]

Endings with questions left unanswered may be considered open, but the plot is still resolved.

Let's take for example OOO's plot. The main crisis that defined OOO's plot was Dr. Maki's ambitions. That was resolved at the series ending, and therefore, OOO's plot is complete, even though people would call that ending as open. Ankh's situation is irrelevant, because Ankh was not the problem Eiji had to solve. Dr. Maki was.

A story that lacks that concrete idea of what the main crisis is and its resolution is not complete and therefore fails as a story on the most basic level. Like the Decade TV series.They built up to the problem of Decade being the destroyer of worlds, and then just ended it right there.

That was the plot thrown in later. I still think the plot originaly was going to be a final fight between Ankh and Eiji. The maki stuff was rammed in last minute. At least that's how I see it.

 

[kuroihikari]

That was the plot thrown in later. I still think the plot originaly was going to be a final fight between Ankh and Eiji. The maki stuff was rammed in last minute. At least that's how I see it.

Yep, that's probably true. Still, viewing in the series in its entirety, the story ended up revolving around Dr. Maki's actions and ambitions and Ankh's issues were resolved along the way.

 

[Toku Prime]

When it comes to any series ending, if it achieves the characters' main goals, then the story is over. I don't especially care about the little details. The ending to Faiz never bugged me, because IMO it's a show about prejudice and in the end the characters who embraced prejudice were defeated. I couldn't care less if the surviving chracters have weeks, months, or years left to live, as that didn't seem to be a big issue in the series as far as I was concerned. Besides, the most important thing was that they killed Kaixa, the worst character ever to blight the franchise and a massive weight hanging around the series' neck. As soon as that happened, everything got roughly five zillion percent better :anime:

On the other hand, it does bug me if they leave the plot hanging or try and establish a new one as if they want to leave sequel bait when they surely know they won't get one. The simplest example of this would be the Ryuki movie, which ends right before the big battle, which felt totally unsatisfying to me. The original televised ending to OOO is closed as far as I am concerned. The Greeed and Maki are all dead, Shingo has been saved, and the core medals have been destroyed. Eiji resumes his journeying lifestyle from before the show, and while the last line of the show is him expressing a desire to see Ankh again someday, it's pretty much just a sentiment expressed as a lot of TV characters would for a dead friend. The director's cut and the next crossover film however, open it back up by launching a storyline to revive Ankh, which in all likelyhood won't be completed and has therefore left me with the feeling that OOO is forever incomplete. It's something that will likely happen increasingly often too, now that it's become standard practise for Riders so return for a crossover movie after their own series ends.

One thing I never understood though was why some people say Den-O was open-ended? It seemed pretty closed to me.

that leaves us 2 possibilities for 2nd akiba:
either the plot will be forced, or the writer will wrote it in an innovative way possible

From the rumours we've gotten so far, Akibaranger s2 will just straight up ignore a large part of the first season. Basically it seems that everything from the moment 'Hatte Saburo' started retooling the show just didn't happen.

 

[Lynxara]

From the rumours we've gotten so far, Akibaranger s2 will just straight up ignore a large part of the first season. Basically it seems that everything from the moment 'Hatte Saburo' started retooling the show just didn't happen.

I doubt this will be an arbitrary thing, though. My gut feeling is that at some point in Akibaranger S2, we're going to find out that reality was changed by the hand of Hatte Saburo, as part of another effort to make Akibaranger "official." I mean, this is basically what the Hatte Saburo character implies he's thinking of doing in episode 13 of season 1.

In a note, he tells the Akibarangers to study what they did wrong, so maybe they'll get another chance to be official. I think Akibaranger S2 will represent a world where the characters didn't "do things wrong," so to speak. But Akagi Nobuo's selfishness undid Hatte Saburo's efforts to improve the world once, and they will rpobably do so again...

 

[Scissors]

Having open endings really depends on the type of plot.
I can accept it in Hibiki and Garo, because right from the beginning we are thrown into a story that started off-screen in a HUGE universe, and what WE are following is more of a subplot taking place somewhere in that universe.
You could make hundreds of solo adventures about some Oni or Makai Knight fighting in different places or times.

However, when you have a show like Faiz, where the story is a very isolated case in the real world, then you kinda expect to see some kind of good or bad ending. I mean if Faiz had defeated the Orphenoch King and crushed Smart Brain, then.... the story would pretty much have been concluded.

 

[Glamador]

It also would have been concluded (and led very nicely into the movie) if the Orphnoch King had won.

 

[Dr Kain]

THIS POST HAS LOTS OF SPOILERS!!!

Series like Kuuga are very closed: The monster is dead, Kuuga's belt is broken, end of show, role credits.

The monster is dead? I never saw Deguva die. I just saw him and Kuuga fighting in a bland battle that just moved on to the next scene without showing the outcome.

The same goes for Agito's finale. I saw two balls of light fly around, not actually seeing any characters fighting it out and winning.

With that said, there is more to an ending than whether or not the hero still has their powers. To me, an ending is when the main villain is fully defeated (on screen) and all plot holes are closed.

W, OOO, and Fourze do this. I don't mind the way DaiRanger and Blade did it because they defeated the main villain of the show. In Dai, Shadam was the main villain, he was defeated. In Blade, the King Undeads were the main villains and all of them were locked away. Yes, there was Joker, but they found a way to solve that problem and do it in an unexpected manner. In the first Garo season, Kiba is defeated, Messiah is defeated, Cerberus is defeated, and Kaoru is saved, the end.

However, it is things like DekaRanger where Agent Aburera was hardly a fighter, and as such, the final battle was lackluster, that I do not like. In 555, there was no final battle, it just stopped. In Kabuto, they completely forgot about the Worms, who were the main villains for the first 44 episodes of the series. Instead, the show turned towards a small faction that turned out to be evil and then the show ended with their defeat. What happened to the main threat? The ones they were fighting since before the show started!? Hibiki never had them finish off the real guy and girl. Or Decade, that just left off at episode 31 and then tried to end the series with several different movies and still couldn't pull it off.

Those are the things that annoy me. Let's take some anime endings for example. My biggest beef besides Evangelion is the ending to the stupid Utena movie. That was the dumbest piece of **** ending I have ever seen. Then the director in the commentary track tries to make it sound so sophisticated with what it symbolizes, but if you have to explain the ending, it is a **** ending no matter what. I hate when these people try to make it sound complex just to make it sound like it is more than garbage. Does that mean I understand every ending to every series? No, but when the director has to explain it because of how much nonsense it was, because of how random it was, it is utter ****.

The other thing I don't like is the reset button ending. Unless it is pulled off very well (which is rare) I hate how it just makes the entire series pointless. Ryuki did it. Mai-Hime did it. Wolf's Rain did it. Big O, Evangelion, RahXephon, etc, all do it. It has just become so cliche and the scapegoat for when people don't want to take a risk at doing something different.

Anyway, I don't mind open endings, I just want my stories to feel complete like we get with things such as Gankutsuou, Escaflowne, Noir, Yu-Gi-Oh!, KakuRanger, Gokaiger, and CarRanger. I don't want to feel like I sat through hours upon hours just to be given the finger because either the studio forgot their show was going to end or they made it so convoluted that they had no idea how to end it on a proper note. The ending to a show/book/movie, is one of the first things that should be figured out before the story is even allowed to go into production.