On one level – well, almost all levels – Megalo Box and Tada-kun wa Koi wo Shinai could hardly be more different.  Not every level, though, and there are a couple of interesting commonalities between them.  Apart from the fact that they aired on the same day (almost at the same time, in fact), both telegraphed sad endings throughout their entire run.  And both ended up defying convention by going the other way – and I’ve seen complaints from fans who feel trolled in both cases.

Whereas Megalo Box was an updating of an existing franchise known for sad endings (and did nothing but encourage the notion that assumption would hold) Tada-kun was not officially a sequel to anything.  But it did make it clear that Roman Holiday was the template, and Roman Holiday – while generally regarded as one of Hollywood’s best romances – is best-remembered for its anti-fairy tale ending.  Above and beyond that the series did nothing specifically to telegraph that we would see a sad (or at least bittersweet) conclusion, the practicalities of the premise seemed to offer little chance of anything else.

That said, some of the whining I’ve seen about the feasibility of this surprise ending is pretty over the top.  Simply put, a lot of people are talking out of their ass – they don’t know jack squat about the history here and act as if they’re experts.  The fact is, European royalty has seen many commoner marriages.  I’ll be more specific – Luxembourg itself (on which Laresenburg is transparently based) has seen one as recently as 2013 (Prince Felix).  And crown princes and princesses are not excluded from this – hell, forget Europe, Japan’s current Crown Prince married a commoner,  History’s most famous example was an actual King, Edward VIII of England, who married American Wallis Simpson in what’s commonly regarded as the ultimate fairy tale romantic story (if you set aside the whole Nazi thing and the fact that it plunged the U.K. into crisis, of course).

No, no one ever said something like this would be easy – but it’s certainly neither impossible or unprecedented.  In a tiny duchy like Larsenburg, I imagine, the crown princess wedding a commoner would be a delicious scandal but ultimately, be absorbed into the nation’s history and moved on from.  As to the specifics of the character side of it in Tadakoi’s case, well, that’s a separate discussion.  But I think what we saw here made pretty good sense from that standpoint – though I would have liked to have seen that part of the story get started an episode or two sooner so what happened in the epilogue could have been fleshed out more.

A couple of things stand out in the denouement here for me.  I’m pretty certain Rachel was pushing for this to happen – trying to prevent a repeat of what she saw as the great regret of her own life (I thought there might be some direct connection to the death of Tada-kun’s parents, but I guess not).  The party invitation was a key of course, but I’d like to think Tada would have somehow forced his way into the palace anyway.  And I’m glad he finally thanked Kaoru-kun for everything he’s done, because one could hardly ask for a more loyal or supportive friend than him.

There can be absolutely no question that Teresa-chan and Tada-kun were in love, but that’s been obvious for a long time (to everyone but them).  Certainly obvious to Charles, and his role in this was quite interesting.  He absolutely knew Teresa didn’t love him, and eventually that she did love Tada-kun.  He was never a villain in this piece, and I’m glad of it – both he and the story are more interesting that way.  Can I imagine someone like Charles recusing himself in the end, knowing that marrying him would make Teresa unhappy?  Yes, I can – it’s in-character, and not unrealistic even in a non-fictional setting.  Not every guy would do it by any means, but it could certainly happen.

The fact is, from a narrative standpoint the one we got before the credits would have been the more neat and elegant one.  What we’d been building up towards was not Tada-kun and Teresa being together, but Tada-kun learning to share his feelings rather than live a closed-off life.  What had to happen was not Tada and Teresa to be together, but for Tada to slough off the scar tissue of his parents’ death, muster his courage and let Teresa know exactly how he felt.  Once that happened, anything else was a dramatic indulgence – a luxury.

Here’s the thing, though – there’s nothing wrong with indulging every once in a while, and sometimes it’s nice to treat yourself to a little luxury.  In this instance a price is paid in terms of pathos and consistency, but sometimes fairy tales do have fairy tale endings.  I would have been perfectly okay without the post-credits scenes, because I’ve been preparing for the series to end without them since the essence of the story became clear.  But I have no problem with the way things did end, because it’s an equally valid choice.  Just because a story doesn’t give you the ending you expect that doesn’t mean it’s trolling – it just means it went in another direction.

One last thought before I go – there is a certain poetry to Teresa doing what she did, that would have been missing without the epilogue.  And it stems from the idea that Tada-kun was rewarded for being courageous.  His journey to Larsenburg was all about conquering fear – his fear of flying, his fear of emotional commitment, his fear of love.  It would have been reward enough, perhaps, to have known that he could live on without carrying the regret of another unspoken declaration of his feelings, but this was is more satisfying – both for him and the viewer.

Epilogue: