The picnic ending really felt tacked on. I mean, yeah, it’s great that she saw the error of her ways and was forgiven etc. Good vibes, feel-good ending, yadda yadda. That and Sunrise really REALLY hedging bets on SuleMio. They spent the whole series developing a complex same-sex relationship and then chickened out on “did they actually get married.” I’m half-remembering conflicting tweets from official sources, along with considerations taken for the time slot it was airing (they had already taken flak for the violent end of cour 1). Sigh. The second half Gendo swerve was pretty well done, I thought. Her motivations were hidden from the beginning. We only got bits and pieces. As it was airing, there was a LOT of speculation about whether Suletta and Eri were the same person. The show specifically left dates out of most of the show, and when… sigh I’m horrible with names, begins with a B, the older researcher from the prologue lab/company (again, I’m awful with names). When she dropped the “revenge from 21 years ago” line, shit blew up. “Maybe Eri was in stasis.” “Is Suletta made of Gund prosthetics?” But Eri being either dead or in the Aerial (Eri-Lfrith) was something a lot of people didn’t want to believe. It all seems obvious in hindsight but this was a huge point of contention. They left ALL of the breadcrumbs out in plain sight, but they left the viewer to connect the dots (or not). And every time a dot was explicitly connected, another was revealed. I think the back half suffered from pacing and productional indecision. We needed more time to flesh out the story. Instead we got periods of drag followed by boom boom boom reveals. Prospera went from: - obvious revenge arc - revenge using her daughter as a pawn - revenge using her brainwashed daughter as a disposable pawn - uhhhh why is she working with Delling - SHE KILLED HOW MANY CLONES FOR REVENGE?!?!? - pawn disposed of - she didn’t actually kill any of them, but the only way to keep them alive was to embed them in Gund - ready for instrumentality to let her daughters live freely (and honestly, fuck all them corpo motherfuckers but that’s a lot of innocent people) - newly self-actualized pawn saves the day with the power of love and giant robots The outline is solid, and the first cour was nearly flawless. Then the pacing fell apart and this was one of the many victims.

As much as the ending of WfM felt unresolved with the status quo basically unchanged, it doesn’t hold a candle to IBO’s stomach-churning denouement. Technically, I guess it’s a “happy” ending. Things improved for some of the marginalized groups, the power structure got reformed, and the war ended. But holy fuck the price paid. And the chosen elite got to re-solidify power anyway. It all feels WRONG. But it’s a fairly accurate portrayal of how things work out IRL. Doesn’t mean I have to like it. ::: spoiler opinionated statements Julia was an uninteresting character not worthy of the epilogue spotlight. I ride with Ride.