Ambiguous Situation / Anime & Manga

• Aggretsuko: Does Director Ton really not remember Retsuko's insulting song during the "department bonding night" when they all went drinking together, or did he just pretend to forget? While he insists he's too hung over to remember when she tries to apologize, his tone of voice suggests a very "just don't bring it up again" kind of dismissiveness - or would for anyone else, but he kind of sounds like that all the time when not chewing people out.
• Arpeggio of Blue Steel: The Stinger of the second movie. After laying flowers at his parents' grave, Gunzou turns around to face the camera and welcomes someone back. Who exactly he is talking to is never shown, though a Not Quite Dead Iona seems likely.
• Cowboy Bebop ends with Spike, grievously wounded, collapsing in front of what remains of Vicious's gang. The creator said that whether he lives or dies is entirely up to the viewer.
• A Cruel God Reigns: One of the continuing points of crisis between Ian and Jeremy is whether or not the car crash that killed their father and mother (step parents respectively) was caused by an error in Greg's driving, a faulty car attribute, or Jeremy's tampering. Because it is never solved and could have been any of the three reasons, heavy strain is placed on Ian's willingness to try to forgive his stepbrother and later on his budding romantic feelings for him. Even more strain is placed on Jeremy because he can't be sure whether or not he accidentally killed his mother, and therefore he can't put the guilt behind him or forget about what Greg did to him to make him sabotage the car in the first place.
• Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba:
  • The story behind the sword inside Yoriichi Type Zero is not made entirely clear in the series proper, the design of the handle, hilt and blade differ slightly from the sword Yoriichi uses throughout all his appearances, however, the blade is definitely meant for Sun Breathing users since Tanjiro felt it fit him perfectly, and the blade has the "Metsu" engraving that only Yoriichi's blade had, also Haganezuka remarks how amazing the blade is even in its aged state; thus that mysterious blade that is reforged as Tanjiro's final sword is either Yoriichi's sword recycled into a different base hundreds of years ago, or a new sword once meant for Yoriichi but was left as a lingering hope for a future Sun Breathing user instead.
  • The narrative never actually gives Yoriichi his official role within the Demon Slayer Corps, he walked among the Hashira of his era like they were his peers but oddly Yoriichi himself is never referred to as a Hashira, not even the Databooks bother to further explain that, Yoriichi is always officially refered to as just a demon slayer, no rank is ever attached to his name despite his immeasurable importance at the time for the Corps, just one curious trivia is mentioned through Goto, the Kakushi Brigade member, that Yoriichi inspired the creation of the Hashira rank, without ever getting into additional details afterwards, as if this seemly crucial piece of information didn't warrant any further explanation; even when he got expelled from the Corps after failing to kill Muzan warranted a mention of his rank being disgraced; Yoriichi is consistently left without a rank attached to his name in all official sources.
  • The true nature of the Marks and the eventual fate of those who achieve it; Kokushibo stated that every Slayer who achieved the elevated power of the Mark was guaranteed to die once they reached 25 years of age, as the tremendous power it brought came at a price, that is rapidly using all vitality a person has till they shrivel and die; that statement was rebutted by Gyomei who knew of at least one person who overcame that predicament, however, Yoriichi being the known example is a very exceptional case since he was a singularity himself, thus being quite difficult to point him as the basis for potential more exceptions to the matter at hand. The series ends with 3 Marked ones who survived the final battle: Tanjiro, Giyu and Sanemi, the series doesn’t dwell on how many years they lived after that, nor the second Fanbook; Tanjiro’s family tree in the 21th century having one full generation over Zenitsu’s and Inosuke’s could be a saddening hint but ultimately nothing is confirmed, and it likely never will be with Gotouge preferring to leave the ending as happy as it can be, since it was too bittersweet already.
• Devilman: In Devilman vs Hades, a large portion of the story is focused on the revival of two women the hero and the villain dearly love. For Akira it's Miki, who is still dead from the events of the original manga, and for Hades it's Persephone, his wife from Greek mythology, who Akira killed when he came to save Miki's soul. Hades having power over the dead, promises Akira that he could bring the woman he loves back from the dead; given certain conditions are met. Ironically, despite having mastery over death, Akira's Devilman powers have corrupted Persephone's soul, and has made it near impossible to repair. The final scene of the manga leaves it ambiguous as to which of the two women were revived, as either Miki or Persephone's eyes open up as Akira and Hades fight to the death. Making it even more ambiguous, is the fact that Persephone and Miki have different colored eyebrows, and that is obscured from view, making it impossible to tell which one of them is being revived.
