There are a lot of ways to end an anime. You could cleanly cut off at the end of an arc or leave things particularly vague in hopes there is a budget for another season. You could, as so many shounen shows do at the very end, rush things up an insane amount so a final battle wraps up quickly with maybe a few scenes dictating what happens to the characters in the coming months or years. You could even go the route of not writing an ending at all. You just end your series on another day in the life of your characters who, much like someone who died in their sleep, simply don’t see the next day.
While some of those ways to end an anime can produce a passable ending, very rarely could they be considered particularly satisfying. An anime that ends with a satisfying ending is one that ends with a resolution to the central conflict of the plot. It is one that ends with all those loose ends tied up, or at least cauterized off, so you won’t be left wondering. A satisfying ending is one that isn’t left up to the varied interpretations of its audience. Unfortunately, you will actually find very few anime series with what one could consider a fully satisfying ending, but maybe these anime recommendations can get close.
As this is an articles concerned with the ending of shows, I’ll try not to give particularly egregious spoilers, but you should probably expect some spoilers.
Best Anime With Satisfying Endings
Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood
While not every wildly popular anime series sticks the ending, one could speculate that because Fullmetal Alchemist maintained a quality of plot from beginning right to the very end is what contributes to its immortal beloved status.
The entirety of FMA was built upon stressing the importance of balance and equivalent exchange, and in the final episodes it continues to press upon that while tying up almost every loose end of plot. Whereas the beginning of the series focused on the brothers desire to bring back their mother without sacrifice, the end is instead a series of balanced sacrifices to ensure the outcome everyone desires for the brothers.
Devilman Crybaby
Initially I thought being unfamiliar with the Devilman franchise would hurt this anime for me, but by the end I was enthralled yet satisfied with how things wrapped up. Although, I will say, having knowledge that Satan is stuck in a time loop doomed to constantly repeat mistakes would have provided more clarity. While ostensibly the series may seem like another battler of good versus evil, that’s not quite right. Instead, what you get is a pretty brutal and endlessly tragic tale filled with demons, yet consistently poses the question as to whether humans are the real evil in most situations.
This series of slaughter, body horror, and bare bodies ends the way you might expect – with one big battle where the one to triumph is not who you expect. It is a series that sets itself up to be tragic and maintains that all the way to the end. By the end, there really isn’t a happy way to end the series either, so really the route they went was the best possible way they could have done things.
Welcome to the NHK
More anime should be based on novels because novels, unlike light novel series, do tend to end pretty conclusively. Welcome to the NHK is the first of actually several series here based on novels and does indeed have a very satisfying ending like you would want a book – and a show – to have.
One of the most charming things about the ending in Welcome to the NHK is that sort of role reversal where you learn that Misaki, who has being helping Satou with his NEETness, was actually desperately holding onto him for literal dear life throughout the series.
The end of the series is not actually anything special, but it didn’t need to be. In fact, it is rather a fitting ending in terms of NEET rehabilitation. The characters are clearly looking positively towards the future, but at the same time it is really well conveyed that they are also a little scared of it as well. This is just how you often feel after big positive change, and it is okay to end with that.
Carole & Tuesday
Carole & Tuesday is a music series about two people from vastly different walks of life being bound by a shared love of music. Throughout the series, they stumble through the professional music industry until they get a solid foothold. By the end, the series is also exploring the growing discontent on the state of immigration from Earth to Mars and introduces some radical immigration policies.
As such, the anime ends in an interesting place. It doesn’t end with Carole & Tuesday flaunting massive fame. Instead it ends with every musician and music industry veteran introduced in the show gathering together to sing a song.
Now, that sounds very cheesy, and it is a little, but it also emphasizes how musicians and stars in any industry possess a profound ability to affect public opinion with their own fame. The series was often focused on musicians competing against each other for stardom, but at the end of the day they are all in the same industry together and all on the same planet together.
Toradora
I can only imagine it is hard to end a romance series. You might think it easy, though. You know, just end the series with a clear confession of love or a kiss and you got yourself a storybook tale. However, are you really satisfied with that? It is hard to show a satisfying romance anime ending without laying out their whole relationship together, which would just drag the whole series on.
