#oima

The following blogpost contains spoilers about the first five episodes of To Your Eternity.

This episode was an exceptional 25 minutes and it is definitely the best of the series so far despite a bit of a wonky start to the episode. The ending was a heartstopping conclusion, the likes of which I don’t think I’ve seen before. I’m too excited. I have to talk about it. Right this second.

I actually thought the episode started weakly which is a shame because I felt like it could've been easily avoided. Parona rescues March from her cell but before they all leave through the sewer system, Parona decides she is going to cut a piece from the dead bear and March protests. They engage in a bit of a longwinded argument and Parona comes off as really unlikeable in this scene because she's trying everything under the sun to convince March that she needs to prove Oniguma is dead.

I feel like this could all have been avoided if Parona had just waited for March to have disappeared with old shaman woman. A little annoying because, to me, I haven't really got behind March doting for the dead bear for most of the last episode. It felt a bit random and I didn't really care all that much.

What's even weirder is that in the next scene in the back of the wagon, Parona and March seem like fine pals once again and all the conversation is very promising and optimistic. It's so light-hearted in fact, that it actually lulled me into a false sense of security and I remember thinking that it was going to be more of a brighter episode.

But Hayase and her goons catch up to them and Parona devoutly provides an offence and a defence at the same time to protect both the child and the wolf and she's struggling. It's quite creative in the costume design for Parona here because she uses her chest plate as a shield for arrows which I thought was pretty neat. I'm back to liking Parona because they consistantly tell the story of her being in control of the situation all the time and that, to March, she is someone to look up to despite the weird scene previously. Parona is struggling here though and March does something that I really honestly never thought they would ever do in this animé.

March actually jumps in front of an arrow that Parona is unaware of and she actually, literally, dies. You can't not be shocked by it. The entire rest of the episode is directed so exquisitely that I was lost for words. For a brief moment, there's silence and then, Joaan leaps from the back of the carriage to attack the chasers and...

Fushi becomes Oniguma and ruins their whole week with a fervid rampage. It's so dynamic and three-dimensional for developing this story in such short order. The narrator and the visual storytelling itself often reminds you that Fushi is becoming more and more human with every scene and you really are drawn to the licanthropic orb that doesn't speak any language whatsoever. It's fantastic.

Parona frantically tries to bandage March up and March appears ready to accept death unlike the way she was before when they were going to sacrifice her. I like this because it carries the message that she has lived out a purpose, however microscopic it was and has became more mature because of it. You see a flashback of all the great times they had together with March constantly desiring responsibility and agency despite being a toddler and Parona being the only one to give it to her.

Anyway, Fushi is absolutely annihilating everything in his sight but Parona walks through the battlefield carrying March all wrapped up and calmly talks Fushi out of his rampage. The following sequence, unbelievably, is even more great.

Fushi is reduced to his human form and Hayase is lying broken in some rubble. Parona holds a blade to her and it cuts to March appearing to be living in some afterlife state back in a world with her parents and Parona and it's just so sad.

This aetherial version of her doesn't really believe any of it and she recalls the way in which she dies and sees Parona holding a blade to her own face. She beats her back repeatedly in the same way that she did when protesting about her own sacrifice except it's far more profound this time because it's as though she views Parona as a part of herself and that her sacrifice of her own life has to mean something inportant and not be wasted. No-one can seemingly hear her though - except for one person.

Fushi grabs the blade and forces it away from Parona's neck.

I don't what I can even say about all of this. It's just so good that I can't possibly do any of it justice. Fushi at this point, has an enormous amount of humanity and it's so exciting to follow the character of the orb and it's made especially brilliant by the directorial use of visual cues, music and narration. I feel like I'm going to say this a lot because I've said it so many times already but I will say it once more;- I cannot get over how great this was.

Parona returns with March to Nihannah to tell March's parents and the gravity of the situation is made all more greater because, to them, Parona couldn't save her from being sacrificed but nobody blames her and they know Parona did her best by March in the end. This makes the argument at the beginning all the more tragic because, during it, Parona says that March couldn't possibly understand the situation being a child but the truth is that her connection with Fushi ultimately saved everybody. On a depressing note, Parona hands March's parents the handprint March made two episodes earlier that was meant to say that they were doing fine in Yanome which is just upsetting. I'm watching amazed that they were able to tell such a profound story so well over such a short time.

