I've seen DYRL and Flashback....I know what happens there. I just wish it was made clearer in the last episode. And I'm sure the footage we've all seen is the same...so I know that Hikaru loves Minmay.... It's just I don't think he professed his true feelings enough in that last episode.... But you've answered that with Asian culture, which I did not know of.
Anyways, the events of that last episode, with Minmay trying to get him to quit flying and such, made it clear to Hikaru that he and Minmay lived in diffrent worlds, like he said before the end of Space War 1.
It's a running thread through the entire series, Minmay and Hikaru diverging apart.
At first they're just 2 teenagers thrown into a strange new situation.
Later Hikaru becomes a fighter pilot and Minmay becomes a star, and they drift apart untill there's just no longer any common ground*.
The Minmay from the beginning of the story never would've asked Hikaru to stop flying. She understood what it meant to him.
*Not that that stopped Max and Millia, but who knows WHAT those 2 were thinking.