It’s because from my point of view, it’s impossible to see the route ending as an ass pull if you understand it and know the meaning behind the events (we talked this part over in the chat) and the same goes for not remembering the Tale of the Bat, which is, in my eyes a solid example of a character-oriented moment which other people said did not exist in the route.
I’ll gladly go more into detail if there’s something about my previous explanations people didn’t understand. I’ll gladly back up my reasoning if you say that my explanations do not prove my claims. But if people claim the opposite of what I’ve written and explained without backing it up, I naturally assume they didn’t read it.
I don’t forbid people from having their own opinions. However, to me, a discussion is far more than just one-sidedly stating your opinion and refusing any kind of dialogue. If it was like that, we wouldn’t need discussions or online forums for that. Writing that stuff down in one’s own diary would suffice.
What’s supposed to happen here is a discussion, a dialogue. So when people write things that go beyond subjective opinion-stating, I expect them to back up their statements and consider what others have written to that topic (like, when in a dialogue, listen to the others before speaking).
To name an example, a discussion is what’s currently going on between me and Pepe here.
While the tale of the bat really doesn’t seem to have produced much character development, I’m pretty sure that character development has happened in the route. We just weren’t shown the results of it.
Think about what happened in the very end. The ultimate goal of the route was not physically smashing the chains that physically bind her, thus ensuring physical survival and allowing her to return to Riki’s side.
It was about solving a mental problem that mentally prevented Kud from staying with Riki while also remembering the incident. It was about dealing with her self-deprecation, her self-awareness as a “useless gear” and the train of thought, according to which, she’s useless and should keep becoming a sacrifice for other people’s sake, even if it means death.
I think the anime picked up on this pretty well, by the way.
SPOILER:
It stated that Kud had returned to her home country just as she wished in a previous loop, but her route still repeated itself because her problem wasn’t solved.
In short, her way of thinking changed by the end of the route, thus character development has devinitely occured.
We simply didn’t see how exactly that has changed her overall, because the route ended the moment Kud returned home.
It’s an ending that follows a “game logic” which states that if you have overcome certain challenges in the game, you can unlock a better ending to the story. It’s a reward given to you as a player for clearing optional content. As a game ending, it makes perfect sense, but as an Anime ending, it naturally makes almost none.
In a purely non-gaming logic, I would justify that “miracle ending” as follows: Tomoya worked hard and he gave happiness to many other people. Thus, he deserved a better ending than that which he was given. Key magic granted him what he deserved even though it wasn’t realistic. That’s what Key magic does in my opinion.
However, I believe that Kud’s route was not solved by Key magic like certain other Key routes.