The hunt for Fushi continues though but Parona demands that he run for his life which he actually is able to understand. Fushi transforms back into Joaan and disappears into the woods. She then climbs the tower and uses her expert vision and archery to target Hayase and finish her off with the same arrow that killed March but she misses and hits her hand. Hayase at this point is manic, bloody and scarred and the image of her is amazing.

We fade out with Fushi walking through the woods and looking at the fruit that March fed him earlier invokes a sense of emotional attachment within the orb and is able to experience deja vu.

I absolutely can't wait to see where we go next with Fushi and I am hooked on this animé. Because the second half of this episode was so good, I am willing to forgive the weirdly timed argument at the beginning with March and Parona. I will be diplomatic and say that it was to establish the idea that March has built her own independent and moral compass but it was still slightly annoying. I still maintain that, in my opinion, this was the best episode in the series so far but it is closely rivalled with the third episode and maybe even the very first one.

The following blogpost contains spoilers about To Your Eternity.

The series continues to impress me and I’m sure it has impressed everyone else who watches it. This episode was no different. It’s weird to say but I wasn’t expecting all that much from this episode based on the preview at the end of the last one. It promised to be an excapade of learning for Fushi as he’s taken under the wing of the old shaman lady which sounds quite tedious and unspectacular on the face of it.

But I was hugely wrong.

As I was openly wondering that if, at any point, would Fushi take on the form of the late March, the narrator went on to explain passively that the orb used March to better climb trees to eat food. It doesn’t necessarily have to present itself as a huge event like it has with the previous transformations but I think the reality of the situation is that you should expect this sort of thing from now on. Anyway, Fushi bumps into the old shaman lady in the form of March I guess purely to freak her out a bit. Fushi being March does help the old lady hunt for food.

The first part of this episode is quite a nice and cozy sequence in which the old woman teaches Fushi how to read and write. By the end of it, it appears that Fushi can speak a good amount and can have conversations in rudimentary Japanese. I am big fan of the typography of the in-universe language and a series like this could always do with touches like that that make the setting feel a lot more alive.

Pioran hints at finding some kind of new settlement which continues Fushi’s search for a home once more. During this, she prods Fushi for questions about where he came from but it’s implied that his memory of the inciting encounter with the boy in the artic is warped and fragmented. The orb that is occupying Fushi seems to not really know what is happening to them as they can’t really explain the nature of his transformations.

What happened next was so completely out of nowhere and is a shot to the arm when you think about the upbeat, coming-of-age tone that the episode had set about creating for the previous 15 minutes. Whilst the two are asleep at the campfire, they are interrupted by a kind of body-snatcher creature that sprouts from the ground with it’s goal being to take away Fushi’s bodily forms that he’s been collecting. It takes the form of a stoney replica of the unnamed boy to which Fushi is visibly aggravated towards in his wolf form. Then, the battle is intercepted by the creator of the orb. Suddenly, you have a character to place on the narrator’s voice.

The creator tells him how to dispatch of the entity because everytime Fushi is mortally wounded by the spikey tentacles of the beanstalk creature, he has to relinquish that form. Soon he is left with no form other than March who actually ends up saving the day in a thrilling scene that is short and sweet. Fushi uses March’s agility and ability to climb through trees to avoid the danger before diving into the creature’s heart where all the forms are stored. I’m doing this scene quite a disservice but I can only applaud it for conjuring unexpected tension from nothing and inserting this surprising new factor of danger in Fushi’s life.

The narrator figure explains to Fushi that he is the creator but it’s clear that Fushi doesn’t really understand what just happened all that much. When Pioran asks him what just happened, he just calmly says that he doesn’t know and that it was quote “weird”.

It is also unclear who is the real bad guy in this scenario. On paper, we are supposed to trust the orb's creator but he looks so damn ominous that him trying to win my favour is going to be an uphill battle for sure.

The episode ends with them arriving at the place where Pioran comes from and it’s clearly sunnier climes compared to the setting previously and despite this being a “transitional” episode into this new world that Fushi is going to be surrounding themselves with for the timebeing, it was still a great episode with a lot of new information learnt that is woven expertly into the storytelling. Yet again, the animé has surprised me with even more fantastic twists and turns. Whilst there wasn’t a great deal to say about it, I was hooked from scene to scene and the animation remains gorgeous and as welcoming as ever.

It’s been a while since I’ve watched this and I’ve been holding off on it so I could finished my dissertation for my MA in creative writing. Also, this show was falling into a damp squib and it was a dredge to write about apart from the surprise ending in the previous episode. Anyway, I apologize that this isn’t at all topical as the show ended over a week ago now. Let’s get on with it, shall we?

The following post briefly contains content which may be distressing for some readers.

I think the downward trend in structure, pacing and animation continues in this episode unfortunately. It starts with a speech from Hayase that goes on for way too long where she spins a tale of Fushi belonging to her and him deserting her. The reason she’s arrived on the island is to try and recapture him because he’s very valuable. Despite Hayase shoving spears into his eye sockets and Fushi voicing his venomous hatred of her after she laughed about killing his friends, she successfully convinces enough the crowd.

What bothered me most about this scene is that chiefly, it goes on for far too long because the writer insists on making the event more complicated than it needs to be. We know that Hayase is now the leader and because she’s an awful bastard, she is obviously going to use it for ill so this scene could be cut out. We can gather all this information and any extra stuff that we don’t know can be inferred through the narrative. By “any extra stuff”, Hayase wants Tonari dead because of course she does. It’s an animé so teenagers are prime targets for murder and execution by grown adults.

When the scene is finally finished, you know that Mystery Incorporated are going to plan to get Fushi back from Hayase the Tyrant. Fushi, who is still drugged, is being carried away to a chamber. What happens now is probably the best bit in the episode because it explores Fushi as a concept and as a person which, as I’ve said time and again, is when To Your Eternity is at it’s best. Fushi is in a dream state back at the brewery with Rean and the old fucker (or whatever his name is). It’s a lot of introspection about Fushi’s end destination and what he’s going to do about the situation he’s in. The actual content in the script isn’t terribly interesting but what is intriguing is that he is having existential thoughts at all.

I don’t know if it’s supposed to be ambiguous or not but Fushi is in a paralytic sleep state whilst Hayase is supposedly attempting to have sex with him whilst he’s asleep which...

Why?

I don’t know but it succeeded in making me feel uncomfortable and I say that in the least complimentary way possible.

So it turns out Fushi exited his vessel into the small mole thing and left the small boy as a shell when nobody was looking. He’s a clever boy now. They carried fake Fushi down into the underground whilst mole Fushi hid under the bed. The scooby gang get all the guards but are ultimately cornered because dispatching of a athletic, unpredictable, mentally unhinged killer wasn’t as easy as they thought it was. But Fushi appears out of nowhere to try and hold Hayase hostage but not before explaining the brief plot twist. He then proposes that everyone leave the island in favour of him staying on the island.

The episode is moving so terribly fast and before you know it, all the young kids are getting put on to the ship because there isn’t enough room on the ship but Tonari and the ghostbusters are held hostage before they get on the ship and knocked out. But Tonari wakes up and decides to leave the ship on a wooden dinghy to go back and get Fushi and then the episode is over.

That’s what of my big issues with this particular arc is that they are speeding through the story and are obviously cutting stuff out from the source material from time constraints. Obviously there isn’t a lot you can do about it except structure it in such a way that disguises the cut content better. Without reading the manga, I couldn’t possibly suggest anything. The tension doesn’t have any room to build because the next thing has to happen. I find it frustrating that it’s only twenty episodes long and that they seemed to spend so much time dicking around in the Gugu arc which I personally found really boring.

It’s the big finish. And it was a good one.

T/W: Dimentia and Alzheimers

This episode is what I feel like To Your Eternity is really all about because it’s what it is best at. Exploring life and death and the ravages of time, tragedy and error are all what this show has proved to be extremely good at. It’s what the Jananda Island arc was missing. The Gugu arc, whilst being a bit boring at points, at least explored life lived in a short time as well as the value of the life of someone like that. This episode rounded off Pioran’s character very, very well indeed.

It starts off with Fushi being in two minds about Pioran. He seems worried about confronting her. He is constantly going to leave and finding an excuse to come back for her and then changing his mind. My immediate thought during these moments was that the animé was just doing ye olde killing time again because it had nothing to offer, in terms of story, to fill up 25 minutes. Actually, it subtly explored Fushi’s concern about welfare and leaving characters behind to be left to their own devices. Simultaneously, it also delves into the attachment that he’s developed for Pioran who he has been with nearly the whole time, lingering in the background. Fushi doesn’t know how to deal with elderly people.

Pioran is very, very old at this point. She can’t really speak. She doesn’t have any money and she’s very vulnerable but Fushi is always talking himself into leaving her be. It gets to a point where The Beholder has to ask what his real problem is and essentially, they live in two different worlds now which Fushi can’t really accept. If he’s being honest with himself, he doesn’t want time to be wasted. There is surprisingly some very good dialogue in this episode and it’s been a long time since I could say that about To Your Eternity.

Pioran eventually recognises Fushi despite him being in Mia’s shell. So Fushi is caring for Pioran for what will probably be the last days of her life. His character is developed a lot by this point and this sequence really gets across how mature he is. He opts to run away from the Nokkers when The Beholder makes them aware of their presence because he won’t be able to fight them just yet. What I like a lot about this is that, without saying it out loud, Fushi is basically an adult now and has taken on a parental instinct naturally. Like the first few episodes, how humans react to certain emotional stimulus versus how Fushi would react is highlighted in the narrative to drive the concept home.

Pioran grows forgetful and weak and Fushi pushes through and lives with it. He carries her everywhere because she’s always falling off the donkey. The Beholder tries to tell Fushi the truth but he won’t listen. This is all great because the immortal man from out of space doesn’t fully understand the human timeline and probably never will be able to and that’s where the tragedy is. Fushi deals with it in stress and anger but does his best. It’s a very upsetting image and anyone who has had to deal with a family member suffering with Alzheimer’s disease knows how awful it is and some moments in this episode really capture that confusion, anger and the struggle of acceptance without overdoing it.

Before Pioran dies, she calls upon The Beholder to make her into something useful for Fushi before she reaches Paradise. One of the best moments in the series is the glimpse of Pioran as a much younger woman wondering the beach in Paradise and releasing her ideal body into the orb. You can assume that this means that she’ll be in the afterlife as an old woman as opposed to being the ideal self that everyone else gets to be. It has to be said at this point that the direction and animation in this episode is easily the best in the whole series. Everything just looks great and the team really gave it their all for the finalé which I can really appreciate. It seemed like they cared a lot more for this against the whole Jananda arc. One of my favourite bits here is when the dim smoke in the fire eventually runs out and is extinguished altogether as a nice symbol for Pioran’s final moments. It’s stuff like that I live for.

Fushi discovers that she’s dead and easily the most upset that he’s ever been about any death in his life but he pushes on. The episode ends with a timeskip for “several decades” as The Beholder explains that there is nothing of note to tell about Fushi during this time. The final shot is him successfully - and perhaps, easily - dispatching of the Nokkers as a fully grown adult.

A great way to wrap this series up that I wasn’t expecting. It was a nice surprise to go back to Pioran and end her story in this way. I really appreciated the economy in which this episode was directed and produced. No time was wasted and I enjoyed every frame. An excellent entry into To Your Eternity that rivals the episodes at the beginning of the series. The big reveal at the end is that there will be a SECOND series. What do I think of that? Well...

Despite the niggling overarching problems that were present in the last episode, we are cooking with gas now. Stuff is happening and it actually feels like we’re heading towards a climax of some kind. Sort of. A lot of people are dead. Hayase is still loose. Pioran is... on the boat, I think?

This episode was actually quite good although it is still wrought with the same problems as the previous ones. I get the feeling that this review is going to be very similar to the last one. That is because a lot of it is the same except this episode had more of a conclusion. A conclusion which, I’m not entirely sure that I am satisfied by but I can’t say that it wasn’t good.

