All things must come to an end.
What They Say:
Episode 18: “To Continue On”
Tonari returns to Jananda to rescue Fushi. Before setting out again, they stay the night in a cave, and Tonari shares her past.
Episode 18: “Wandering Rage”
Fushi, Tonari and their friends fight the Nokkers, who have taken over corpses.
Episode 19: “Echoes”
Fushi parts ways with Tonari and heads to the port where Pioran is waiting for him. He worries that he may attract the Nokkers again and endanger her.
The Review
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
The Jananda arc of the manga always felt like a weak point in the story. The extreme circumstances of violence and disfunction on the island didn’t feel realistic. Sure, there are a few isolated cases of places where the situation is so miserable that people would take pleasure in murdering each other, but it’s not sustainable over the long run without an outside force controlling it. That power vacuum wouldn’t have such a high turnover as we saw in this story.
Likewise, the story took a very long time making Tonari likable. She is a victim of an abusive system which made her worst fears about her family come true. It doesn’t even matter if her father did murder her mother because the harm was done and the clock cannot be turned back. Tonari’s faith in humanity was utterly shattered and in a society where everyone is out for themselves, it was easy to fall into that pattern herself.
Fushi’s selflessness might be a result of the invulnerability of his body. Or maybe it’s just that even for all their faults the people he had met up till now had been full of hope and altruism. He started his journey hating the island and all the terrible people on it. Until he saw those people come together and some of them thank him for what he had done to help them.
The other element dragging this arc down is Hayase. Fushi is immortal but she had no excuse for her cockroach-like survival this far. She had her damn face ripped off, she rips a nokker out of her arm, she might as well be the Terminator. When Fushi finally gets his moment to ask her what her problem is and what she wants she reveals her twisted, jealous love for him and Fushi takes that as another lesson that wherever he goes danger follows. Yet he refuses to kill her once again and instead sets her adrift to meet her fate far away from him.
(Unfortunately, it’s probably not the last we’ll see of her, nokkers or no.)
The weird, bad tasted that Jananda leaves in the viewer’s mouth is soon forgotten as the season ends with a high note for the story.
Fushi struggles with his decision to return to Pioran. He tells his Watcher that he is lonely and his Watcher foreshadows the fate that awaits Pioran. Fushi has only seen folks die from injury so far. Natural death is coming for Pioran, who is almost 90 in a pre-industrial world. Fushi finally decides that he can’t just depart without saying anything to the old woman and their reunion is touching. An unstated amount of time passes for the two as they live freely in the tropical region, living off the land and sleeping under the stars.
This series has one of the most hard-hitting depictions of dementia that I’ve seen. As Pioran slowly succumbs to the ravaging effects of the disease Fushi struggles to understand the changes that have come over his grandmotherly figure. The increasing frailty, angry outbursts, short-term memory loss, it’s all recognizable to anyone who has watched someone with the diseases of Alzheimer’s or other age-related dementia. Fushi becomes angry in return, suffering as many caregivers do. The person he cared about is being taken away from him, and there isn’t anything he can do to keep her safe, once again.
In a final moment of lucid clarity, Pioran sends Fushi off to do some chores while she confronts death in the form of the Watcher. Her one wish is to continue to help Fushi on his journey, and as she is given her glimpse of eternity (we get to see her as a young woman, briefly) the Watcher grants her wish. Fushi is left to mourn and find a path forward without a friendly face. The season ends with a glimpse of Fushi, naturally aged in his first human body, living life and continuing to battle the nokkers. Our hint the story is just paused, not over.
In Summary:
To Your Eternity is a study on what it means to be alive, to struggle, to find happiness, and ultimately about how mortals chose to live their lives. It’s about humanity and all our hypocritical and nonsensical motivations, which often lead us to an early grave. We watched Fushi grow from a biological anomaly to something very close to human, even if that human cannot experience the same fate that everyone he has ever met will one day face.
The emotional core of the series is intact, but the path getting us from point A to B was often fraught with rough, time-constrained animation that didn’t do the material justice. The music and voice acting had to shoulder that burden when the animation just wasn’t up to snuff. Ultimately, the adaptation has been adequate but hasn’t risen above the manga, it has only kept pace with it.
Speaking of keeping pace with the manga, the anime has been given a green light for a second season for the Fall of 2022, production delays notwithstanding. This is far from the end of Fushi’s journey. He is immortal, after all.
Episode Grades: C, B-, A
Streamed by: Crunchyroll
