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Unhappy with Endings – This Week in Anime

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6 hours ago

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In the wake of Goodbye, Lara‘s finale, Sylvia and Coop discuss anime endings that left viewers wanting.

The views and opinions expressed by the participants in this chatlog are not the views of Anime News Network.
Spoiler Warning for discussion of the series ahead.

Crunchyroll streams Wonder Egg Priority, Tokyo Ghoul: Root A, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, The Promised Neverland, Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt, and The Day I Became a God, and Goodbye, Lara.
Netflix streams Neon Genesis Evangelion, End of Evangelion, and Steel Ball Run.
Prime Video streams Mobile Suit Gundam GQuuuuuuX and New PANTY & STOCKING with GARTERBELT.
Rebuild of Evangelion Films available on VODs.
Fullmetal Alchemist (2003) and Super Dimension Fortress Macross are out of print.

Coop

I don’t know about you, Sylvia, but it seems to me that folks have strong feelings about their endings.

Sylvia

Coop, I have a strong feeling about ending this column right now. Why have you brought this evil upon us? That’s not the kind of ending we’re talking about, and you know it. My disappointment is immeasurable and my day is ruined.

Now that your face is perfectly placed in your palm, I’d say we’re in the perfect emotional space to talk a handful of endings to anime series that were initially reviled or considered divisive.

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© 1997 khara/Project EVA.

The final two episodes of Neon Genesis Evangelion are the poster child for such endings, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg, baby. In fact, it sounds like there was some consternation swimming around a recent fishy favorite of yours, right, Sylvia?

For better or worse, yes. We’ve reached the end of another anime season, and that means it is a time of goodbyes. And one of those goodbyes was the goodbye to Goodbye, Lara, a big and bold conclusion which immediately spawned a range of reactions from “I loved it ;_;” to “let’s beat the writer with hammers.”

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© Kinema Citrus/Goodbye Lara PARTNERS

We at “This Week in Anime” (specifically you and I) preempted some of those reactions earlier in the season with our Dog Chess column. So I cannot say I was surprised. But I am nevertheless kinda bummed about it.

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© Kinema Citrus/Goodbye Lara PARTNERS

Since we talked about it last time, I’ve been a little more in touch with discussion around Lara’s ending than the series itself. It’s been sort of an End of Evangelion summer in my part of the woods. However, everything I’ve heard has me more intrigued to pop in and finish it for myself. Same with Wonder Egg Priority, which apparently is great until that last episode…and came up in the Lara conversation.

Before we continue, I’ll throw in an extra disclaimer that we can’t really do this column without discussing details about these series’ conclusions, so from this point on, here be spoilers. You’ve been warned.

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© Kinema Citrus/Goodbye Lara PARTNERS

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© MARVEL

But anyway, with Lara specifically, it’s not even the final episode so much as it’s the final ~5 minutes. I think most people were on board with the story’s climax, which invokes a lot of abstract, Ikuhara-esque imagery with the upshot of Lara confronting the pain in her own heart in order to rescue Mari’s. There’s no kiss, as it were, but it’s a confession of love all the same, and one that Lara reciprocates from Mari earlier.

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© Kinema Citrus/Goodbye Lara PARTNERS
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© Kinema Citrus/Goodbye Lara PARTNERS
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© Kinema Citrus/Goodbye Lara PARTNERS
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© Kinema Citrus/Goodbye Lara PARTNERS

The show then timeskips 6 months ahead and shows Lara saying her goodbyes to the other characters, culminating in a parting with Mari at the train station.

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© Kinema Citrus/Goodbye Lara PARTNERS
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© Kinema Citrus/Goodbye Lara PARTNERS
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© Kinema Citrus/Goodbye Lara PARTNERS
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© Kinema Citrus/Goodbye Lara PARTNERS

It’s abrupt. It’s bittersweet. And its various minutiae have been dissected all sorts of ways over the past week and a change. Frankly, there’s too much I’d want to say and write to adequately argue my piece, and that’s not really the point of this column. But I do want to draw attention to what you just said: you’ve seen more discussion about the ending than about the rest of the series. And that, I think, does Goodbye, Lara a disservice.

I’d be inclined to agree. When any work has a highly criticized or maligned ending, that tends to become the conversation around that work for years to come. People forget about all the stellar or heartwarming moments that meant so much to them as they were experiencing the vast majority of a certain work. In Lara‘s case, the ending comes off as incredibly bittersweet, but it feels real. There are multitudes of people who come in and out of our lives; some stick around and others move on to the next phase of their own lives. It hurts when this happens, but it does.

