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Wow you people seriously have analyzed this to death. I don't know if I should laugh or despair over the sanity of humans.

elen didn't die....the flower theory is a bit over the top, and too much assumptions have to come into play. Also, the cart guy was probably working for inferno and killed Reiji. He wouldn't have killed elen cuz elen technically wasn't an enemy of Inferno.

Not exactly the ending I was hoping for but the series overall is pretty damn good. I'm considering rewatching again in subbed :)

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Hmm I think its one of those things where the writer leaves it to the "reader" to decided what happens.

I personally like to think he survives :)

Sure he got shot and you see him falling but doesn't mean he died instantly.. Everything from then on out is up to the reader to decided what happens after.

They lived happily ever after, done! lol

5/5

Oh I wasn't aware that it was based on a game xD ah well I'll keep telling myself he ended up surviving and they lived happily ever after :3 I must believe!

Here is a copy and paste of my blog entry explaining the ending. (my take on it with pictures, quotes, and evidence)

Personally, I - do - want the guy Reiji To be alive, but ... in the anime, they want us to understand that he's no longer exists in the world!
Because Elen said" the name he gave me is enough for me to keep living" and " the memories he gave me is enough for me to keep living !" those speech with the falling scene they all "speak up": it over! The poor guy is dead and the girl has to live lonely under her home town sky.
I admit I've cried many times when I think about this ending, this is so sad! Rather they die together I would feel better.

I just finished watching Requiem for the Phantom, the complete series on DVD and Blu-ray. Loved it. But as many of you felt, the ending left me depressed and completely baffled. I would like to put forward a theory that I haven't seen here. First, I felt that Eren didn't die at the end. She was just lying on her back looking at the sky. I felt it odd that she didn't act surprised when Reiji was shot she just smiled. Why? One clue was that several times in the series a big deal was made of her acting ability. You could never know her true feelings. Was she just using Reiji.
Eren and Reiji were not lovers, they acted as brother and sister. Was it because she had no real feelings for him?
She was the first Phantom but Reiji was superior to her and overshadowed her, but she needed his help to discover who she was. When his usefulness was over she had him killed. Nobody else could have known where they were. Now Eren knows who she is and is once again the only Phantom.
I know this a cynical view, but throughout the series Eren was a soulless puppet and only Reiji felt he could save her. Did she ever have feeling for him or was she just acting? What do you think?

Great analysis OriginANIME! Clears up a bit of things.

My take is that the carriage driver is Lelouch vi Brittania, after R2 he was obviously employed as a phantom carriage driver assassin DUH :D

In all seriousness, I can't really tell what's going on. Because as soon as I get an idea, there's something that happens in the ending which conflicts with it...
The best idea I have is that both Elen and Reiji are together in the field, Reiji is facing the back of Elen. Elen is initially not very happy, as although the place is familiar, she can't find her memories. Reiji then turns the opposite direction, goes to the cliffs to see the sunset. Reiji smiles as he becomes hopeful and thinks to himself that "one day" he wants that one promise of making Elen smile fulfilled. Elen becomes happy with the thought of all her new memories she developed from being with Reiji. Reiji gets shot, and Elen notices by hearing the sound of the bullet. She expected this, they both knew that they'd be hunted. So now that Reiji is dead and she is happy, she poisons herself with the flower as she knows she would die next anyway. The final smile she gives is from the relief that her and Reiji can finally be together in peace. I don't know why Reiji is smiling after he gets shot. If he dies then the same people who killed him would take Elen's life next and him being dead, he can't protect her and fulfil his promise...

Some things that bothered me with the anime were the fact that Reiji never even bothered to tell Cal that he didn't "abandon" her, he was just fully convinced she died. Another thing is when Reiji killed that little boy and his mother around the start of the show. Not much of a big deal was made of that, and I didn't expect that he'd do it. I thought that his limit, even as Zwei, was killing innocent children.

I watched until the part six months later.
After this I DIDNT see anything.

this is actually the REAL happy ending. Remember, the game had multiple endings so it doesnt matter what you believe. But the anime follows the ending where they go to Mongolia and this is what truly happened when they got there.

Updated.

Scythe master is finally dead. I don't get the ending. I'll have to read the other topic.

I just finished this and this ^ sums up my feelings xD

Though there are many theories of what happened in the end... thing is it kind of sucked either way. Those ambiguous endings are mehh to me when the story didn't attract me enough cause of being incomplete. At first I thought it was all abt Inferno (wrong), then it was abt Elen and Reiji (she died), then abt his new purpose in life, Cal (wrong) but no in the end it was all abt Elen and Reiji and the whole backstory felt like a decoration.

