It is already April 7 in Japan, which means that it has been five years since the premiere of the anime adaptation of the manga written and illustrated by Taishi Tsutsui“We Never Learn (Bokutachi wa Benkyou ga Dekinai)”. Although the anime had multiple flaws towards the end by cutting much of the content, much of the content adapted from the original manga was quite faithful.
Thus, fans of the franchise recommend avoiding the anime and going directly to the original manga. This is because it is quite difficult to untangle the mess that occurred in the second season of the anime, the omission of a key character cannot be ignored and the manga itself is a fun and light-hearted read regardless.
And that is precisely what we will talk about today. Not about the anime adaptation, but about the manga itself. Although it was a romantic comedy combined with a harem of five girls, the play made history by creating different endings for each of them. While this is common in visual novels (i.e., those dating video games so popular among otakus), it is something rarely seen in the world of manga.
The play had a total of six different endings, with the sixth being a “win-win” bonus. Thus, each of the girls had their happy ending in different universes: the first was with Uruka Takemoto having a long-distance relationship with Nariyuki Yuiga until they meet again; the second was with Rizu Ogatawho lives with Nariyuki and they run their family’s ramen restaurant; the third was with Fumino Furuhashiwho has his relationship with Nariyuki in college; the fourth was with Asumi Kominamiwho lives with Nariyuki on a small island; and the fifth was with Mafuyu Kirisuwho lives with Nariyuki while they both work as teachers.
Harem mangas have become the default format for today’s romantic comedies, and whether we love them or hate them, they’re not going away anytime soon. Taishi Tsutsui’s “We Never Learn” looked like it was going to become a relatively successful and enjoyable, but ultimately forgettable series, until the author revealed that the work would have five different endings, a somewhat unique experiment. Although this unusual approach pleased many fans and caused a detente in the waifu wars, it wasn’t exactly easy.
The first problem, and the most obvious, is that one of the endings seems more canonical than the others, specifically the first, which focuses on Uruka Takemoto, the protagonist’s childhood friend. Although each ending takes place in its own volume, Takemoto’s begins in the last pages of volume 16, which makes for a jarring disconnect if someone were to read the series up to the point where the endings diverge and then choose one ending to read. Takemoto’s ending is the only one that directly follows the rest of the series.
This problem is compounded by the fact that later endings, especially the one focusing on fan favorite Fumino Furuhashi, rewrite much earlier events in the series. Fumino’s ending turns the clock back to chapter 127, a volume and a half before the series split into alternate endings, and changes a major event. This makes the second most popular girl’s ending seem even less canonical than the others.
The author said that the public can “take the endings however they want” and that he had planned to make five endings since the series began. I wanted the audience to feel that the final five had equal weight; the only problem is that the manga doesn’t give them the same weight. If I had to guess the reason why “We Never Learn” turned out like this, with five identical endings that don’t seem very similar, it’s because it had never been done like this before in the manga. Visual novels often have multiple routes leading to multiple endings, but it’s not something that’s really been done in the manga, and the editors are quite conservative.
Next to “We Never Learn“, in the rival magazine Weekly Shonen Magazine it was published “Gotoubun no Hanayome (The Quintessential Quintuplets)”, by Negi Harubaa story about a high school boy hired as a tutor for five identical twin girls, one of whom was shown getting married in the first pages of the manga. Although both series were popular, reactions to the end of “Gotoubun no Hanayome” were more divided, as the girlfriend from the first episode turned out to be neither the most popular nor the most obvious sister. Multiple endings would have helped that play a lot and made people more satisfied, that’s for sure.
Of course, not all harem mangas would benefit from multiple endings. “Nisekoi” by Naoshi Komi was published in Weekly Shonen Jump before “We Never Learn,” and there was never any doubt which of the girls from the manga Raku Ichijo would end up with. Although “Nisekoi” had a lot of problems towards the end of its series, they were not related to the girl Raku would end up with, but rather due to a weak story arc before the end, which dragged on too long.
Despite the problems, the “We Never Learn” experiment turned out positively, so harem romantic comedies will have two options in the future: Either they go the “Gotoubun no Hanayome” route and have only one girl win, or they go the “We Never Learn” route and make endings for each of the girls. Of course, there is also the obnoxious option that “no one wins” and the work is left with an open ending, but that generally happens with stories that accelerated their ending because they were already plummeting.
And you, what do you think about multiple endings?
Fountain: reddit