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© ​1997​ BE​-​PAPAS​,​SAITO​ ​CHIHO​/​SHOGAKUKAN​,​SHOKAKU​,​TV​-​TOKYO​.

There’s no such thing as a “perfect ending” in life (and media, except Revolutionary Girl Utena), and works that embrace that truth are just as important as the ones where the girl gets the girl. Honestly, what you’ve told me has me going, “So what if after finding Utena, Anthy breaks things off so she can figure herself out a bit more?” Not a romantic ending, but a potentially realistic one.

And that’s a perfectly valid interpretation of Lara‘s ending. You can also interpret it in a way that does not preclude Lara and Mari’s romantic bond. Or you can interpret it as betraying their bond as established by the narrative leading up to that point. I think you can make sound arguments for several conclusions, or point at elements that could have been done differently, utilized more clearly, or expanded. We each bring a different set of personal circumstances to art, and in fact, that’s why art exists! People love utilizing fictions, abstractions, and sublimations in order to pry at quintessences that straightforward language cannot penetrate. This necessarily creates debates about the meaning of artistic works, and in a perfect world, that’s a good thing.

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© Kinema Citrus/Goodbye Lara PARTNERS

In our social media-poisoned reality, though, tribalism and conspiracy are king. Discussions don’t happen. It’s all different sides posting past each other, shadowboxing conveniently flimsy cutouts of their opponents. People invent circumstances and motivations out of nothing. People who haven’t even watched the show feel compelled to chime in because it happens to be a popular topic, and their voices can be amplified as loud or louder than others depending on the size of their following and the whims of the algorithm. In this way, a contentious ending becomes a different monster entirely, feeding the discourse machine without nourishing any thoughtful conversation. And that’s the shit that rankles me.

And I’m not saying I’m above that! Even now, I feel the compulsion to shadowbox my mental projections of what this column’s comment section is going to look like. But there’s no good reason for me to do that—to reduce the entirety of Goodbye, Lara to a series of gotchas that own my opponents in the marketplace of ideas.

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© Kinema Citrus/Goodbye Lara PARTNERS

Between this, that terrible JoJo’s ending theme, and the chatter over a three-year-old tweet (for which the poster had to record a response to for heaven’s sake), social media has been feeling more and more like it’s only there to upset people. To make myself clear, I’m not talking about getting fired up over a serious topic that affects people’s lives; I’m talking about nerd dick-waving contests and people making themselves upset over an art form they love. Unless someone’s actually being hurt, we’ve got better things to be getting upset about.

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© SOTSU・SUNRISE

Here’s an example of one worth getting upset over—Mobile Suit Gundam GQuuuuuuX. Not for overindulging in a meta narrative about escaping the original series’ looming cultural shadow, but for giving Tōru Furuya a featured cameo in its finale. This aired over a year after the actor admitted to having an abusive affair with a fan. I don’t care if he was “the original Amuro” or if they were short on production time. If SEGA could hastily rip Pierre Taki out of Judgment and rebuild all of his character’s assets because of cocaine charges, Khara and Sunrise could’ve brought in a new actor to record one line for this.

An objectively boneheaded move for sure, especially when they already recast Char! Like, come on, guys. Yet it’s also interesting I saw less social media consternation about that than the other more subjectively contentious parts, like the metanarrative or the fact that Machu and Nyaan didn’t bump uglies (which they should have imo). But that’s an anecdotal observation, so I wouldn’t want to draw any conclusions from that. And people certainly had issues with GQuuuuuuX‘s structure and story before that.

Sometimes, though, you see problems on the horizon and just don’t want to acknowledge them. Since you brought it up earlier, and since it was brought up in conversation with Goodbye, Lara, I will swallow my sadness and mention Wonder Egg Priority, which holds the distinction of the most heartbreaking (derogatory) anime ending I’ve ever had to grapple with. It’s in a league of its own. And it legit pissed me off to see people comparing it to Lara‘s conclusion. Y’all don’t even know. I was there. I had to sit down and review that after nearly three months of huffing copium. It hurt me. I hated this.

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© WEP PROJECT

I will still go to bat for a lot of Wonder Egg Priority, and probably more than most people will. But this is one ending where I believe it truly drags down everything that came before it.

Reading through your review, I get the impression that just stopping before the finale might be the best way to approach this one. There’s nothing wrong with watching or playing through most of something and going “I’ve got what I wanted out of this,” then peacing out. Though I’ll admit that my morbid curiosity will likely lead me to watching the whole thing anyway. There are probably some lessons to be learned from how Wonder Egg beefs it on the dismount.