It has a very melodramatic start which came off as obnoxious in the context of the previous episode where they tried to press the same emotional buttons. It’s like they think that if they keep pressing that button, it’ll be more sad and more epic when actually, I get it now. I get it. The three guys from the gang are the walking dead and they have to kill them or at least do something about them.

What I am acutely bothered by is Hayase’s encounter with the Nokkers in which the being inserts itself into her body but she actually talks the being out of it. Hayase basically advises that, instead of attacking Fushi hand or foot, the Nokkers should attempt to get into an abusive relationship with him. How they would go about that is not to known to me, I’m afraid. But it is enough to get them to evacuate mid-infection.

An annoying and predictable trope then occurs (who’d a thunk it) when Fushi crushes Hayase as Inugami. He sticks his claw into Hayase’s cheek but Hayase, again, talks him out of killing her on the spot because he needs to go and save his friends which he does post-haste. Because, if there’s anything that takes a long time, it’s a gigantic bear with massive claws killing a tiny human. I would hope that this series would resist tropes and clichés like this where the hero refuses to kill the antagonist when they are in pole position to do so. It isn’t even the first time that it happens in this series or the last time in this episode.

Fushi goes ham on all the zombies with Gugu’s fire-breath to save Tonari and the other boy who I cannot remember the name of. Of course, the last ones left are Uroy, Mia and Oopa (see, I know them now) and Fushi gets put into a predicament when Hayase is holding Tonari over a fiery pit. She attempts to negotiate a really simple deal with Fushi but in an extremely complicated and contrived way when Tonari drags Hayase down into the pit with her. Fushi jumps in and saves BOTH of them. Fushi somehow puts Hayase to sleep and it doesn’t explain exactly how but I guess it doesn’t really matter. They tie her up and then she’s forgotten about until the end of the episode.

It appears to do somewhat of a timeskip where the people on the island are all working together to make a more friendly and agricultural society. Everyone is treating each other for their wounds. It goes full circle in a way because Fushi is seen to be handing out fruit and vegetables for everyone who is hungry and everyone is thanking him en masse. I thought it was nice to highlight Fushi’s general role in society and how it’s changed since the very start when March was teaching him to say thanks. GOOD.

Tonari stays on the island to help rebuild and defend Jananda. Fushi goes off on the boat with the unconscious Hayase who I guess has been asleep for a very long time. She wakes up and attempts to force herself onto Fushi once again before demanding that Fushi kill her and become her which begs the question why she wasn’t okay with it before. Unless she knows that it’s reverse psychology and Fushi wouldn’t have the guts to kill her. What Fushi does is generate another boat for him to use and leaves her tied up by herself in the middle of nowhere like a fucking mob boss.

Then the Nokkers appear out of nowhere to stab her and she screams. It’s deliberately left ambiguous whether or not she’s dead but I guarantee that she definitely comes back somehow. I would put my house on the idea that the Nokkers have interacted with her vessel in such a way that she is still alive whilst being possessed by it. It would obviously be really bad with the Nokkers had Hayase as a form because she is really dangerous. So no-one is buying this fake death... surely?

Anyway, the episode ends with Fushi going to look for Pioran to reunite with her... I think.

Quite a good episode. A better episode in a different arc, probably. I just don’t care about Tonari’s mates. Tonari is alright now in my books but it was heavy going for a while whilst they were shoving her abandonment and trust issues in our faces constantly. I’m bothered by them always writing themselves into a corner with Hayase’s character and how she is used in the story is very befuddled and mismatched. There appears to be a constant fight between having her sitting on the throne and pulling the strings versus her being vulnerable and damaged versus her being genuinely pure evil and the pendulum in fighting to keep the balance.

I was surprised with the direction that they took this episode and I wasn’t really expecting a lot of things although it was, at times, obvious. I didn’t think it needed to be said so I omitted it from my previous post but this episode reminded me even more of The Legend of Aang especially with it’s remote setting and themes of traditionalism and destiny.

The prologue follows the unnamed boy but only briefly as the narrator explains that he keeps dying and regenerating due to lack of nutrition. The narrator also mentions that he keeps shitting himself for some reason. Not that I’m confused as to why an alien creature harboring a human vessel would crap their pants but I’m confused as to why the writer felt the need to keep me informed.

