“All’s well that ends well” is a phrase that seems to come up all the time, isn’t it? It comes up so often, in fact, that I’d hesitate to call it a saying or an aphorism, and I’d certainly never think to look up its origins. It’s a common phrase—a conventional one. A phrase that spreads from person to person as naturally as could be...which you might say attests to the fact that it expresses a broad and general truth.
All’s well that ends well. It sounds like a positive sentiment, at first blush—like it’s saying that no matter what trials and tribulations you may go through, they’ll all be water under the bridge when everything’s over. It’s very easy to read another implication into that interpretation, however: that when all’s said and done, the results are all that matter. It implies that no matter what incredible things may have happened over the course of the process, if the ending doesn’t satisfy—if the results don’t live up to expectations—then everything that came before is rendered meaningless.
We only get to be judged by how hard we work—by the effort that we put in over the course of an endeavor—until we graduate from school. After that point, we’re thrust into society at large, where results are everything. Yes, I’m still actively living out my student years even as I say these words, and yes, it’s a little embarrassing to monologue about what it’s like out in society considering that...but I think this is something that even students like me can understand. Nobody’s naively optimistic enough not to catch on to these things eventually.
People—especially celebrities and fictional characters—love talking about how hard work is always rewarded, but from another perspective, wouldn’t that mean that hard work that isn’t rewarded can’t be counted as hard work at all? It’s a concept that hints that those who never produce results have no right to be proud of the effort that they put in. Kinda puts the harsh reality of society on display, doesn’t it?
In the end, everything is defined by results. It’s only by achieving clear success—by reaching an ending—that the process of putting in hard work is recognized as hard work.
All’s well that ends well. Results are everything.
But there’s one thing...just one complaint that I’d like to raise about that idea. Indeed, I hold a single objection to this particular truth of the world—namely, I believe there’s an exception to the otherwise universal rule that is “all’s well that ends well.”
That exception’s identity: fiction.
When it comes to manga, anime, novels, light novels, and on and on—to fiction of all shapes and sizes—I believe that results are not, in fact, everything. I believe that a story’s result—in other words, a story’s ending—doesn’t define that story in its entirety.
This is really hard to put into words, but there are a lot of stories out there with endings that, well...suck. I mean, maybe saying that they suck is taking it a step too far, but there are certainly no small number of stories that make you cock your head and say “Wait, what? That’s it?” when you read their final chapters.
There are absolutely stories out there that found popularity, made the jump into multimedia franchises, became beloved by fans far and wide, carried on for years on end, laid out all sorts of grand mysteries and layers of foreshadowing...then threw it all away at the absolute last second by ending in such a perfunctory way that not even the most diehard fans could defend it in good faith. Death game series are particularly prone to that, as most of their endings— Actually, scratch that. I probably shouldn’t get too specific about this, on second thought.
Anyway, what I’m getting at is that a fair percentage of stories have endings that are kinda hard to give a passing grade. That said, the mere fact that those works got endings at all means that they avoided being a lot worse off—after all, there are also plenty of fictional works that were never able to end at all.
Some stories just never reach their endings, for one reason or another. I can think of all sorts of circumstances that could lead to that result, the most common of which would probably be getting canceled on account of poor sales. Then there are stories whose authors get sick or die, or stories published by companies that go under or magazines that get discontinued. Then you have those works in the light novel world that sell decently enough, by all appearances, but for some inexplicable reason just never put out another volume.
That’s only scratching the surface of potential reasons. Take, for instance, works that were perfectly popular up until their anime aired, but which then had their publication rate drop straight off a cliff the second it finished. Did the anime airing somehow lead to the author burning themself out? Or maybe seeing their work in adaptation was a debilitating shock? Maybe the editorial department dialed back the pressure after the anime ended, or maybe the author had a new series start doing really well and turned their attention to it instead? I’m no author, so I can only speculate, but I have to assume that every author has a unique set of circumstances like those that they have to work under.
The point I’m trying to make is that there are a ton of series out there that were never able to end on account of one real-world issue or another. Actually, “a ton” might not do it justice. These days, I have a feeling that unfinished stories might outnumber the finished ones. We live in an era that’s spoiled for entertainment, after all, and a countless number of stories are beginning and ending at any given moment.
I have to wonder: Just how many of those stories ever come to a satisfying conclusion? If I had to hazard a guess as to how many stories have reached an ideal ending—running for exactly as long as they should have without getting prematurely canceled or artificially dragged out, concluding only after the author finished telling the story they wanted to tell, including a perfect final chapter that could truly satisfy each and every reader—I would say that we’d be looking at a grand total of less than one percent of stories, most likely.