It’s interesting, certainly. And not wanting for ambition. Most concretely, Wonder Egg is a lesson in how paramount project management is to making a successful anime series. Like, Lara could have benefited from a few extra episodes, but overall it adapted itself to its runtime well and told a complete character arc. Wonder Egg Priority‘s structure, meanwhile, collapsed like a house of cards and shoved every mean twist it could think of into its shoddily animated finale. Apples and oranges.

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© WEP PROJECT

The talk of rough animation and erratic productions brings an all-time classic to mind: Super Dimension Fortress Macross.

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© BIGWEST ©HARMONY GOLD

Though beloved, Macross is known quite well for its famously messy production and its similarly jumbled conclusion. However, it’s not just the finale that has a less-than-sterling reputation; it’s the eight episodes that led up to it as well. While I see that final arc as an intriguing postwar denouement to the main Macross tale, there are many who do not. Heck, series director Noboru Ishiguro might’ve been in that camp too if his old interview with AnimEigo from their ye olde DVD boxsets is to be believed—an interview I wrote about for Zimmerit a while back.

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© Zimmerit

Slipping into his shoes for a minute, I totally get why Ishiguro was likely not a fan of something his team had to scramble even more to produce.

Absolutely. Every anime production only exists as a series of largely invisible compromises, as does any collaborative work of art. It makes tons of sense for any of the various artists involved to harbor complicated or negative feelings about that, depending on the result. But it definitely gets trickier when those compromises become evident to the audience, who bring their own ideas about who or what may be to blame.

Case in point, Hideaki Anno has come up with no fewer than three different endings to Evangelion, each of which represents a distinct creative vision, and each of which inspires a wide array of reactions. The original TV ending is most infamous, though, due to its stylistic and abstract departure from what audiences had come to expect from Eva. Yet if you watch it with an open mind, it stands on its own as an appropriately psychological conclusion to Shinji’s arc. It represents a clear artistic vision. However, the consensus continues to view it as an “incomplete” version of the story eventually told by End of Evangelion.

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© 1997 khara/Project EVA.

Eva‘s conclusion (and the entire franchise, really) has fascinated me for years now, mostly because I came to it as an adult instead of an adolescent. I might’ve also been uniquely inoculated for any potential whiplash because one—people have been dissecting this ending for years—and two—one of my first experiences with Evangelion was randomly catching the final episode on Adult Swim one night. I had no clue why everyone was congratulating the sad kid until I was in my mid-twenties.

And that’s a good point! Once-controversial endings can become less contentious as time goes on and audiences reevaluate things. Like I will still see people recommend skipping Eva‘s TV ending and going straight to End of Evangelion—which is wrong, mind you—but at least that’s better than sending death threats to the director.

I strongly disagree with that recommendation as well, primarily because each ending builds on the last. I’ve come to personally frame it like this: Evangelion‘s conclusion is like having a panic attack you’ve lost all control over. The TV ending is the out-of-body sensation part of it, like you’ve been pulled out of your body and you’re watching it all go on in slow motion while trying to mentally parse everything out. End of Eva is the panic attack occurring in real time and the eventual whiplash of when you’re pulled back into your body. Two parts of one big panic attack.

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© khara

For me, this is why Thrice Upon a Time hits so hard. After spending three films trying to avoid another attack, you finally have one and realize that it’s time you have an honest conversation with yourself about it. A conversation that doesn’t involve beating yourself up or blaming those who’ve done wrong by you, but accepting all of it for what it is and trying your best to move forward. Who’s to say you won’t have another attack, but trying to constantly replay (or “redo” in this case) everything isn’t going to help either. I love that Shinji, myself, and perhaps Anno reached that conclusion by the end of this whole odyssey.

Oddly enough, it seems like Evangelion actually did hit me at a tender time. I just wasn’t in high school.

I think that’s why I gravitate towards more ambiguous and/or “unsatisfying” endings. I like leaving a series with a lot to chew on, and I like seeing how my interpretations change when I rewatch them, because (ideally) I’m not the same person who first watched it. But I can’t deny the presence of some contrarianism in there. I really enjoyed Tokyo Ghoul: Root A, for example, despite many fans of the manga expressing disappointment over the many changes it made. So when the finale concluded on a long, unbroken, several-minute-long scene of Kaneki carrying his best friend’s dead body, I loved how indulgent and bleak that was. It felt like the perfect mood to end this narrative on. The anime adaptation of Tokyo Ghoul:re then goes on to undo everything that made this effective for me, but regardless, I still respect the moxie.