It cuts to this village of people in the mountains and it’s all in very stark contrast to what we saw in the previous episode and I’m all for it. There’s still a sense of mystery and intrigue about the world and the way that the story reveals small tidbits and details is really cool. They don’t overexplain anything or over-decorate the world with too much furniture. As a viewer, I have found that I’m made to feel comfortable and settled. The main character in this episode is an easter egg-like gremlin girl called March and I just adore her character design and the way they introduce her.

Her character is that she is obsessed with being a grown-up and specifically, being a mother. She is seen playing house with her stuffed toys that are wearing little Obi-Wan robes. They don’t reveal a lot about the people and the way of their life other than they are probably agricultural. Also, they need to sacrifice a person to a creature or a God of some sorts because of course they do; they are indigenous mountain people. It turns out that the bubbly coffee-eyed girl is on the chopping block because she’s the most healthy. Despite it being quite obvious, I found myself caring more than I thought that I would. Just a smidgen more.

I was thinking at this point that the unnamed boy would come along and save her somehow but obviously I under-estimated this. March makes a break for it despite the threat of someone else being sacrificed instead and it’s only then that she bumps into the boy who is laying face down in a cavern.

This scene is just tremendous. March finds a loose eyeball and then sees his carcass disfigured and mauled. Slowly, his body begins to reform and it’s wonderfully putrid and disgusting. His ribcage, arteries and internal organs cover themselves in unwounded skin as the unnamed boy reanimates himself back to life. This scares away the pursuers of March and March has really no choice but to go with him into the everglade. It creates such a heavy and creepy atmosphere but gives this massive sense of an adventure unfolding. I love this very, VERY much.

March follows him for quite a while and makes several efforts to talk to the stranger but can’t seem to get through to him at all. This begs a few questions. It was heavily implied in the first episode that the wolf formed a strong bond with the boy and at least understood on some level, what he was saying to what was then Joaan. I wonder how much information the orb is able tor retain or if it has been lost over several deaths and instances of trauma. Not that I’m suggesting that he should’ve been able to retain language and the meaning of words just by hearing it but rather, that the orb would at least recognize communication when it hears it and register it as such. Does the orb retain the hippocampus of the vessel it enters? I think so because it would explain how the wolf knew where it was going and the direction that the orb is taking the un-named boy in. I like all this mystery because I feel like you are learning information about the orb without the animé telling you. Again, it’s a good example of the Iceberg Theory in practice.

Something that I do find a bit confusing though is that there is a sequence where March is handing him food and he bats it away and then goes to maul on it. This seems weird to me because that isn’t something we’ve seen the orb doing as the boy showed the wolf how to eat properly in the first episode. I wonder how the orb even recognizes the fruit as food anyway because it was only eating fish and meat prior to this. I’m not nitpicking and prodding for plotholes here; it simply struck me as weird and unexplained.

What is a nice detail that I feel is worth noting is that when March landed in the water in the cavern, all her facepaint fell away which makes me wonder how that would come into play later on. I feel like this is symbolic and foreboding of something... I just can’t put my finger on it.

The episode ends full circle because it illuminates that March is the “grown-up” in this situation and is acting like a maternal figure for the orb. The unnamed boy follows her because he knows she’ll give him food to keep him alive. I look forward to the next episode. This one was nowhere near as tragic or as glum as the first episode and was much more light-hearted in tone apart from the whole child sacrifice thing. March is a very likeable character to be taking the fold now and I like this idea of having different main characters, swapping roles and exploring relationship and emotional dynamics in the way that it does with the orb story device.

This wasn’t as action-packed with moments of great tensions like the previous gambit of episodes were in this series but it was a fun pause for air despite the inherent tragedy of the undertones which is an excellence of this show.

The first part of the episode is all about the new character of Gugu whom we saw briefly at the end of the last episode who came off as just an odd child with an unknown identity. But it begins with quite a good sequence of a small window into his life and it’s all very cosy and welcoming. Him and his brother are fruit traders who are just trying to get money to live which is nice, simple and relatable. I really like their designs as well and they do really stand out in the universe so far despite their simplicity. The character of Gugu is transfixed with this posh-looking girl who he sees in the market.

