With so much anime being made these days, it’s tough to know which series to stick with and which to abandon. How can you tell if a show will stick the landing, or if it’ll fall flat on its face? The answer is easy: just stick with series that have already ended, particularly the ones that people know are good. Not all of these anime end happily. Sometimes characters die, or they don’t get what they want, or they learn that what they wanted wasn’t what they needed. Does that make these shows a tough watch? Not necessarily. I think there’s something satisfying about “non-satisfying” endings, too. All that said, here are 10 great anime from the past few decades with satisfying endings that will stick with you. NOTE: The following contains spoilers for multiple anime series, including: Akudama Drive , 86 EIGHTY-SIX , Gunbuster , Mazinger Edition Z , Ping Pong the Animation , Puella Magi Madoka Magica , Sonny Boy , The Heike Story , Turn A Gundam and Revolutionary Girl Utena . If you want to watch any of these series without knowing the endings, come back to this feature when you're done! Akudama Drive RELATED: What Makes Akudama Drive's Ending So Compelling? Kazutaka Kodaka made his career writing flashy stories about big personalities with funny names playing death games against each other. But he’s also always been a fan of filmmakers like David Lynch or Kunihiko Ikuhara, who care much more about texture or metaphor than plot. In my opinion, the climax of Akudama Drive is the single most successful sequence in all of his work at combining these influences with the thing that made him famous. The events are straightforward: Swindler and Courier sacrifice themselves to transport their wards, Brother and Sister, to safety. There are plenty of big, cinematic moments on the road to that endpoint, like Courier riding his motorbike up and off a collapsing radio tower. But what sticks with me are the flashes of surrealism. Swindler’s vision of the future moments before the cops metaphorically nail her to the cross. Courier’s superhuman one-man stand against descending drones. And, of course, Brother and Sister leaving Kansai through a tunnel as snow blankets everything. What lies on the other side of that tunnel? What will happen to Kansai after the citizens revolt? Akudama Drive doesn’t explain anything. Yet, in your heart, you get it. 86 EIGHTY-SIX RELATED: How 86 EIGHTY-SIX's Uses Chronology to Perfect the Art of Adaptation Throughout the first season of 86 EIGHTY-SIX , you get a sense of Shinei Nouzen reading Erich Maria Remarque’s novel All Quiet on the Western Front . This book, one of the most famous anti-war stories in English literature, tells the tale of a boy who fights in World War I, suffers and eventually dies on the battlefield. From that point on, I was wondering if Shinei and his friends would follow suit? Could there be a happy ending to their story? Well, yes and no. The 11th episode ends with the supposed death of Shinei and his friends at the hands of a new enemy. Their former handler, Lena, visits their old base and finds a letter from them wishing her well. As she stares into the sunset, knowing that she will fight until she is dead, the camera cuts to a decapitated dummy throwing a peace sign. Roll credits, plus a final minute where a young Shinei reunites with his brother. In the real world, he has no head (or does he?). But surprise, Shinei and his friends survived after all. In the show’s real ending, they reunite with Lena on the battlefield and are recognized for their bravery. That nicely sets up the rest of the series, which continues in the original light novels for over a dozen volumes. Even so, my heart will always be with that midseason climax. It’s just more faithful to All Quiet on the Western Front , you know? That’s war: not pride or friendship, but thoughtless, painful death. Gunbuster RELATED: Got Three Hours to Spare? Watch Gunbuster! The final episode of Gainax’s immortal OVA Gunbuster switches from color to black and white. Rather than a cost-saving measure, says Jonathan Clements , this was a choice by the team to capture the aesthetic of old science fiction. “Old-school science fiction… felt more realistic to him,” he reports, “lacking some of the garish colors of 1960s and 1970s sci-fi…” As part of the OVA’s escalation from school story to interstellar war, the finale’s black and white colors set its events even further apart from the story that preceded it. The finale, though, is really what makes this episode. Due to the effects of time dilation, the heroines Noriko and Kazumi return to Earth over 10,000 years after their victory against