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© Sui Ishida/Shueisha,Tokyo Ghoul Production Committee

Y’know, that reminds me of how rare anime-original endings or endings seem to be these days. Though not an ending, my brain keeps rounding back to the vitriol around Chainsaw Man‘s adaptation simply because it was doing its own thing and sticking to it. If I really want to seek out a story in its original form, I’ll do that instead. Most of the time, I’d rather not watch a copy-and-paste from the manga. It defeats the point of bringing it into a new medium.


Fullmetal Alchemist is perhaps THE example when it comes to anime-original endings and adaptations overall. The 2003 series covered much of the manga’s early goings-on before going off in its own direction with Arakawa’s blessing. Six years later, Brotherhood was produced at the same studio, Bones, and cleverly swerved around the already adapted material. The studio already made a delicious FMA cake with its own distinct flavorings; why completely copy it to make a new one? Also, that first cake ruled. Actually, both cakes rule.

Again, as a fan of weird big swings, I vibe heavy with FMA 2003’s last-minute swerve. And now there’s certainly a healthy contingent of people in that camp, which is good. But while I’m generally a fan of adaptations doing their own thing, there are examples where it doesn’t work out, i.e., the near-universally reviled second season of The Promised Neverland.

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© KAIU SHIRAI,POSUKA DEMIZU/SHUEISHA,THE PROMISED NEVERLAND COMMITTEE

Although admittedly, that’s more of a season-wide problem than one concentrated just in the ending.

Sounded like a legit case of “promises” broken from the rumbling I’d heard about it.

“Never” should have been the operative word there.

I guess you could say that it…never landed.

ANYWAY, we should also mention that the “Gainax Ending” used to be a whole thing understood by fandom at large, with its funniest example definitely being Panty & Stocking‘s original cliffhanger.

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© 2010 GAINAX/GEEKS

Thinking about how New Panty & Stocking rolls right in like that fifteen-year gap never happened.

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© TRIGGER・今石洋之／NPSG製作委員会

But more relevantly, the good ol’ “Gainax Ending” sprung out of titles like the aforementioned Evangelion and Gunbuster, in which the finale takes some sort of wild last-minute swing that catches most audiences off guard… And also makes them wonder if the studio blew all their budget earlier on in production.

Personally, I think the takeaway from most “Gainax Endings” is that women can do anything.

After reviewing my notes, I concur. Women can do anything.

And that includes co-writing a column about controversial anime endings! This certainly hasn’t been an exhaustive list (and I am consciously sparing our readers some of the rancor I could throw at, say, The Day I Became a God‘s rancid final episode). Still, overall, I think it tends to be a good sign when an ending sparks a variety of reactions. That usually means it has something to say. But I also believe the internet as it currently exists has been engineered to foster precisely the wrong kinds of reactions, so that part sucks. Maybe the ending we need most is the end of social media.

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I will say, there is something truly special about dissociating to a potentially ill-fitting end credits sequence after watching an intensely distressing cliffhanger finale.

Please don’t mention “ill-fitting end credits sequence;” I’m still traumatized by how you began this column.

A truly terrible ending we’ll remember for generations to come.

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Evangelion: Δ Cross Reflections Extended Reality Game Streams Teaser Video – News

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23 minutes ago

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October 1, 2026

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Korea-based virtual reality (VR) development studio Pixelity Inc. began streaming on Tuesday a teaser video for Evangelion: Δ Cross Reflections, the first extended reality (XR) game based on the Neon Genesis Evangelion franchise. The company initially unveiled the video during the San Francisco Hands-on Preview event last week.

Evangelion: Δ Cross Reflections
Image courtesy of Pixelity

© khara / Project Eva. © Pixelity Inc.

Evangelion: Δ Cross Reflections is the first entry in a planned trilogy, and it covers the first 11 episodes of the original television anime. The games feature a new story within the timeline of all 26 episodes.

The first game will launch in 2027, following a delay. The game was originally scheduled for release in 2026. It will use VR and mixed reality (MR) technology.

In the action-adventure game, players will explore the world of Evangelion as an original character whose dream is to be a pilot. There will be quests and battles based on the anime’s timeline. The game will feature co-op play with characters from the series, and there will be other original characters such as NERV trainees.

New cast members include:

Netflix began streaming the 1995 television anime in June 2019, and it describes the story:

A.D. 2015. Tokyo 3 is under attack by powerful creatures known as the Angels. The protagonist, Shinji Ikari, is chosen to pilot the Humanoid Decisive Weapon Evangelion — the only way for humanity to fight against the Angels. The battle for the fate of humanity starts now. What exactly are the Angels? What fate awaits the young pilots and humanity itself?

