The Weird Just Done and Gone Got Weirder

[nojay]

 I'm a fan of Japanese manga, in case you haven't noticed. The stuff I'm interested tends to be somewhat off-centre compared to the popular shonen (boy's) titles like Bleach, Naruto etc., basic battle level-up stories with a girl or six acting as bait/reward/stiletto-tongued harpy to the main character, or the shoujo romances which tend to have a

Comments

[nelc]

What's the difference between a 'satisfying' and a 'satisfactory' ending?

[nojay]

I had to think about that after I typed it -- I know what I meant but it needed some cogitation afterwards.

The ending of Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou (that is, the last few chapters and the epilogue) was satisfying such as it was. It gave me a sense of completion to a story which had become, in its latter stages very episodic in a Last and First Men manner with large timeskips occurring between chapters. It was not satisfactory in that it was less than I wanted in that, as with a lot of superior manga, many story elements were left unexplained or abandoned in a manner that grated on my Western-educated sense of how a story is told.

A snack bar is satisfying, a proper meal at dinnertime is satisfactory. Does that make sense?

[nelc]

Personally, I'd nuance those two words the other way around: a snack is satisfactory, and a meal satisfying. But, yeah, I get you. In one case you're glad the story ended, more or less, without the author deciding he was bored with it and leaving all the characters in a swamp; in the other, not only are the characters not in a swamp, but plot lines are resolved, justice is meted out and it all makes sense.