Jan 13, 2025
Jiro's soul passing on but his consciousness remaining as an eternal is an ending I can accept. Him sacrificing himself to atone for the past but still in some form getting to live out peaceful days with Yuna is nice. I think it would have had more impact if he was just straight up dead-dead, but I'm certainly not averse to a happy ending.
That being said, it does reopen an issue I had earlier on that I stopped thinking about for a while. For a scifi story, the idea of a "soul" is pretty esoteric unscientific, which is fine, not everything has to have a scientific explanation, but it leaves me wondering what a "soul" actually is. If Jiro's consciousness, complete with all his memories and mannerisms, is now in Genesis, and the only thing separating "Jiro" the human and "Jiro" the eternal is a soul, it would really help to have some understanding of what the "soul" actually is.
To be honest, the sacrifice rings a little hollow because of this. His soul passed on which means... what? Considering Yuna and Shizuka seem just as human as anyone else, there's really no established consequence to having no soul. Would have really made the emotional punch work a lot better if this concept was actually fully explored.
That being said, I've really enjoyed reading this over the past few months. It's been a fun one to keep up with, and I'm really gonna miss the cast of this series (until you make that Magical Girl & Barrel Guy buddy cop spin off, this is an obligation now). So, feel proud. I think you wrote something great here
