@puppeto4 Oh wow, I didn't even remember that. That puts the ending, and the series, more into perspective...
As for my personal thoughts on the ending... Yeah I expected about as much. An unsatisfying ending, but appropriate for the series. The mangaka has a lot of these series where the ending is treated more like an opportunity to think more about the matters brought up rather than wrapping up loose ends and feeling like the story has concluded. I personally prefer the latter, because a lot of people just don't like thinking too hard about their comics, but doing a deep dive into why something felt bad is a good exercise every once in a while.
So, why do I not feel satisfied with the ending? I guess that it's cause my gut instinct says that the mangaka is just leaving this open just for the sake of being unsettling, and that if anyone deserves to find some resolution, it would be the MC. That last fact that puppeto4 brought up does change that a lot actually, now that we know that he actually did know what was going to happen and even kind of wanted it to. There are some loose ends, and while I am generally opposed to people who don't even think about more than what the author has explicitly stated, then blame them for plot holes that literally would have been resolved if they expended a single neuron to connect the dots, in this case, it's hard to tell whether this feeling of dissatisfaction is because of a ton of implicit details or the mangaka intentionally being an ass.
Anyways, thank you for these translations! It's been a ride