the space monsters. At first, they are petrified that humanity has long since perished and that they are all alone. But then the surface of Earth lights up with the message, “WELCOME HOMƎ!” This scene would be used again in the denouement of Diebuster , which restages it from the perspective of humanity as they welcome Noriko and Kazumi back from their long voyage. Mazinger Edition Z Yasuhiro Imagawa’s anime OVA Giant Robo: The Day the Earth Stood Still ends on one of the nastiest cliffhangers in anime history. After a worldwide conflict decimates heroes and villains alike, Lord Big Fire – the most powerful living esper – revives from his long hibernation. Now the final battle for humanity’s future will begin! Except it never does, because the series ends there. Imagawa’s last TV anime as director, Mazinger Edition Z , ends on an even crueler note. But you wouldn’t know it at first. At long last, the tragic archvillain Baron Ashura joins forces with our hero Kabuto Koji to defeat Dr. Hell! Koji reveals a hundred Rocket Punches hidden inside the broken bodies of the Mazinger Corps! They transform into a Big Bang Punch and blast Dr. Hell out of existence! This is what super robot shows were made for. But it was all a lie. Dr. Hell’s machinations were all to keep Earth safe from the Mycenae empire. Baron Ashura’s true plan, meanwhile, was to open the door for that empire at the cost of their life. As they tear themselves in two, the Dark General appears. He swings his sword and severs the top of Mt. Fuji. There is no hope. Or is there? Mazinger Edition Z starts in medias res with Kabuto Koji’s final battle against the forces of Dr. Hell. If you pay close attention, this premiere answers the question posed by the finale. How do you cope with the coming destruction of everything you love? By choosing to live anyway. “I can’t possibly become a God,” Koji says, “And I don’t want to be a Devil. But, I will fight!” Ping Pong the Animation RELATED: Why Did It Take Me So Long to Watch Ping Pong the Animation? Ping Pong the Animation begins and ends with Smile and Peco. Smile is a great ping pong player, but he doesn’t have fun playing the game anymore. Whenever he’s sad, though, he can count on Peco to save him. But first, Peco has to become worthy of Smile. He changes his attitude, he learns new strokes, he trains hard to increase his stamina, all so that he can challenge the greatest high school players in the league for the honor of playing against Smile one-on-one. The original manga ends with Smile and Peco’s final game, rendered as staccato panels interspersed with flashbacks to their shared childhood. The anime expands upon this to loop in every other player in the series. As Smile and Peco compete in ecstatic play, their arms and legs stretch like cartoons. Their rivals remember what it was like to be a child, when play was something you did for fun instead of something that you had to win. Reality melts into nostalgic reminiscence. “Because we are alive,” sing a chorus of children’s voices, “we sing.” Puella Magi Madoka Magica RELATED: 15 Pink-Haired Anime Characters to Brighten Your Day Every episode of Puella Magi Madoka Magica twists the knife deeper. It isn’t enough that magical girls in Madoka’s world sell their souls to an interstellar deity so that they might one day die in battle to incomprehensible witches. It isn’t enough that those magical girls are inevitably warped by grief into witches themselves. Nope. Madoka’s time-travelling classmate, Homura, has lived the events of the series over and over; not only has she failed every time, but her efforts to save Madoka have just made things worse. How could Madoka and her friends possibly get out of this one? The final two episodes of the series were delayed for a month thanks to the 2011 Tohoku earthquake. When they finally aired that April, they revealed an ending happier than anybody could have expected, all things considered. Madoka sacrifices her existence to save Homura and rework the magical girl system, granting peace to every magical girl (and witch) who has ever lived. Entropy still exists, and yet the forces that regulate it are slightly more fair. As Homura goes to battle once again, the words appear: “always, somewhere, someone is fighting for you. As long as you remember her, you are not alone.” Of course, you might have been left unsatisfied by this turn of events. Why should Homura have to sacrifice Madoka for the good of the world? Shouldn’t Madoka have the chance to live her life instead of being swallowed by the cosmic system that she created? For those people, there is Rebellion , which takes Homura and