Wah oh! That was me; I said that thing about only telling grim stories. Or at least I was one of the people who did. Apologies if that made you uncomfortable with whatever ending you had in mind before!
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Your comment actually inspired me to end on a higher note. I was going to end on the protagonist dying, which happened in some of the chapters of the manga, but decided against it. I recall Dylan also saying something about why stories shouldn't just be depressing for depressing's sake, and I thought I hadn't shown enough of his life before the incident (or at least the happy things about it) to warrant ending the story in such a manner.
That makes sense! Depressing is something that, like a lot of elements of a work, should be applied responsibly. I do think that keeping some element pertaining to the protag's passing would have made some sense, though; he was watching a tape of his entire life, or at least that's what I thought based on your inspiration.
From the angle of him finding reason to keep on trucking in form of the bear, I suppose that bear showing up in real life but not the tape is him trying to go against the downer fate set before him and instead make improvements in his life... much like how you decided to make a less downer ending and instead go for something less excessively upsetting.