The ending is satisfying, and I think the relationships and loose ends are handled well. Yet it also loses some of the momentum that would make the series a masterpiece. Now I'm 100% sure something went funky on the production side that brought this from masterpiece to something safer, more bumbling, and still fairly good.
The ending, up to the final scene in 147, feels conspicuously whiffed to weaken the preceding chapters:
- Even carrying wedding rings was too gay, or Kuzushiro didn't want to show it. They are mentioned repeatedly then the story just sort of ends sitting on steps at the beach.
- Nozomi's left hand was basically hidden the whole chapter.
- Shino not going to pick out a ring(chain) Nozomi wanted to, and instead going with the male friend, was a bit telling too. I don't mind the het pairing, it just wasn't the time and was portrayed as rude.
The story swerved quite a bit about 2/3 of the way in too.
- Shino worked through the worst of her grief sooner, but she didn't have a major emotional arc after that. For the most part she had normal worries for going to college and losing a connection. She stopped being unique and became standardized.
- Nozomi's decision to raise Shino turned out perfectly, zero issues, instead of mostly good with some issues. I doubt her development would be much different.
- For over 100 chapters there was lots of subtext even when it felt weirdly inserted.
- Then subtext dried up and was pretty much gone the last couple dozen chapters
- Gay subtext that gets cut is objectively bad communication. Those spreads could have told us more about sisterhood, deeper than the small panels, but instead subtext muddied the waters. Monologues work either way but they probably could have been improved somewhere by not actively creating openings for subtext.
- The les bait sharply decreases then vanishes right around when Kuzushiro started a series with main character lookalikes. With a different publisher.
- The ending tied up all the family issues but toned down any toxicity pretty rapidly.
- I think Heidi was underutilized near the end, just dragged in to be present a couple times, so why focus on his/their situation and set them up as a professional source of advice.
This reeks of business not wanting a profitable property to stay the course into queer topics and more contraversial handling of toxic incestuous feelings, when the plot was clearly about the main relationship slowly becoming healthier.
To be fair, the series may not have been able to run for 13 years if it didn't bait for most of that. And it would be hard to sell the landing if it went controversial. So profit was more important than consistency.
So that romance about lookalikes? The Moon On A Rainy Night is angsty and intersectional. Shino's lookalike is a self-conscious closeted pianist, Nozomi's lookalike is deaf, and their comedic timing is about the same. They are also different enough, more youthful and confused, and in different life situations so it's not a copy paste at all. Maybe like recasting actors?
Anyhow those are my thoughts I don't expect anyone to read. Like or
or whatever to make my day.