Fractale Ending Rant

Original hair colors here. One less plot hole in the manga.

Just finished watching the last episode of Fractale and in all honesty it was rather disappointing. The fact that I'm actually taking the time to write this rant out should be quite indicative of how annoyed I was by the way the series ended. The series was actually pretty good overall with its fascinating setting but then they wasted all the building up they did when the last episode rolled around. It was as if they decided to switch out the original ending with something that would look more mainstream. It really wouldn't surprise me at all if that was the case since the whole hair recoloring thing was supposed to be so that the series would appeal better to regular folks who only watch Ghibli films for their anime experience. I was expecting something more epic as the truth behind Phryne and Nessa being the key to rebooting the Fractale system. Here's how I think the series should have done with it:

It's revealed that the Fractale system isn't just a worldwide augmented reality system but is actually a reality within a reality simulation that everyone's plugged into. Every time they reboot the system, they're actually creating another iteration of the reality and sending everyone's consciousness into the new reality hence the reason the series is named after the word Fractal - "A rough or fragmented geometric shape that can be split into parts, each of which is (at least approximately) a reduced-size copy of the whole". It'd explain why exactly rebooting would save them all when the problem with the system is the hardware deterioration of the satellites and why is it that Nessa can exist in those dead zones where the system isn't supposed to work.

From there I even speculated that Dias and the high priestess were the previous iterations of Clain and Phryne that knew the truth behind the system and that they took polar views on what should be done about it. That part was mainly because of how intentionally similar they made him look like a grown up Clain along with the whole clone thing but even I think that's a bit of a stretch. Thinking about it now, that theory could still fit in there with the ending but that doesn't make it any less of a letdown. Yamakan has failed to save anime but will that actually stop him from acting like the drama queen he is? I think not. People like him just don't give up so I doubt he'll actually follow up on his threat to leave the industry. Just hope he's learned to shut his big trap and actually puts his money where his mouth is in the future.