[barnstenchfartface]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fish Sandwich

I really don't think it does. The problem everybody has with Takeru dying is that the show is "faking you out", isn't it? With Makoto the audience knows the whole time he'll be fine, and the characters know he's still alive too, so how does it count?

IIRC, there actually was a certain degree of ambiguity about Makoto at that point. Right before his "death," there had been the whole thing where he went to the Ganma world to get his body back. However, the show didn't actually tell us if he did or did not accomplish that while he was there--he was just going around saying he came to get his body back and then meet Alia/fight Adel, so some of us assumed he just did it off screen. Of course later we learned that's not the case, but at the time, up until his body vanishes and the Eyecon explodes, we didn't really know one way or the other. And of course as they are wont to do, the previews were really pushing the "Makoto's dying" angle.

So it was a little ambiguous for a little bit there. I wouldn't even bet that the showrunners intended that to be the case, but it sorta ended up being that way anyway.