I'm not going to put spoiler tags around anything, since the topic is spoiler-ish with respect to any series discussed anyway. You've been warned...
I just finished reading
Absolute Boyfriend a few moments ago--well actually I got bored about 1/4 of the way through so I just jumped to the very end--and even though I thought the series was so-so, the ending was a surprise to me. I thought it was pretty obvious who Riiko would go for in the end: the formula is whoever the protagonist first meets will "win" in the end. Everyone else is pretty much just foils. The couple beat the odds, and their relationship becomes stronger. Note that this doesn't apply to the secondary characters. In fact, the "runner up" often would often hook up with one of them so that there can be a happy ending for everyone.
I'd even argue that even in stories where the don't end up together in the end, the ending is still just a variation of the same. For instance, in
The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, Chiaki and Makoto didn't stay together (although some may interpret the ending as saying that they
will meet again, I disagree). In any case, Makoto still "won" since their bond did become stronger.
So back to
Zettai Kareshi. I wasn't too surprised that Night "died," but I always thought the author would just bring him back with some sort of contrivance, since the story is pretty lighthearted throughout. I'm somewhat surprised that Night did not come back, but quite shocked that Riiko essentially ended up with Soushi. I don't think I've never seen this ending before...
...ok I take that back. As I was typing this post I remembered that in
Macross Hikaru chose Misa over Minmay. Still, I hold that this kind of ending is pretty rare (or I have terrible memory...
) Ah well, I guess this degenerated into quite a long rant. This is what happens to people waiting on code to compile, because the company is too stingy to get a quad-core machines to employees who need them!
So are there any other series where this happens? I'm not a huge shoujo reader--though I've been reading several lately; the "flavor" is very different and is refreshing (one I'd recommend reading is
Koukou Debut)--so perhaps this is more common in that genre?