Mahoromatic: Motto Utsukushii Mono - 15: SPOILER!

Title:	Mahoromatic: Motto Utsukushii Mono
Episode:	15: SPOILER!
Synopsis
DON'T READ THIS UNLESS YOU'VE SEEN THE ENTIRE SERIES! There is in fact no 15th episode, but if you were as confused as I was at the end, perhaps we can compare notes and agree how certain events and characters should be interpreted. Matthew, "The collective will of Saint": Despite the male name, Matthew and Mahoro are spitting images of each other. At one point Youichiro (Suguru's grandfather) tells Mahoro "You truly are the soul of Saint". Was Mahoro some sort of copy of Matthew, using a mix of terran and Saint technology? How did Vesper get such data? How did Vesper's star combat android come to look exactly like the leader of it's enemy? To add to the confusion, Youichiro makes the comment that "I've never seen Matthew". The "new" Mahoro in episode 14: Before setting off on some sort of epic journey through space, Matthew declares that she has no use for the new emotion of "nostalgia", and will instead use it to create some sort of duplicate Mahoro to comfort the anguished Suguru. Has Mahoro somehow been resurrected, or has an exact copy been made? When Minawa asked Leesha to extend Mahoro's lifespan, Leesha replied "Mahoro is going to be just fine". How did she know? Is it just Mahoro's android body that has a limited lifespan, while her "soul" is indestructible? Management: This nefarious organization seems to be entirely terran, except that at one point it was described as having existed before human civilization itself. Apparently, it has "managed" history itself, adroitly manipulating all sorts of factors so that exactly what it wanted was always what happened, and nobody else knew this was going on. Or something like that... Leesha: A beautiful Saint woman, who was once captured by Management, but escaped with the help of the defector Youichiro. They fell in love and had a daughter (Suguru's mother). Later, she left him because he was "sleeping around" (according to Suguru). Youichiro himself says "A long time ago he (Matthew) stole a woman from me". Maybe it's a mistake to try to provide a completely logical explanation to all these questions, without taking into account intangible factors such as "destiny", etc, which are all too common in anime... Here's an explanation of the final episode offered by ANN reviewer "Key" during a April 2008 debate Most disappointing ending to an anime series you've ever seen (many people disliked this one): "...it's easy to not completely understand what you're seeing in that final episode because Mahoro looks like Matthew. In the manga Matthew explains that she was actually patterned off of the same person that Matthew was, while the anime gives more of the impression that Mahoro is an independent incarnation of Matthew. Thus, when it looks like Mahoro is appearing in the nude in that final episode, that's actually Matthew, and that's why Suguru's grandfather makes the comment at one point about how Mahoro has "the soul of SAINT." When she dies, she reintegrates with Matthew, who decides to split her off again and send her back to Suguru 20 years later". Some people interpreted Suguru's seeing Mahoro again at the end as a dying delusion on his part. Here's a surprising comment by "Angel_Lover" about Ms. Shikijou from "Hey Answerman" at ANN, 10/24/08: "Actually, she probably isn't human, it seems fairly clear from the final episode that she's an android. She was presumably created to keep an eye on the young Suguru, but her personality appears to have been designed by Suguru's lecherous grandfather - not a good choice." Suffice to say that that had never occured to me.
Comments
I recommend reading the manga from TokyoPop. While the ending of the manga is somewhat different (because Gainax wanted to do something different for the anime adaptation I guess), it helped me understand a bit more about Matthew, Mahoro, and the like. -ANB

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