This week's poll was suggested by our member Ruruskadoo. You ever watch the movie Inception? How do you feel about that ending? Do you like the kind of ending that is open to interpretation?

You can submit poll ideas here: https://www.mangaupdates.com/topic/kilkdnn/site-manga-poll-suggestions

Previous Poll Results:

Question: What do you think of the usual air quality where you live?

Choices:

• Panacea - votes: 62 (2.9%)
• Great - votes: 337 (15.9%)
• Good - votes: 544 (25.7%)
• Okay - votes: 429 (20.3%)
• Meh - votes: 155 (7.3%)
• Could be better - votes: 260 (12.3%)
• Bad - votes: 167 (7.9%)
• Terrible - votes: 75 (3.5%)
• Cancer - votes: 85 (4%)

There were 2114 total votes. The poll ended: March 8, 2025

Now I'm curious on the difference between the public perception of your air quality in your location vs. what you feel like it is.

A just ruler amongst tyrants

Rationally I can often understand their artistic merit and why the creators chose to go with an open ending, but as a reader/viewer I don't give a damn about rationality and artistic merit; I find open endings hugely unsatisfying.

I don't like being left with only questions and no answers or having loose ends left unraveled, I want a story to wrap up neatly so I can have closure instead of being left wondering what the hell just happened.

I never watched the movie Interceptor. But I do like open endings. They allow me to day dream about what could happen next.

They usually also aren't too happy. Happy endings often just make me feel envious. >.>

For those who can't read my name, you can call me gloomy.

Quote from Ruruskadoo

Rationally I can often understand their artistic merit and why the creators chose to go with an open ending, but as a reader/viewer I don't give a damn about rationality and artistic merit; I find open endings hugely unsatisfying.

I don't like being left with only questions and no answers or having loose ends left unraveled, I want a story to wrap up neatly so I can have closure instead of being left wondering what the hell just happened.

Exactly this!!

Open endings are pretty unsatisfying, but I don't mind them too much... it's better than a sad one, honestly. And I have read some such manga that I really liked. But I'd still rather know what actually happens at the end - even if it's not what I hoped for, I can just ignore reality and imagine!

Never seen Inception 😔 but I heard it has something to do with dreams, and I'm learning to lucid dream! Which does not mean I ever intend to watch it. I don't.

...Hop!

I really like the fact that they give room for discussion and let each viewer get a go at how they would interpret the ending. Was cobb still dreaming, or was he finally in reality?

For me, it depends on the lead up to the ambiguous ending.

If a large majority of the mysteries are unsolved or the story takes a completely different direction at the end I hate it.

But if most of mysteries, relationship dynamics and story points are wrapped up nicely, I like them! For example, I really enjoy when the main narrative between the main protagonists finish but there's an implication that life continues on beyond the story's ending.

Like any ending, I think a well-executed open ending is really nice if it fits the story. If anything, I think there is an urge from many audiences today to want EVERY single thread answered and that almost feels laundry-list like to me. Closing every single possibility, well that is the role of fanfiction to explore 😎

I love the ending of inception and feel like it plays perfectly into the movie's themes and character motivations.

What I dislike is when open endings are an excuse or a cop-out by the author since they couldn't come up with satisfying way to wrap up narrative threads. Similar to how user AUOdere explains, I need an open ending that makes sense in the context of the work as a whole.

✨~* ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~✨

I'm not big fan of open endings, but I wouldn't say I don't like them. They are ok-ish. Most time they are mediocre and something along line of "our battle will continue..." which are ... not really endings, they lack conclusion, it doesn't feel like period at end of sentence.

It depends on the implementation, and the genre of the manga. Sometimes there is a whole lot of concrete stuff but there is a single point that is very clearly deliberately ambiguous, and in anything "psychological thriller"-adjacent, that can work really well.

But the VAST majority of ambiguous endings in manga are "I got canceled, you'll never know how this adventure really goes" or "I'm too lazy/stupid to make a Real Ending, here's some random platitudes and also I'm leaving seventeen plot threads unfulfilled" and I despise every single one of those. And unlike Twilight_Moon, I think most fanfiction is absolutely dogshit because reading comprehension across the world is absolutely abysmal so 99% of fanfic writers just make shit up instead of seriously considering how the characters the original author made would actually behave in a given scenario. Fanfic writers average even worse than anime filler writers, who are already some of the dumbest people on the planet.

With that said, I don't need EVERYTHING in a full laundry list of theoretical threads to be clarified explicitly. If the main character seems asexual (like Luffy), I don't need to watch him die of old age just to be absolutely sure he never decided to marry someone. I just need everything that was deliberately set up by the author as a plot thread to be wrapped up in some reasonable form.

On that basis, I wrote "Dislike Them", but again, in some specific scenarios in psychological thrillers and related genres, they do enhance the experience.

If it's a nice clean ending you'll probably forget about it in a sea of other cleanly tied ribbons. It's the open endings we remember, thinking and going over them again and again. Open way is the right way.