• Haruhi Suzumiya:
  • A big ambiguity that is touched on occasionally but never truly addressed is whether Haruhi is a god or not. It's one of the early theories that Koizumi presented, and a large number of fans assume it to be the case, but even Koizumi himself doesn't know if it's true or not. He says it's just the worst case scenario that his Organization is acting on. Or at least that he claims it is acting on.
  • At the end of the first season (which in chronological order would be the sixth episode), it is left very vague as to whether Haruhi recreated the world or not. Kyon and Koizumi don't know either. There is really no way to know for sure, only that the events surrounding the moment when it would have occurred, if it did, really did happen.
  • Multiple explanations for various happenings are also presented. For example, Koizumi claims that Haruhi created the espers and either attracted time travelers and aliens or created them, while Mikuru says that Koizumi is lying and that the residents of the future have their own goals. Nagato refuses to say what the IDTE thinks because neither she nor the previous two have the slightest bit of proof that they can show to Kyon and any of the three could easily lie to him. And, of course, any of the three could just be wrong.
  • At the end of The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya, while Kyon and Yuki are having a moment together, Kyon says, "Yuki." She looks up in surprise, since he always calls her by surname, only to find him staring up at the sky, which has started snowing. "Yuki" is the Japanese word for "snow", thus it is ambiguous whether he really was calling her by given name or he was just pointing out the snow. The English dub keeps the ambiguity — after Yuki looks up and sees the snow, Kyon adds, "It means 'snow', right?"
• Henkyou no Roukishi Bard Loen: The "Witch" reveals she was trapped in a house set on fire by villagers trying to kill her, but somehow, she's still here. After casting a lot of fire magic, she turns into a young woman, before going back to her normal appearance. After a short travel together, she vanishes while Bard isn't looking when they leave the forest, leaving the possibility that she might be a ghost all along.
• Himouto! Umaru-chan: Chapter 89 ends with what seems like Ebina about to confess her love to Taihei. Chapter 90 begins next morning with Taihei and Umaru and no real hint of what happened as a result other than Taihei preparing New Year's money for Ebina when in previous years he only did so for Umaru. Chapter 92 mentions that he listened to it seriously, but doesn't elaborate any further. It isn't until chapter 98 where readers learn what actually happened: She didn't confess.
• Inuyasha: In the ending, it's left uncertain whether or not the gateway between the present day and the Feudal Era in the Bone Eater's Well is sealed up for good after Kagome returns there permanently, or if Kagome really is Trapped in the Past for good this time. Either way, she's chosen to stay in the past.
• Irresponsible Captain Tylor: The story leaves the title character's actual personality and level of ability very difficult to pin down. The most obvious example is regarding whether he's just incredibly lucky or actually knows exactly what he's doing and just wants to play the fool for reasons no one else can understand. There's a lot of support for both positions, leaving an overall impression that it's probably a bit of both. How much is unclear and his Worthy Opponent considers the distinction to be entirely irrelevant.
• JoJo's Bizarre Adventure:
  • Josuke's savior in JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Diamond is Unbreakable. According to Josuke, when he was four he and his mother were caught in a snowstorm and were rescued by a heavily injured high schooler, inspiring Josuke to adopt his haircut and chivalrous attitude. Due to the inexplicable nature of the boy's wounds, sudden appearance, and the fact that he's depicted as being identical to Josuke in the flashback, while the story was ongoing it was theorized that it was a Stable Time Loop with Josuke sent back in time during a fight and saving himself with the theory even being brought up in JoJo's Bizarre Adventure 4th Another Day. While the story makes it clear this was not the case, Araki to this day has refused to elaborate on the events leading up to it.
  • Golden Wind:
    • Just about everything about Diavolo is left as vague as possible, from the circumstances of his birth, to how he managed to bury his mother under his house (and even if he was the one that did it), to his relationship with Vinegar Doppio.
    • Notorious B.I.G, the Stand of Carne, is only activated after Carne's death, so it's left unclear how much of Notorious B.I.G is its own being and how much is Carne.