Evangelion: Death (True)2 is the updated 1998 edition of the 1997 compilation of the television series with some updated footage. The End of Evangelion film provided a new ending to the story in 1997.

Shout! Factory and GKIDS launched the Collector’s Edition of the Neon Genesis Evangelion television anime and the films Evangelion: Death (True)2 and The End of Evangelion in December 2021 and the Standard Edition Blu-ray Disc set in November 2021. The company began selling digital downloads for the series and films in November 2021.

The franchise is getting a new series.

A new anime short premiered at the “Evangelion:30+;” festival on February 21, and officially started streaming on March 8.

The franchise has inspired numerous spinoffs, merchandise, and collaborations. Hideaki Anno, the director of the anime, founded Studio Khara in 2006. He and the studio began producing a new tetralogy of films titled Rebuild of Evangelion, which reinterprets the events in the series. The tetralogy began with Evangelion 1.0 You Are (Not) Alone in 2007, followed by Evangelion 2.0 You Can (Not) Advance and Evangelion: 3.0 You Can (Not) Redo in 2009 and 2012, respectively. Evangelion: 3.0+1.0: Thrice Upon A Time, the final Evangelion film, opened in Japan on March 2021 and ranked #1 in its first weekend. Evangelion: 3.0+1.01: Thrice Upon A Time (Shin Evangelion Gekijō-ban :||), the new version of the final Evangelion film, opened in Japan in June 2021.

Source: Evangelion: Δ Cross Reflections game’s X/Twitter account

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Topo Gigio’s Voice Actor Peppino Mazzullo Dies – News

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30 minutes ago

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October 1, 2026

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Mazzullo voiced mouse character Topo Gigio in puppet appearances, 1988 anime
Topo Gigio
Image via Nippon Animation

© NIPPON ANIMATION／MARIA PEREGO

Italian actor Peppino Mazzullo died on Wednesday at his home in Santo Stefano di Briga, Italy. He was 100.

Mazzullo was perhaps best known for voicing the puppet mouse Topo Gigio, a creation of Maria Perego. Beyond voicing the character in Italy, Mazzullo and Topo Gigio also made appearances on The Ed Sulivan Show starting in 1962, and gained worldwide popularity.

Mazzullo provided the voice for Topo in the Italian and Spanish dubs of the 1988 Topo Gigio and Yumemiru Topo Gigio anime.

He voiced the character until 2006. After retiring from acting, he founded the Piccolissimo Teatro di Messina theater academy, and taught acting there.

Source: The Hollywood Reporter (Mike Barnes)

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Tasokare Hotel -Tsubomi- Smartphone Game Ends Service – News

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2 hours ago

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October 1, 2026

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tasokare-hotel-tsubomi

The official website for the Tasokare Hotel -Tsubomi- smartphone game announced on Wednesday that the game is ending service on November 30 at 12:00 p.m. JST.

Sales of in-game currency have halted. Players can request refunds until the game ends service. Following the end of service, players will still be able to open the app, but they will not be able to access game content.

Tasokare Hotel -Tsubomi- launched in March 2025. It is a sequel adventure game with a new protagonist and characters, new story, and revamped game system.

SEEC‘s Tasokare Hotel game launched for iOS and Android in 2017 and has over 1.1 million downloads worldwide. A remake with new elements and features titled Tasokare Hotel Re:newal launched for iOS and Android in Japan in December 2022, and the remake game’s Steam version launched in Japan in January 2024.

The mobile game inspired a television anime on Tokyo MX in January 2025. The anime streamed on Prime Video, It’s Anime YouTube channel, Tubi, Plex App, Anime Onegai, TVING, bilibili, and Anime Key in over 100 countries and territories.

It’s Anime! describes the anime adaptation’s story:

“TASOKARE HOTEL” is a hotel that is engulfed in twilight all day long, with no distinction between day and night.

It exists as a place between life and death, where souls unable to decide whether to move on to the afterlife or return to the present world can rest their wings.

The protagonist, Neko Tsukahara, wanders into “TASOKARE HOTEL” without remembering who she is or why she’s there.

Guided by the hotel staff, she is led to her room.

“There should be items related to the customer’s memories in the room. These might serve as clues to help the customer regain their memories.”

While searching for a way to return to the present world and remembering who she is, she encounters a certain incident…

The game’s original author Benoma Ray and concept creator SEEC stated that the anime version incorporates “developments that add unique charm only possible in this medium,” and that they have “crafted a work that will bring new surprises and emotions even to fans of the original [game].”

The original game also inspired both a stage play and a webtoon.

Sources: Tasokare Hotel -Tsubomi- game’s website, 4Gamer (簗島)

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