Toradora does well to end their series on a solid middle ground. The confession of love and kiss come before even the last episode of the series. Toradora instead chooses to end the series addressing a character problem that ultimately lead to the formation of the relationship between Taiga and Ryuuji as well as loomed over the entire series like a somber cloud.
Yet, while the solution to that problem stung quite a bit, the series still delivers its ultimate happy ending by showing a flash forward where the couple reunites once more and will possibly never be apart again.
Tsuki ga Kirei
One more romance series that actually managed to provide a satisfying conclusion to a romance is Tsuki ga Kirei. This series was one where the couple bonded early on in the series and the anime was instead focused in on exploring early relationship struggles alongside teenage character drama.
What is perhaps most lovely about Tsuki ga Kirei in regards to its ending is that things are not so neatly wrapped up. A goal was for them to attend the same high school, but one doesn’t make the cut. So they are separated. However, while it seems the series may end on a melancholy note, you get this lovely montage of them getting into the same college and enjoying a variety of sweet moments in life together.
You have to love a romance that has the testicular fortitude to say that relationships have major setbacks sometimes without wedging the same tired drama tropes in to do it.
Gosick
For a series that started off very strongly as a sort of episodic or short arc-driven mystery solver, Gosick sure ended up in a different place. While it kind of drifted into the mediocre in the middle, Gosick brings it back to stick the landing by tidily tying the up the loose ends to the relationship between the main characters that it had been slowly building up throughout the entire series.
You could fault Gosick’s ending for seeming rushed, but unlike other shows where the rushed paced diminished the impact of things, the rush in Gosick actually aided the frenetic chaos that was kind of engulfing the world at that point.
While that rushed nature sort of built things up, the actual reunion of the main pair was rather a low-key affair, but while Gosick had some grand dramatic moments, many of the most touching were done with subtly, and that’s what this was. A conclusive reunion done with a subtle hand that gave you a chance to yield a nice satisfying sigh.
Durarara
Durarara, throughout its long and confusing seasons, is like a series of threads all connected to its vast cast of characters. However, at the end, you watch all those threads twist into one cohesive rope.
Over the course of the series, you explore individual character tales and by the end, you get to see all those vaguely connected stories all come together in one crescendo. That is really the best possible outcome as an ending to a series that never really had an overall goal for the plot in the first place. Both Durarara and Baccano by the same author are masterful at taking seemingly unrelated people and tying them all together.
Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann
Gainax is not noted for being very good at ending their anime. In fact, saying something has a Gainax ending is a meme for saying a series has a pretty unsatisfactory or confusing ending to it. However, being fair, the surreal stories that Gainax creates would be pretty hard for anyone to end well.
Gurren Lagann is one of those sparse few Gainax exceptions. It sets itself as a story taking the main character from their small life underground and aims towards the stars, and guess where the series ends up? However, it isn’t just about that final battle that is absolutely jammed packed full of emotion. The satisfaction from the ending comes with Simon’s melancholic ending where it all leads him back to where he began. He was a digger who dug paths for people to follow and it ends with him watching people walking those (metaphorical) paths that he dug.
Angel Beats
While the ending episodes of Angel Beats to tend to pick up a rushed pace compared to the rest of the series, this series about dead children given a chance to have a happy school life in the afterlife ends as satisfyingly, cathartically sad as you would expect.
They’ve all graduated in their own way, all except Kanade and Otonashi, the latter having second thoughts and wanting to stay together with her. Eventually he finds peace and this allows both of them to move on. But that’s not all! You get one extra nugget or reincarnation-fueled satisfaction at the end to give you the extra closure to that relationship.
Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure
Now here me out, okay? While Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure is an ongoing adventure following generations of the Joestar family, it separates itself into separate series that all have a conclusive ending, and they have never been anything short of satisfactory.
Phantom Blood ends with Jonathan subduing the foe that unraveled his entire life.
Battle Tendency had Joseph overcoming a powerful foe and reappearing in a very Joseph-like way.
Stardust Crusaders ends with its journey complete and battle done with friends made and lost along the way.
Diamond is Unbreakable sees the villain plaguing the town getting his just desserts.
And finally, Golden Wind ends up with Giorno reaching his goal of becoming a top notch Mafioso so he can pass on the kindness once shown to him.
Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure is a series with many endings, and all of those endings are solid.