All the characters that should have been developed didn't and the show felt hollow. Scythemaster... I thought maybe we'd get intel on him towards the end... but no... only where he worked and that didn't help much. McQuire as the boss of Inferno... was USELESS... Claudia? Random as random can be. Cal... bipolar much and she needed more time for her chara which she never got. Ein.. I don't think she was rly under-developed... just some adjustments here and there maybe.
The only random person I found well developed was Lizzie. I don't know why rly. She didn't have a great role but what she did, she did fairly well. I could get into her role a bit.

Also Cal's theme when she grew up annoyed me but at the same time I rly liked it how it changed from that nice melody to that annoying fast beat xD I don't know how or why but... the orgasms at the end... Were they rly necessary? First time I heard it, I thought I was wrong but nope... they were moans...

Either way, nice series I guess as an overall or at least as an idea. 6/10 cause I'm nice and I try to look to the good things it had and could have. I may not have been able to get into the story since it was kinda a mess but I wasn't RLY bored so that's something.

WAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!! REIJIIIIIIIII. TTATT <33333
The way I see it is:
Reiji and Elen are content with everything they've done. Elen is happy with her memories and her name given by Reiji (Elen). Reiji says that he's done everything possible and he only has one last wish: to make Elen show her "true smile". Before Reiji is shot and killed (screw that carriage driver dude! >:( ), we see Elen smile... her "true smile". She isn't forcing it or anything. It's the first time you see her smiling at of her own will. Reiji's last promise/wish is completed and he's satisfied.

Now, they aren't only content. To me, they're also exhausted of this unending cycle of assassination. If they go back to school, they will just cause harm to the students. They don't belong there, they're phantoms. All they can do is accept everything that comes, once and for all. Okay, that's just how I interpret it.

I seriously doubt Elen suicided. She wants to live on with the life that Reiji provided her. She talks about that often during the last few episodes of the anime.

But, I still don't understand why Elen didn't show any emotion when Reiji died. At least show a teardrop or something!? Stop looking so goddamn happy! D: Unless, she understood Reiji's feelings and accepted them.

~Hillary

phew you know assassins cannot live a normal life after killing many people from organizations but i dont believe that Reiji Azuma will die from only 1 shot hes very strong they got shot many times and lived after all... i want to think positively so i think that for the end Elen saved him after that shot he's very strong he cant die just because of a shot of an 9mm gun lowlz.. so i think im happy -_-

That would be true... if life was a video game where you have a health bar. A bullet to a vital organ will kill you.
And nobody who just gets wounded by a bullet falls like that. So that bullet definitely hit a vital era, most likely the heart.
Elen's fate is unknown... tough the poisonous flower you see in the last scene suggests shem ay have committed a suicide.

I've only read the first few pages of posts, and this (currently) last page, so I'm not sure if this was covered or not.

I think that (Eren or Elen?) and Reiji started to live for each other. They found meaning because of each other and hope for a life outside of being assassins. Eren struggls with it at first saying, "It's nothing" but clearly being troubled in the middle of the first season. Reiji always acknowledged that being killed by Eren or Cal would be a suitable death because of the things he had done. I'm kind of astonished that Reiji had the stones to kill Cal in the end. I figured he was unarmed and would have lost that showdown. The elicit emotion there could have easily been my ending.

In the end, Reiji already found relief/safety/life in Japan--albeit brief, he lived. He wanted this for Eren, even at the cost of his own life. Helping her find that, to me, is a passing of the torch because now she can live. This was impossible until until she pulled the trigger on Scythe and maybe even until she found herself right before Reiji dies.

It's an awakening, and I agree that she wouldn't have committed suicide after this rebirth. They aren't focusing her smile on Reiji's death, but in finding her life. If she was angry or crying, this would imply that she could revert back to the dark side, right?

You guys really need to analyze this stuff? It's Gen's work, even if there was a happy ending, something wicked fucking awful will happen, even if it's in the credits, even if it's implied. Look at all his work, from Saya no Uta to Madoka, he just doesn't believe in good endings and if there was such a thing, he will bring primary characters to their knees or even to their deaths. He will make them pay for it.

Anyone watch that Fate/Zero episode where caster is explaining how much sweeter it is for people to find hope only to get pulled down during it's zenith? That's Gen's entire philosophy and that's what makes him a god tier writer.

With all that said though, I thought the series took an unnecessary turn. Cal dying was unnecessary, it seemed like talking about some logical mistake would have easily made things somewhat cordial, she seemed to have been regaining her senses before squaring off with what she though was Ein. Living in japan just seemed like a big mistake. Reiji dying is not some philosophical symbolism, he just got shot.