Downer endings can be tough to pull off. Go too far and you risk alienating your audience. Don't go far enough and it seems like a cheap ploy to give your ending resonance. Just like an unearned happy ending, an undeservedly depressing finale can mar an entire series. Wolf's Rain walks the line with its conclusion, and as a result it will divide viewers.

The series takes the "everyone dies!" ending to the next level because, well, everyone dies. Except for Cher and Hubb, who fall off cliffs, Darcia kills all the rest: Toboe, Quent, Blue, Hige, Tsume, Cheza, and Kiba. Mankind commits nuclear suicide. Kiba and Cheza manage to give birth to Paradise before succumbing to death; however, it remains tainted by evil due to Darcia. Rain, wolf's rain, washes away the old world and an ice age makes way for a new one, one in which Tsume, Hige, and Toboe are human, and none of them remember their past lives. Hubb, Cher, Quent, Blue... they're still dead, unfairly condemned to live as the last of their generation.

Is Kiba human, too? Unlikely. Kiba is the mythological father of the world, and he must continue to destroy and renew the world for all eternity. It's his instinct to run, to search for Cheza, the mother of Creation, and start the cycle again. As Kiba hints twice, a Darcia always exists to corrupt the new world that Kiba creates. He's a tragic figure, given that, only born into the world when it's at its most corrupt. Maybe he should have just stayed with Mew.