  • Jolyne Cujoh from Stone Ocean manages to pull off a number of feats that would require a large amount of calculating to succeed, but whether or not she's able to perform them out of genuine intelligence or just dumb luck in unknown.
• Life with an Ordinary Guy who Reincarnated into a Total Fantasy Knockout: When salarymen Tachibana and Jinguuji are sent to another world by that world's Goddess of Love to be its heroes and, in the process, turns Tachibana into a girl, they upset the goddess enough that she places a curse on them. Immediately after, Tachibana and Jinguuji are resisting attraction to one another, prompting to assume that's the curse. However, Tachibana soon realizes that the goddess never actually specified what the curse was, Jinguuji tends to ignore women generally and greatly favor Tachibana even before all this, and it's later revealed that Tachibana can passively charm people, meaning that they could simply attracted to one another, and the curse is something else entirely. Tachibana is reluctant to face that idea, however, so he never seriously tries to confirm it.
• Towards the end of the "Cannon Fodder" segment of Memories, it's shown that the cannons that the citizens of the nation have fired are on the ground instead of hitting the enemy, raising the question of whether or not the war is even real or if it's made up to keep the people in line. Complicating matters is that a news report specifies that the enemy has a mobile city, but this either means that they're lying about it to give an excuse as to why the cannons miss, or the enemy is real but because they're able to move, the cannons are useless.
• Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch from Mercury has the connection between series protagonist Suletta Mercury and a character from the Prologue, Ericht Samaya. It is confirmed that Ericht's mother, Elnora Samaya, is Lady Prospera Mercury, who is also the mother of Suletta. There is a twenty-one year gap between the Prologue and the first episode, and Suletta is stated to be seventeen years old. This leaves one of two possibilities: if Suletta is Ericht, she's not actually 17, but approximately 25. Conversely, if Suletta isn't Ericht, then that raises the question of what exactly happened to Ericht in the interim. Some of the answers came in Episode 14, when it was finally laid out that Suletta and Ericht were not the same person — although those answers come as a cold comfort given what actually happened to Ericht...
• My-HiME:
  • The situation between just what Shizuru did with Natsuki while the latter was recovering under her care is never fully resolved. Besides Shizuru herself (who never brings it up) we only see Natsuki's imagining a scene of them silhouetted through a rice-paper screen door where Shizuru disrobes and then lies down, and the scene is flipped from what it was in reality, adding to the ambiguity about whether Natsuki is remembering it or imagining it based on what she hears Haruka and Yukino saying. All we know for certain is that Shizuru did kiss the sleeping Natsuki, but beyond that there are several possibilities. Whether or not Shizuru was wearing any underwear beneath her kimono, whether or not she lay down on the same futon or one adjacent, and whether it even really happened are left ambiguous, so it's impossible to see what happens next and means that Yukino and Haruka's assumptions might not be accurate. Further complicating the situation, Yukino intimates that she witnessed more, and Shizuru doesn't confirm or deny the situation, but instead deflects, accusing Yukino of voyeurism.
  • It's indicated that one's most important person can change over time, so this happens to two characters.
    • For Mai, her original most important person is clearly Takumi, since her life revolves around caring for him. However, later on in the series, a rift develops between them when Takumi insists on getting treatment, which distresses Mai, around the time Mai is starting to develop feelings for Yuuichi. Takumi dies not long afterward, and Natsuki realizes that Takumi's position as Mai's most important person was transferred to someone else. One would assume it's Yuuichi, but Mai is able to summon her Child after Yuuichi dies as a result of Shiho's Child being destroyed, something Mai says is the result of her love for Yuuichi. That being said, Mai has a similarly strong bond with Mikoto, so it's also possible Mikoto became Mai's new most important person.
    • For Natsuki, she begins the series trying to seek revenge or her mother's death, and has Shizuru as her Only Friend. While Duran is initially rather small compared to most other Childs, one would wonder why it's possible to summon a Child with a dead person as one's most important person(although Mai provides a possible explanation). Later on, Natsuki hears someone claim that her mother wanted to sell her to the Searrs Foundation, and this shakes her belief in her mother so much she is unable to summon her Child. Realizing that Shizuru loves her enables Natsuki to summon a much larger Duran, and Duran shooting Kiyohime with explosive rounds at point-blank range results in Shizuru and Natsuki's deaths. While Natsuki's most important person at the end of the series is obviously Shizuru, it's unclear whether her mother played that role until then.
