Stardate 20031223.1433

This post discusses the ending of the series Mahoromatic and is loaded with spoilers. If you have not watched the series and think you might want to, you probably should not read any further.

Mahoromatic was two seasons; with twelve episodes the first season and fourteen in the second. It has been released on six DVDs, and the sixth one, with the last five episodes of the second series, was only released last week. One of my readers and I had been exchanging mail about the series before that, and he picked up a copy and watched it the day after it became available. I had ordered it by the web, and it arrived a couple of days after that.

Based on things we'd seen, we were afraid that the ending was going to be a massive disappointment. After he watched it, before my copy arrived, he wrote to me. Not wanting to ruin it for me, all he said was, "It didn't suck."

I don't agree. I think it did suck.

The series ending failed dramatically, failed logically, and failed in character terms. It didn't make any sense on any level. Throughout the final DVD there were far too many cases where character behavior was inconsistent, in ways which seemed contrived.

It's not as bad as it could have been, I guess. There were things which happened which felt right. Some characters did act consistently to the end. But there was a hell of a lot more which did not feel right, and the bad far outweighed the good. Some things worked, but a lot more did not work.

Going into the final DVD, we knew Minawa was serving Management's purposes by being in the Misato household, but it had never been clear whether she knew it. It was not really a surprise to learn she did, or that she would then accept the order to help kidnap Suguru.

Having Slash try to protect Suguru when Minawa begins her kidnap effort worked. It startled me, and yet it was right. Slash never trusted Minawa, and always had his eyes on her, and when she pulled a gun Slash was right there. It also worked that he caught the knife that Feldrance threw.

It didn't work that when he was in the tree looking at Feldrance that he didn't follow through. Feldrance was a hostile who had made an active attack against Suguru; as soon as Slash was there, he should have tried to blow Feldrance away rather than engaging in clever dialogue. That's especially true since Minawa threatened to shoot Suguru but had her gun pointed at Suguru's arm, not his torso. Even if she had the guts to pull the trigger if Slash ignored her threat, the worst it could have done would be to amputate the arm, and I think that Slash is ruthless enough to risk it given that there was considerable doubt about whether she'd follow through on that threat. Under the circumstances Slash's restraint was totally out of character.

It also worked that Slash and Ryuga rescued Mahoro and Suguru. But it didn't work that Ryuga shouted "This cancels my debt to you" as he dropped in. That was the wrong time to say that. It was ungracious and ignoble and out of character. It was not how a "warrior" would act.

It only partially worked that Feldrance killed the cat-eyed professor. What should have happened is that Ryuga should have totally trashed that base, killed the professor, and should have at least engaged Feldrance and tried to kill him. However, given that he didn't, it did work that Feldrance was revealed as having sold the cat-eyed professor out just before shooting him.

It partially worked that Minawa explained that she betrayed them all to get "a heart" because of her promise to Management android 369, and that Mahoro shouted to her that someone without a heart would never cry, bringing her to realize that like the Tin Woodman she already had what she thought she was seeking. (Does that make Mahoro Dorothy, Slash the Lion, and Suguru the scarecrow?) So it worked that just as Suguru halted on the stairs, that Minawa suddenly took over and began dragging him. However, it made no sense that she grab Suguru and carry him when she decided to help Mahoro and made her leap; there was no reason to. (It's not even clear why she leaped at all, except that it looked cool, and meant she fell a long way when Feldrance shot her.)

I think it actually did work that Minawa was so accurate with her pistol in shooting away the bonds on Mahoro, and that Feldrance was astounded by it. Her clumsiness and lack of coordination could be explained by her internal conflict, thus would be corrected when the conflict was resolved after Suguru told her she should remember and concentrate on the times when she was happy.

Mahoro's nightmare sort of worked. The symbolism of her vomiting up nuts and bolts only partly worked; her wandering the streets feverishly did work. Waking to face Feldrance worked.

But at the end of their confrontation there was a discontinuity: Mahoro and Feldrance had been facing each other and Feldrance had been menacing her, and then suddenly we're looking at a long path of destruction, with Feldrance himself digging his way out from under some rubble as a local Management guy chides him about what he'd done. If there was time for that guy to show up, a lot of time must have passed. Mahoro was long gone. The destruction began where Feldrance had been standing and passed through the point where Mahoro had been and went well beyond there; it must have been Feldrance that did it. If so, how did he get buried and knocked out? That scene made no sense.

It was not the first nor the last time that it seemed as if they were on a predetermined path and weren't going to leave it even if tha