Hey guys! I've seen a lot of people on the internet complaining about the lack of Makoto in the ending of the series. I came up with a theory regarding why she stayed gone, despite all the other girls making amazing recoveries.
So basically, Ayu's wish makes it so that everyone who Yuuichi cares about ends up okay. We see Mai and Sayuri out of the hospital in time for graduation, we see Shiori overcome her mysterious disease, Akiko pulls through and her and Nayuki are back to normal, and eventually Ayu herself recovers from her coma. The only acknowledgement of Makotp we get at the end of Kanon is a small fox behind the tree stump in the woods. This, however cannot be Makoto, as she definitely died. It is at most another fox filled with love for a human as Amano referenced at the end of the Makoto arc.
Now this is where people get unhappy with the show. "Why kill Makoto but bring everyone else back?" they ask. I think the finality of her death is meant as a lesson for Yuuichi. Her whole arc seems like a period of character growth for him. Let's be honest, Yuuichi was a flat out jerk in the beginning of the series. We see him regretting this during his last moments with Makoto, lamenting on whether or not she actually knew that he cared about her. After this point he keeps his snarky and sarcastic nature, but drops the jerkiness of it and becomes more friendly.
The reason she stayed dead is probably to support the theme of the end; you can't push out sad memories, you have to accept the truth of what happens. If Makoto magically came back it would have negated this theme completely.
Also, as a side note, we see Makoto on the hill in the spring after she already dies. You may wonder why that is. I believe it is because she died, but was reincarnated in the past as the older Makoto Sawatari that Yuuichi had a crush on. The same one that saved him from the snow. This may seem like a stretch, even for Kanon, but not so much if we assume that all Key/KyoAni collars take place in the same universe (which isn't a crazy assumption to make).
In Angel Beats we see that reincarnation is possible in this universe. But that wouldn't explain why Makoto is reincarnated in the past. That can also be explained by Angel Beats. At the end of the series, we learn that Otonashi's donated heart went to Kanade. That means Otonashi died before Kanade, yet she ended up in the afterlife long before him, showing the non-linearity of time in the Key/KyoAni afterlife. This non-linear reincarnation is also shown in Air, where Yukito and Misuzu see two young children playing on a beach, unaware that these children are reincarnations of themselves. Just as further backup for the theory, this is also proved in Clannad/Clannad: After Story. Tomoya joins Ushio in the illusionary world after they die, yet Nagisa and Tomoya both have memories of this world before they even meet, and robot Tomoya even states that he was in a different world (the real world) in the distant future.
Tl;dr Makoto dies to teach Yuuichi a lesson in finality and mortality; Makoto (the fox) was reincarnated in the past as Yuuichi's crush; one more theory...Nayuki's dad is a fox like Makoto! |