Madoka’s cosmic dance one step further. Sonny Boy In the finale of Sonny Boy , protagonists Nagara and Mizuho escape their island adrift in space and time to find a world where their friend Nozomi is alive. But that story is sandwiched between the reality of Nagara’s life in that world. He has no friends. He works an unfulfilling part-time job. Even Nozomi, who he worked so hard to find, is not the Nozomi he once knew. That Nozomi is dead. Why call this ending “satisfying,” then? Well, the sequence in which Nagara and Mizuho traverse the universe is beautiful. Like the best of Sonny Boy , it deploys simple images to realize abstract ideas. They are nearly impossible to describe and yet work perfectly within the medium of animation. A manga or novel version of this scene would have to be reconceptualized from the ground up. With that in mind, Nagara’s struggles in “reality” are contextualized, though not softened. Real life is difficult. It rains every day, things stay broken after you break them, and people you meet on the street won’t always be your friend. But Nagara and Mizuho have endured so much to choose lives for themselves that they can be satisfied with. Now they just have to live, no matter how difficult that might be. The Heike Story RELATED: So You Want to Get Into Japanese Historical Anime? Here's What to Watch! If you’re familiar with The Heike Story ’s source material, then you already know how its story will end: with the death of the Taira clan at the hands of the Genji. The series follows through. The kind, flawed people who we have come to know over the course of the show all die in battle, or kill themselves, or each other. The children drown, too. Only Tokuko, the woman once betrothed to the Emperor’s son, survives. How do you live, The Heike Story asks, knowing that “all existence is impermanent?” Tokuko wants to give up. It’s the show’s heroine, Biwa, who convinces her that it isn’t yet time to die. In time, Tokuko becomes a nun and devotes herself to prayer. Biwa tells and retells the tale of Heike. Life, prayer, song, story: all strings of the same instrument. Time rewinds, and the fallen flowers return to their trees. The Story begins again. Turn A Gundam Turn A Gundam ends with a grand confrontation between hero Loran Cehak and the villainous Gym Ghingham. But that doesn’t really matter. What does matter is the last five minutes, which hand the wheel to series composer Yoko Kanno and her song “Tsuki no Mayu” (Moon’s Cocoon). We see Kihel take Dianna’s place in space, conniving politician Guin sail off into the distance, and (most crushingly) Loran forsake Sochie’s love for a life in the woods caring for his Queen, Diana. Director Yoshiyuki Tomino is famous for his endings, whether they be tragic ( Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam ) or cosmic ( Space Runaway Ideon: Be Invoked ). The ending of Turn A Gundam might be his happiest; yet there’s a weight to it that surprises me every time. Nobody in this story lives a life free of responsibility. Every character must give something up so that they can achieve their goals. Meanwhile, time passes, unforgiving as always. The beauty of yellow fall leaves, representing idyllic nature, is juxtaposed with the image of a red gift of love floating down a river into the dark. RELATED: A Breakdown of the Gundam Timeline So Far Revolutionary Girl Utena RELATED: Revolutionary Girl Utena Is Surreal, That's Why It Works Even for a series that specialized in giving the audience something that they had never seen before , Revolutionary Girl Utena ’s finale goes above and beyond. From the unforgettable image of Anthy being pierced by hundreds of swords, to the desolate strains of J.A. Seazer’s “Missing Link,” to Utena herself shoving Akio out of the way, prying open the Rose Gate with her bloodied hands and shouting at Anthy to take her hand for what feels like eternity. Only for the swords to turn on her as the dueling arena collapses and Ohtori Academy continues, unchanging. Or does it? Revolution comes not with a bang, but with just one person choosing to say, “no.” Director Kunihiko Ikuhara would repeat this simple trick for the rest of his career. Befuddle the audience with obtuse metaphors. String the audience along with the promise that everything has an answer. Only to reveal through sleight of hand that a story you thought was complex was very simple. Then, blow up the metaphors. The sword, the gates, the dueling arena, everything. It works every time, but it’s at its best here. I don’t know if there’s a more satisfying anime ending than this. 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