• Reincarnation (or Next Life as a Fictional Character to be exact) in My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom!, since in this series, Past-Life Memories are latent until being somehow activated by, for example, head trauma.
  • It's not really clear if Catarina is actually Catarina like she thinks or just her past life having completely replaced who Catarina was supposed to be. She does identify as Catarina, have her memories and her father thinks she's similar to her mother, but she seems unfamiliar with some really basic things that Catarina ought to know. But then again Catarina was always as dumb as a box of rocks, now she's just dumb in a different way.
  • And then at least we know in the story Catarina actively knows who she was, and how does her Past-Life Memories change her. There're even more mysteries concerning how being Acchan's reincarnation has affected Sophia compared to the one in Fortune Lover, since her Past-Life Memories are mostly dormant. This ambiguity is very clearly intentional on the part of the creators, since Sophia is actually a Mysterious Stranger to Catarina. Catarina never played the Nicol route of Fortune Lover in her past life, so all we know about the Sophia in the game was that she was Nicol's little sister that the latter is rather overprotective towards, and as a "rival", is probably a bit of a bro-con. We learn upon meeting the actual Sophia that she's considered "cursed" due to her appearance^note Catarina's case indicates Past-Life Memories don't affect appearance, so Sophia is also an albino in the game., and we see firsthand that she experiences strange dreams where she sees her previous life but doesn't remember much afterward, and there are a few times when Acchan clearly does exert control, but how much this may "impose" on Sophia, whether Sophia's attraction towards Catarina is based on or strengthened by Acchan's feelings, and whether Sophia would mind if she knew who she was, are all open questions, in fact with Sophia's Past-Life Memories mostly dormant it's impossible to know where one ends and another begins if such a distinction even exists in the first place.
• Neon Genesis Evangelion has quite a bit of this, partly resulting from that Rule of Symbolism mentioned in the trope description. The most notable example would be the final scene of End of Evangelion, where the true meaning of Asuka's words remains up to viewer interpretation.
• Rebuild World: Out of nowhere, despite Alpha being Invisible to Normals, Alpha talks to Sheryl in a White Void Room dream telling her to Quit Your Whining. This seems to be a hint that Sheryl is a Differently Powered Individual known as an Old World Connector. There’s the alternative explanation of Sheryl being part of a Psychic Link with Akira like Katsuya had with his Battle Harem, who appeared in said dreams alongside Akira and Katsuya. Additionally, it seems that Akira accidentally lets his guard down waking up next to Sheryl resulting in him speaking out loud to Alpha when he normally uses Telepathy, which Sheryl overhears more than once, but the text is ambiguous enough for that to have been overheard telepathy (telepathy has been overheard by Tsubaki before).
• Sonic X: While Dr. Eggman hails from Sonic's dimension in this continuity, his grandfather, Professor Gerald, and his cousin Maria still hail from Earth. This leads Eggman to theorize that he was initially born on Earth and somehow ended up on Sonic's world, but it's unclear whether or not this is the case, much less how he got there in the first place.
• In Wonder Egg Priority Neiru's sister apparently stabbed her and then jumped off a bridge, but that's just what Neiru was told in the ICU and she has no memory of the incident.
• Chapter 239 of Yamada-kun and the Seven Witches reveals that the reason why Yamada and Shiraishi keep meeting and falling in love despite repeated memory losses is that Shiraishi, during her first year, wished to be with Yamada, after which the wish was fulfilled as she became the original witch. This means that Yamada's love for Shiraishi originally was induced by magic and not real. When Shiraishi leaves Suzaku High in the middle of her third year, the magic is broken, but Yamada still misses her as all hell, meaning that his love for her is now genuine and not caused by any magic power. So it's very ambiguous, and left up to the reader's interpretation, at which point Yamada's magic-induced love became genuine love.
• Yu-Gi-Oh! The Dark Side of Dimensions ends with Seto successfully breaching through to the afterlife. He has Aigami's Quantum Cube, but the movie leaves it up in the air as to whether going to the afterlife made him dead as well, and whether or not he'll win against Atem when he finally duels him. Complicating matters further is that he leaves KaibaCorp in Mokuba's hands, suggesting he may not return right away, if at all.

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