EDIT: Spoiler tags added. Would appreciate similar tags being added into quotes of these posts, please. I'm afraid I got caught up in the heat of making a point and forgot to account for people who haven't finished the path yet.
Megumeru wrote:
It does sound like indoctrination theory, doesn't it? I'm not saying the ending is bad, it's good--but it's too perfect to be believable. It's like how ME-trilogy ends with utter mindfuck with the god-child and Bioware trying to justify it with the extended cut DLC--which didn't really solve the problem, mind you.
The "problem" was lack of clarification and closure. Extended Cut gave us that, even if the ending concept itself didn't do it for everyone even after those holes were filled in.
Also, Indoctrination Theory would have been a bigger mindfuck, not least because it fucking
required indoctrination to completely change its function during the last ten minutes of the game. All Indoctrination Theory was when you boil it down was unsatisfied fans in
denial. They didn't like how canon ended up so they tried to convince themselves that there was a canonical loophole through which they could dump the canon ending into a furnace. It was wishful thinking, at best. Like your little "running joke" there. Let's entertain that for a second.
What you suggest in the "Hisao really died at the end of Lilly's route" scenario is a textbook "But it was
all a
dream" ending. Do you have
any idea what a tired, overdone, cliche, anathema piece of shit hackneyed cop-out that would be? Because it would be really tired, very overdone, incredibly cliche, UTTERLY anathema piece of shit hackneyed cop-out if it were true.
Thankfully, it's not. So we can all rest easy.
I don't think Lilly's ending was "too perfect" by any means.
It starts with Hisao realizing that he fucked up far too late to do a goddamned thing about it and then further fucking up by giving himself a heart attack in the process of trying to fix things. That he survives (under much more likely circumstances than "he had a heart attack alone in the woods with a girl in the midst of winter," mind you) and has his chance to win back the girl in the end anyway is hardly "too perfect." If I had to pick a detail that seemed a bit cheesy it would be the presence of the music box in the hospital room, and that's just about all.
Also, I didn't see any problems being swept under the rug in the epilogue. Hell, if nothing else, Akira having to move to Scotland anyway put a bit of a damper on the mood even if I was happy to see she at least changed her mind about breaking up with her own boyfriend in the process. A nice touch of bittersweetness, there.
Also, they don't walk off into a sunset at all. Look at that ending art, it's clearly mid-day. What, is good weather a mark of melodrama, now? And like, the very last lines in the story basically say, "Yeah, we know there's probably going to be some more shit going down at some point down the line, but we'll deal with it when we get there." So yeah. It's actually not that perfect at all. It's just that happy moment of resolution that all romances aspire to. Resolution is sometimes mistakenly seen as an ending, where things are wrapped up and put away. But it's more about decisiveness, determination. It's something that is both the end of one thing and the beginning of another.
That's what Lilly's ending was, quite literally. Their resolution to move forward together. It's also what the other good endings were, and what any decent "good" ending is, really. It's just more blatantly
spelled-out in Lilly's ending than it is in the others.
And I've been holding that in for a bit too long. Bleh. Rant Mode: Off.
