What if Voltron, but it’s a gritty, surreal horror with no robots at all? (part 3)

Continued from part 2

(Content Warning: Sexual Assault, Cancer)

Remy reloads her gun, although her hands are so injured she's not confident she'll be able to fire it many more times. As she soaks her hands in hot water, the creepy girl and wolf taunt her some more, but Remy just waves them off dismissively.

Her and her friends spend the night loading weapons and preparing themselves for a final assault on the big creepy tower.

Even going so far as to turn the streetcar we saw earlier into a reinforced battle wagon.

There's a full on musical "let's get ready to fight" montage, which would be so great if the soundtrack weren't soft 80's pop. I don't think they picked the right song for this.

Back in the past, child Remy has been chased into a pit by the families of the kids she walloped. Alone and scared, she's about to give up, but she's cheered by imagining a group of other lonely kids who she might one day meet.

The doctor is ready to turf Remy, she's not gonna make it.

Ain't nobody in town is cool with their "let's attack the tower" plan, but armored car don't care.

okay this has become a little goofy

tower's a nightmare hellscape inside, whoops

jesus christ

Someone really went to town on the "blood disease" and "time running out" spec on these shots.

While everyone else was rescuing Remy in the previous cutscenes, these guys didn't get to do anything cool... because they were preparing to blow up the entire city

fuck you, fate! when life gives you lemons, blow up the city.

But, surprise surprise, destroying the city doesn't do anything, because it was just a metaphor for blood cancer all along!

Can't beat that!

Also: the wolf is huge. And your friends aren't really here! You're just imagining them!

"Oh, by the way, I never said when fate said I was supposed to die."

Fate's a fuckin' chump, Remy, you go get 'em.

Her friends rush off to fight the fight. The friends she imagined when she was a lonely child. The friends who are even now gathered around her hospital bed as a 70-year old woman.

Sad defiant song!

She's gonna fight this fuckin' wolf.

She has to tie the gun to her hand for support.

And she does it. She kills the wolf!

But it's not enough.

Her heartbeat stops.

Her friends leave the room sadly.

Yeah, this grave we've all been standing around? It's Remy's grave.

"Hey, about that whole beating fate thing - you were lying, right? You weren't actually fated to die yesterday?"

"Bang!"

and so the nurse tidies up in an empty room.

But....

maybe....

From nothing, a heartbeat - a weak heartbeat.

Her friends sadly leave the hospital, but they hear something behind them.

It's Remy! ... Young Remy!

We have never once seen old Remy's face in this whole story.

They're all young! They'll be together forever!

Time doesn't exist, really, they'll be together forever!

Remy and her friends walk into the light.

Roll credits.

That's a happy ending, right? The redditor with the story on the tip of their tongue remembered it as "then she wakes up in the hospital and her friends are all there".

But I remembered it as "I can't remember whether or not the woman wakes up at the end of the movie."

So, like, it's actually kind of unclear how this ended, right? She died, but then, it feels like she pulled through in the suspiciously-too-happy ending, got up out of her hospital bed, actually got up and walked out of the hospital and they were all young and happy again.

The story ends right there.

No, I don't buy it. I don't think you're intended to. Did she just imagine that last bit? "Going into the light with your perfect best friends, who are young again" ain't exactly what it looks like when someone beats cancer.

And it's intentionally ambiguous. I think it's kind of beautiful, either way - either she beat cancer with SHEER GRIT, or she went out fighting and utterly confident that her friends had her back. And the story doesn't really want to let you know which one it was.

I was not okay with ambiguous endings as a teenager. I wanted a real answer - but now I think the story has a lot more nuance and beauty if it doesn't tell you how the story ends.

That's not really the point, now, is it?

....

And, uh, after re-watching it, I know exactly why my subconscious would invoke this weird old movie I saw once, 25 years ago - why I thought about this movie again, now. I know precisely what life event I've dealt with recently that would make me think of this bittersweet movie where you don't get to know whether the courageous protagonist lives or dies, but the only thing that really matters was that she felt loved and supported and fought to the very end.

So This Was Great, Actually

When I found out that this movie I'd been thinking about for all of this time was a giant mecha anime from the 80's, I figured "this is going to be dorky as hell", but you know what? I think it holds up really well. It deserves the tiny corner of my mind it's been squatting in for a quarter of a century.

This is an interesting movie.

It was goofy, thoughtful, horrifying, surprisingly artistic, and told a nuanced story about an aging mecha pilot struggling with leukemia that also featured a samurai with a fighter jet and surreal horror elements.

All because someone thought "okay, the protagonists of this goofy kids robot show- what if 40 years pass and they all get together because one of them has got blood cancer?"