I'll pay ten dollars to anyone that explains the ending

what specifically confused you?

>>152037995
little slugger was a supernatural phenomenon of the girl's guilt over their dead dog

The last episode was by far the best episode. Haven't seen it in a long ass time though, so I dunno.

Mass hysteria made things happened.

>>152038130
"What was the significance of the fake reality the detective got himself into, and him meeting the designer, how the trauma killed everyone?" among many other questions.

>>152038136
still waiting for ops reactions since i wont give a full explanation of the entire series at this point but i think my favourite episode was the one with the group of suicidals. it was just absolutely perfect and if it wasnt connected to the shonen bat story i would recommend watching it as short film to anybody.

the director wanted to end the show and the studio told him to make more episodes so he shit on a piece of paper and they animated it.

Just watch Paprika instead

>>152038338
Post thoughts on where they died:

>Two dudes died in the building. Girl was ghost all along.

I think im right, tho

>>152038300
okay so first of all, dont be too confused with the multiple different story parts, kon used the whole series to recycle some of his ideas that he couldnt put in his former works. obviously all those concepts dealt with the connection between fantasy and reality which is pretty typical for kon. ultimately, he decided to build the main story about how replacing experiences with fiction can damage persons, individually, but also as families or even as societies.
while fitting in this setting, the stories of the designer and for example the story of the detective were probably not related before kon decided to both integrate them into the series. the alternate reality at the end was a tool to a) find a climax of the whole substituting reality with fantasy part and b) relate the different story arcs, as the designer finds fullfilment in being honest to and feeling loved by a father figure and the detective in finally having a daughter, which he couldnt archive in his real life.

cont...

>>152038426
i think they all died in the building, but the end only gives away that they are indeed dead, so im not sure if theres a way to figure out if the girl was dead all along.

>>152038523
the destruction of tokyo was in my opinion not to be understood too literally. after going through the multiple consequences of false fantasies in the preceding episodes, i feel like kon wanted to find a way to also show its destructive impact to society as a whole. now there will be people who wont be happy with his solution, but he chose to exaggerate and also overconcretize this by simply having tokyo flooded with this black mass which was the so to speak final form of shonen bat, aka the substituted fantasy of the designer for the traumatic event in her past. i dont think you should take the implication of one persons fantasy being able to cause such an amount of destruction too seriously here, even if people like her can influence a scary big part of the society through media. but her trauma was known to us through the series and thus a lot more relatable to than just the gathered traumas of potentially a huge number of random individuals

>>152038300
Without giving an analysis of the show, it probably helps to just understand Kon a little and what his work is often about. You should be able to kind of figure out the specifics from there.

He pretty consistently deals with the ideas of fantasy and reality overlapping in one way or another, and/or being confused with each other. To put it as simply as possible, fantasy and reality don't literally overlap or merge in reality, but in Kon's work they literally do. He's just taking poetic license to express his thoughts on how dreams, fiction, culture, fantasies, etc... all shape people's individual lives and reality as a whole. He was pretty neat really, cancer is a bitch.

>>152038716
This guy again >>152038136

I honestly don't remember, but I recall a theory that the devastation was somehow to represent the destruction of the war and bombs and whatnot. I think one of the characters comments at the end that it 'looks just like after the war'. I'd have to watch it again, but there was a way that fit in with the rest of the typical Kon themes you pointed out.

>>152038716
plus kon loved to break through the expectations and standards of a genre to look how far he could push his ideas. just read the opus manga series, which was his last work asa mangaka before directing his first film, perfect blue. not only does he do all the inception/butterflyeffect/metareality stuff at once, his unpublished end just says fuck it all, adds a completely new metalevel by introducing his own existence into the manga (which already dealt with a mangaka traveling in his own manga) hes ultimately drawing at the moment, and uses his own struggles with managing his upcoming career as director to end the series as abruptly as it was ended irl.
i guess some people wont like some of his work for being playful like that, but its a unique feature of his style to exaggerate like this from time to time and you really shouldnt let things like that throw you out of the mood of enjoying the rest.

>>152038939
i really should rewatch the series to grasp some more of its details, but im pretty sure that you can include the hole atomic bomb trauma japan as a nation has into any interpretation of the ending of the series. im not sure if there was any direct symbolism for this, but then again there doesnt need to be in general. if it leaves more room for consistent interpretation, it just enriches the medium. just ask lynch, tarkovsky and, yeah, anno.

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I like the suicide pact episode with the little girl, the adult man, and the old man. They all killed themselves, very poignant social commentary about online suicide forums.

However. rest of the show doesn't make any sense. What was with the last two episodes? I don't get it.

>>152039148
just read the thread, then explain further what confused you

All I got out of it was life sucks no matter what and using fiction to try and lie to yourself just makes it worse. It's better to accept the shittiness than make up a lie to feel better.

How was this show hard to understand? It pretty much beat you over the head with what it was about.

>>152041113
i dont think its hard to understand, but people struggle to decide what was meant to be real and what only fictional.

>>152038133
I thought her lie provoked everyone's fears to take a material form.

>>152041453
>people struggle to decide what was meant to be real and what only fictional.
I feel bad for the people who feel this way. I think >>152038757 put it best in explaining Kon's works. In my opinion, deciphering what's real and what's not is almost pointless considering the merging of reality and fiction is where I see the genius in his work.

>>152041645
yeah but its not really surprising that people can struggle with this, isnt it? in almost every other medium, reality and fiction are separated from each other, and many exceptions use any merged form to depict insanity. as you said overcoming this attitude is necessary to understand any of kons work, and some people have problems with this step.

Paranoia Agent is underrated. I don't know why people say Kon isn't good in TV format. I thought it was really quite good.

>>152041997
It's a backlash to the general opinion that it was good before everyone "hated" it. Honestly the only people that hate this show are people that can't understand subtlety which the majority of anime are not about.

>>152042744
Oops. Sorry. I was shitposting on another board and forgot to empty the name field.

>>152041997
Probably because the last episode crammed in so much information at once

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It was all about running away from the responsibilities and life's hardships and finding excuses and someone else to blame. The animator-chan used "guy with bat" as excuse for dead dog as a kid. Everyone else started to use "Guy with bat" as excuse for their hardships to the point he got real. His hits with the bat became blessings that resolved (or more like postponed) character's problems.
The detective's wife faced her hardships and weaknesses instead of blaming someone else that's why "guy with the gold bat" couldn't touch her. He demolished her house but she still believed in the future, in her love with the husband and their ability to overcome it together.
Blaming someone else and finding excuses instead of admitting problems is destructive to the society as a whole. It's impossible to solve shit or get better that way.