Anyone who has watched Anime for any period of time knows that not every series or movie’s ending leaves you satisfied. Some even leave you wondering, “why the hell did I even bother watching this” or “what the hell was that crap.”
So as our civic duty to you, our fellow anime watching girls and guys out there. Periodically we’ll take a look at these epic failures. You can rest assured that any anime series that appears here has a spectacularly unsatisfactory ending. Oh and this may be obvious but there will be spoilers ahead!
Not Sure why they look so happy, they star in a pretty bad anime
Case File#3 - Da Capo II
A brief history introduction
Da Capo II is the sequel to Da Capo and Da Capo SS. Da Capo told the story of Nemu and her pseudo brother (not by blood) Junichi and their cousin Sakura. Sakura returns to Japan from the US and immediately put the full court press to get into Junichi’s pants. Problem is Nemu loves her Onii-chan, and Junichi, despite denying his feelings comes to realize he loves Yume. This is all played out against the backdrop of a sorta-evil-never-weltering Sakura tree. That is also under the somewhat control of Sakura (the cousin). The tree tries to kill Nemu but fails, and the series ends with Yume and Junichi together and deeply in love. We love the original Da Capo and our official review score is 4 out of 4 potato heads.
Da Capo SS goes completely off the track and introduces a new moe character, Aisia, into the story. Aisia like Sakura before her, tries to build a wedge between Nemu and Junichi again using the Sakura tree. 80% of the series is pure garbage, and the only redeeming quality is the ending. Da Capo SS ends with Nemu and Junichi getting married. Offical Review Score - 2 out of 4 potato heads.
Da Capo II takes place 50 years after the original series and focuses on the grand daughters of Nemu and Junichi - Yume and Otone - and the “son” of Sakura - Yoshiyuki. And yes the main plot does revolve around the sakura tree.
If they took an axe to this tree, it would have saved a lot of trouble
Off to a bad start…
Da Capo II is divided into 2 seasons (Da Capo II and Da Capo II SS), but really the 1st season is pure filler. The entire first season focuses primarily on the start, middle and end of Yoshiyuki’s relationship with a secondary character - Koko. And there is also some nonsense with a banana eating android. Yes - there are numerous slow motions shots of girls eating bananas. Hardly anytime is devoted to the main girls - Yume or Otone, and the sakura tree and its connection to Yoshiyuki is barely mentioned. The first season is really a waste of time. If you planning on watching Da Capo II - don’t - but if you insist, do yourself a favor and go directly into the second season.
If your watching a show with people eating chocolate bananas, chances are it will suck
Signs of redemption
So after sitting through the crappy first season, your expectations are really low, so any little improvement gets magnified. And 2nd season is an improvement. First the story’s focus shifts towards Yume, Otone and Yoshiyuki. Also you learn that Yoshiyuki wasn’t born into the world. He is a wish made by Sakura and granted by the Sakura tree. And so if the tree dies so does Yoshiyuki.
- The girls, especially Yume confront their true feelings for Yoshiyuki.
- Yume and Yoshiyuki grow closer and closer together
- Otone must decide between saving Yoshiyuki and destroying the evil sakura tree
- Sakura and Junichi (the Grampa of the girls) sacrifice themselves in order to save Yoshiyuki and quell the sakura tree.
- Yoshiyuki begins to fade and dies after the sakura tree is “destroyed”.
Death by Sakura Tree - the only way to go
Epic Fail
So all this sounds promising right? Well right near the end, the series completely jumps the cliff into the bottomless pit of elephant diarrhea. So before his death, Yoshiyuki doesn’t choose between Yume and Otone, and doesn’t tell either girls his true feelings. Even though all signs point to him picking Yume. It seems to us that he has loves her like a gf and loves Otone like an older sister. So he dies with nothing resolved. Fine keep him dead then.
But apparently you can’t do that. So what ends up happing is the ghost of Sakura comes back wishes to the 99% dead sakura tree to bring Yoshiyuki back. Which the tree does, before completely vanishing. Okay - so finally they are going to have Yoshiyuki confess his feelings for Yume right? Nope. Nothing happens. Yoshiyuki comes back and nothing gets settled. He doesn’t choose between the two girls and in fact the three are basically are back to where they were at the start of the season. Which means Sakura and Junichi sacrificed themselves for nothing. So for sitting through 24 episodes, you get nothing in the way of pay off - other than the sakura tree vanishing, but who gives a crap about that.
So wasting 10+ hours of our lives, Da Capo II gets this month’s award for Worst Anime Ending Ever!
We’re you waiting for these two to hookup? We’ll keep waiting.
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Previous winners of Worst Anime Endings Ever
July 29th, 2008 at 1:48 am
I honestly didn’t think the ending was all that bad (Cheesy yes. Bad? Well, compared to the entirety of DCSS…). Then again, that’s primarily because I didn’t expect Jun’ichi to end up with anyone, so I can see why those who were rooting for any sort of coupling would find it sucky.
November 6th, 2008 at 4:39 pm
Yup that sure is a bad ending. I suggest you watch Macross Zero, Macross Frontier and Tenjo Tenge. These animes also have bad endings they started out good but you get trolled in the ending.