That’s all fine but I must address the elephant in the room which is how he has his accident that causes him to wear the weird hawk helmet in the first place. He’s just wondering around on the hill and thinking about edgy faux-philosophical stuff like pre-pubescent boys do when confronted with feelings of attraction to someone else when a lumber carriage comes by on rails. He openly wonders about what would happen if he jumped in front of it but decides against it and then a log falls off and just misses him by inches. It’s stuck on a branch so the man runs to get help and tells Gugu to watch it. It eventually falls and there’s a woman down at the end of the hill and we get the classic theatrical cliché we’ve seen a thousand times. Gugu is shouting at her to get out of the way but she is obviously oblivious to all her senses and he jumps out to save her.

This is a bit of a kerfuffle visually because it comes off like he falls off the side of the edge and the log trips up on some small rocks and then lands squarely on his face. I can’t deny that this was sloppily executed and the actual logistics of the nature of his injury is something that can be called into question as well as he only suffers facial injuries that don’t impair his speech or his brain activity. He’s just laying there with this heavy object that a grown, heavy set man couldn’t budge but is somehow saved by an old drunk who runs a brewery/bottle shop. I don’t want to be that guy who cries that a fantasy product is unrealistic and impossible but I can only suspend my disbelief so far. I’ll tell you what I’ll do though. For this arc, I will give this the benefit of the doubt as I don’t know what lies ahead for Gugu and if there will be any more consequences.

Moving on, the halfway point resumes where the previous episode left off as Fushi and the old lady who I can’t remember the name of strolled through the door. Gugu and Fushi quickly become good pals and it’s implicit that Gugu is replacing the brother figure in his life but treats Fushi as a younger brother which is a bit of a different prescribed relationship dynamic than March acting as a mother figure for Fu. I enjoyed a lot of the shenanigans here and everything was fun and warm.

There is quite a touching scene but also a disgusting scene in which Gugu attempts to bathe Fushi but all of his clothes are stuck to his body and the visuals for this are wonderfully foul as usual. The sound design is great at exemplifiying the gross stickiness. Then though, Fushi attempts to remove his helmet and Gugu is ashamed of his appearance but he doesn’t have any concept of what appearances are. Fushi is mainly interested in the weird helmet. I like scenes like this in this animé because they’re very explorative of the possibilities of the concept and I get frustrated when there’s a great premise that becomes squandered.

The conflict is set up near to the end of this episode as the girl that Gugu fancied in the market turns up at the brewery but it isn’t at all interested in him but is more into Fushi which, fair enough, he is a handsome boy. It’s all very wacky and delightful and I’m especially fond of the visual emotives on Gugu’s helmet. They really had fun with the concept of the helmet in the animation here from treating the little circles on his helmet like eyes and playing with the shutter as though it were a mouth. You can tell that the animation direction was charged with playfully imaginative ideas so it’s a lot of fun to watch.

Gugu then proceeds to cockblock Fushi by telling the girl - Rean - that Fushi can't do anything for himself but she doesn't really care and would actually see that as the challenge. Yes - Rean is a "I could change him" girl. It's worth mentioning that Gugu found Rean's lost dog earlier and she rewarded him with a cheap ring that she didn't have any use for which Gugu didn't bring up at all which is what is interesting isn't it. Gugu won't be willing to prove it by taking off his helmet and it's questionable if he would even be recognized.

Then the old man recommends he start drinking or do something about his sadness because, Gugu being a young teenager, he’s in a sour mood. To which he responds by deciding to begin working out to try and get something over Fushi. It’s all very silly and light-hearted and I just know that this animé as something horribly depressing coming around the corner because that’s what To Your Eternity is all about.

This was a short post but I have to say that there wasn’t a great deal to analyze or go over. It was a fine old episode in the end but it’s all in the name of getting us acquainted with all the new characters in a new setting which it did do as well. I hope they turn around the contrived log incident as a plot device because that sticks out of this episode like a sore thumb unfortunately. I’d like to excuse it somehow but I don’t want to effect a soppy bias into my writing about this animé because I love it too much.