( 　ﾟ ,_ゝﾟ)

OK NVM ARE THEY ADAPTING THE EXTRA VOLUME…..

OMG THANK YOU FOR SAYING THIS. ABSOLUTELY TRUTH NUKE. I was too scared of getting flamed for thinking about it this way. The scene where all the other scientists are just shitting on xeno’s plan to build the time machine? That’s me. I am those other scientists. There’s a point to where I can accept the alien tech, but not a whole ass TIME MACHINE 😭the story could have totally ended without it. It is simply too far fetched for me to enjoy it. And I do feel bad about not liking it, cause just like you said, I understand the message!! But at the same time I just. Can’t 😭

The point about senku not grieving healthily is only exacerbated in the extra volume with why man’s mind games. give him a BREAK bro 💔

I'm also not a fan of the time machine. It feels too far-fetched but also just Senku not grieving.

I would have preferred an ending where Senku accepts his father is gone but it's thank to him that they made it this far.

Also Senku's ambitions were always going to the moon, so an ending I would have preferred is for him to decide to push the boundaries of space exploration!

They now have hard proof that other intelligent lifeforms exist in the universe. Let's try to find them, get excited! Something like that! 😭

Introducing a time machine at the 11th hour just feels weird. And also I just don't see an happy ending with time travel.

Like what's the goal? Why-Man says they want to prevent incursion on Earth to save more of their people. So prevent the petrification completely? So no more Kohaku, Chrome, Suika? Mirai goes back to being brain dead in the hospital? Gen goes back to his celebrity job that seemed to by wearing him down to the bones (he looked like a dead man walking in the manga at first)? That doesn't feel like a happy ending...

Or they save an alternate timeline so everything above is applicable but also Senku never sees his dad again. That's sad too!

If they just wanted to save the astronauts by bringing them in the future, just say it! But it still feels like a cop-out. I love Byakuya, but a message above grieving and moving on is good too!!

In one it yanks Gen's mind out of a near-death moment and shoves it into a younger body - the just sending information idea Xeno mentions twisted into it's least useful form. In the other it does that to Senku and Gen, but incompletely and at the cost of their lives. Senku is framed as self destructive and willing to incur any cost to get his father back even as an 80+ year old man. That's what spending his life chasing time travel got him: old, mostly alone, full of regrets and chasing the past as his future came and went without him moving forward.

Re-establish an ISS.

Trying to send signals in the vastness of space.

But also moving on, yes. Stopping his "I'm gonna pause everything else in my life". Friends, family, etc.

He continues to study science and space, but at the end of the day goes out to drink with friends, goes home. Says hello to the little memorial he put together for Byakuya in the living room.

I really love the story, but that aspect of it hits a sour note for me. Especially with everyone else moving forward and thriving and he's still in his red cape pursuing the same goal of saving everyone with overlays of dead people who died without ever being petrified. Gen puts his old outfit on, but it isn't tattered like it was. It's clearly a new version (with the old jagged line design not the sleeker one and no tie) probably made of nicer fabric instead of rawhide and hemp. He's just being comfortable at home and usually wears a suit to work. Senku does have a nice lab coat (finally he has trousers) but he is at work wearing the tattered red cape after a significant - likely multiple years long - time skip. It's not a nostalgic thing he keeps as a precious momento, it's part of his everyday at work. Sure, he was at day 1 of Taiju and Yuzuriha's wedding, but if anyone other than the bride and groom was going to be there for both ceremonies it wouldn't it be the best man? Cultural differences, Japanese weddings are really short compared to American ones, but he's not there. They say he was there for the firat one and at least the English translation sounds like he left early to go back to work that same day. Taiju and Yuzuriha clearly wanted him there, they are bringing the cake and Gen to Senku.

That's why, like many other media I am fan of, I choose to ignore the Canon about the time machine and make my own ending. 😭

But glad I am not the only one rubbed the wrong way by the sudden time machine introduction.

Adding something visually to the discussion and my Head Canon

I imagine this would be after senku collapsed from overwork, but instead of resting after waking up, he went straight back to work and gen couldn’t take it anymore. He’s already tried talking some sense into senku, using his mentalist tricks and getting the other members of the science team (and kos) on his side, so senku is more inclined to.. maybe focus on his own future and try to move on. Nothing has worked so far and it hurts too much to see senku loosing more and more of himself. It’s even more obvious to gen how much senku has changed because of all the years they haven’t seen each other. Realizing how much the kos have enabled this bad coping mechanism, including himself. As the designated mentalist of the kos he feels especially guilty for not seeing how much senku has strayed from his path.