WARNING: This article contains spoilers for Japan Sinks: 2020, now streaming on Netflix.
Throughout the first nine episodes of Japan Sinks: 2020, the main character Ayumu essentially goes through Hell. She loses her father, her mother and several friends. By the 10th and final episode, the only survivors in her traveling party are herself, her younger brother Go, the gamer/YouTuber/DJ celebrity Kite and the paralyzed scientist Onodera. Against all odds, however, at least three of these survivors manage to make it through to a happy ending.
Kite sure seemed ready to sacrifice his own life for the survival of his comrades. After rafting the kids and the scientist to a spot in the ocean where Onodera predicted Japan would rise again at some point in the future, he flew off through the storm clouds in a hot air balloon to set up an internet signal. The way his face contorts in the wind, it sure appears as if he's on the brink of death. Whether or not he survives is left ambiguous - Ayumu recieves a text from Kite in the hospital shortly afterwards and he seems to appear in the crowd eight years later in the Paralympic audience, but it's also implied that Onodera took over Kite's social media accounts and might even be controling holograms.
Once Kite gets the signal working, a Russian rescue team comes to save the others. Russia is now filled with Japanese refugees. While in a Russian hospital, Ayumu finds out that the cut on her leg has become infected, and she will need to amputate it in order to survive, a particularly upsetting situation for a girl who promised her dead mother that she'd keep runnng.
The next scene Ayumu appears in, her leg is purposefully obscured, leaving some ambiguity as to her decision. It's in this scene that we get perhaps the most emotional moment in all of Japan Sinks: 2020: Ayumu and Go go through their mom's old photos and videos left on her computer. It's a downright beautiful sequence, a sad yet positive celebration of the ways technology allows us to document our lives in the face of unimaginable loss.
The story skips ahead eight years, leading into another similar photo/video montage. This time, it's not mourning/celebrating Ayumu and Go's mom, but Japanese culture as a whole. As Onodera predicted, parts of the sunken Japan have begun to rise up again, and the volcanic erruption of Mount Fuji created a new habitable island where those who left Japan are slowly returning. The history and culture of the old Japan is preserved in a digital reference library, a development which holds contemporary relevance with how much arts and culture are being made accessible online during the coronavirus pandemic.
As for the main survivors, the scientific writings Onodera and his late research partner Professor Tadokoro have been published thanks to Ayumu and Go. He now has a high tech wheelchair and seems to control Kite's social media accounts (as mentioned earlier, Kite's fate is left ambiguous). Go became the professional eSports athlete he always dreamed of being. He holds dual citizenship in Japan and Estonia, and has a eyebrow piercing where his stitches used to be.
The show saves Ayumu's fate for last. She's still alive, and ended up getting her leg amputated, but that didn't stop her from fulfilling her promise to keep running. She's able to live out her dreams as a Paralympic athlete, running with a prosthetic leg. As she runs, she remembers all the pain she went through when she was younger, but also all the good memories, and can't help but smile thinking about the future.
After such a grueling viewing experience, the amazing finale of Japan Sinks: 2020 is the perfect reward for all the emotional pain and a necessary burst of optimism. It might very well be the most tearjerking episode in the whole series, but for the first and only time while watching this anime, some of those tears in your eyes will be tears of joy.
Japan Sinks: 2020 is now streaming on Netflix.