(Spoilers Ahead)

Great anime, but a questionable ending. Yotsuba, really?

I don’t usually write reviews here, but after this movie I felt obligated. They gave Yotsuba a bit of forced drama with Fuutarou in the past just to justify her being chosen in the future. During the actual events of the anime, she has little relevance — at best she’s just a comic relief character. She doesn’t even come close to the development that Nino and Miku had, for example. Even Yotsuba herself believed she wasn’t the best choice among the sisters, and in the end she had to be convinced by her own sisters to stay with Fuutarou. That’s just pathetic. I honestly don’t know how Yotsuba fans can see it as fair that the sister who fought the least for the protagonist is the one who wins — and only after being pushed by Miku and Nino, who had the strongest development with him. Watching her win feels like a bad joke.

Not to mention how painful those conversations must have been for the other sisters. Both Nino and Miku opened up and confessed their true feelings, only to see all of that thrown away. That’s not easy to swallow.

Even after five years, despite everything, I think it would have been more satisfying if Fuutarou ended up with someone else, showing that life had moved on for everyone. That kind of closure would have been interesting. Instead, the other sisters are still in love with him, which feels strange — especially since Yotsuba was already engaged and about to be married. Developing that in the timeskip could have made Yotsuba’s victory easier to accept. But to make it worse, during the honeymoon they all go together as if it were some kind of friendly school trip. That makes no sense, since it was supposed to be something intimate. Even more bizarre considering the other four still have feelings for him. At that point, it almost looks like a harem, but that was never the intention of the story.

A new animation is coming soon, but it will only adapt some deleted scenes. Honestly, I think they should use the opportunity (and the budget) to at least create an alternative ending, showing what could have happened with each of the quintuplets. A lot of fans were disappointed with how things ended. Hopefully the visual novel will be released in the West soon so we can finally see the “right” ending.

In short, they made a whole movie to justify giving the win to a character who had almost no real prominence throughout the anime.

Update: I played the visual novel on Steam, and just as I thought, the ones who truly deserved it finally get their fair ending. Nino and Miku, in an alternate world, you actually got to be happy! And Yotsuba… well, sadly, they didn’t forget you either. That’s it.