A Place Further Than The Universe
The penultimate episode of A Place Further Than The Universe was one of emotional ruin as the girls reach their goal and the the primary motivation for the journey is unhappily put to bed. So of course, the final episode needed to be one of catharsis.
Shirase gets a hair cut, a change on the outside to reflect the change on the inside, and she begins the process of letting go having finally gone through a period of mourning. However, the real catharsis is having Gin send one unsent e-mail from Shirase’s mother as the group view the Aurora Australis and prepare to head back home. The journey is over, the summer is over, and it is time for everyone to move forward with their lives after a once-in-a-lifetime journey.
Kids on the Slope
Kids on the Slope is a coming-of-age anime told about three characters that bond together over jazz. Like the messy symphony of seeming chaos that is jazz, their youth spent together is full of pleasant times, but also rife with trials and trepidation.
Still, through this, two people who were always alone bond together and the finale emphasizes that. Sentarou flees after a tragedy, only to be found by Kaoru on happenstance eight years later. They reunite, play the very song that they built their friendship on, and run down a slope as peers and unshakable friends who have both finally found a place in the world for them.
While the broship of Kids on the Slope was cleanly wrapped up, you could argue the love triangle was not. Yet, at the same time, it is since Sentarou is now a catholic priest.
From The New World
Mystery anime that isn’t episodic Sherlock Holmes-types mysteries tend to have a hard time ending well. The issue is that they tend to start strong by raising a number of questions to encourage general intrigue and hook the audience, but when you fail to address all those questions properly, it tends to leave people unsatisfied.
From The New World set itself up to fall into that same trap by front-loading ten tons of questions about the world where normal humans and society has disappeared and have been replaced by smaller villages of humans with psychic powers that manifest at puberty. Throughout the story you watch the children grow and your understanding of the world will grow with them. At first you see the earmarks of sinister answers, and as the children grow, you discover the dark secrets that come with losing the rose-colored glasses of innocence.
Ultimately, at the end there is this huge reveal of something that, to be frank, it didn’t see coming, but it perfectly put the antagonist’s motives into perspective.
Paranoia Agent
Now I said that a satisfying anime ending shouldn’t be one you need to interpret. However, the entire series of Paranoia Agent is one that you need to interpret through the symbolism. If you haven’t deciphered the key message about choosing to not hide from reality inside your delusions, Paranoia Agent and its ending will seem like just abstract batshit craziness.
In the ending, when a black blob of mass paranoia caused by Lil Slugger is consuming the characters, Tsukiko, the woman who started it all, confronts that she has been escaping painful reality with delusion since she was a child. This finally stops the blob, and the message is clear – don’t use fantasy to escape reality, no matter how painful. Also, extra satisfying, was the lovely last seconds that suggested anime is a big crutch for that. It is extra stinging in these days of rampant isekai shows meant to feed a desire for escape.
The Tatami Galaxy
The Tatami Galaxy ending is another ending that maybe you had to Google for a better explanation. However, the conclusion is really right there if you look at the symbolism of it, and it does indeed come to a satisfactory answer to the whole scenario.
In the end of The Tatami Galaxy, Watashi is caught in a loop of his own room, each being from a parallel timeline of him chasing his perfect campus life. In each room there is an object that serves as the dangling reminder that in every life that he spent chasing perfection, he wasn’t taking the opportunity to ask out Akashi that was right in front of him.
In the end, he makes the realization that we all need to make. Life isn’t about chasing the abstract concept of perfection that can never be achieved, but instead it is about making the best of what you are given and appreciating what you do have.
The Heike Story
One more anime series based on a novel for the road, I suppose. The Heike Story modifies the story of the novel primarily by adding in a character that serves as a sort of framing device. It tells the tale of a clan that rose to prominence, became cruel in their influence and rule, and then proceeds to tell the tragic fall of that clan.
Japan does tend to love to stress the impermanence of things in many realms, and the key theme of The Heike Story is that all things that rise must fall. It stresses that theme, it sticks to it, you know things are going to end unhappily for the cast of confusingly named characters – and then they do! A particularly nice part of the series is that it paints members of the clan on a large moral spectrum since no one organization should fully be on one end. Some are awful people, some are great people, but all are caught in the whirlwind of fate.
Do you have more anime series that you think ended in a satisfying way? Let fans know in the comment section below.
