To Your Eternity Season 3

Episode 12

For as much as I am enjoying this third season of To Your Eternity and all of its attempts to make Fushi's renewed battle against the Nokkers into something nuanced and thematically rich, I fear the story may be falling into a pacing trap. Recently, TYE has been spending time building up the presence of this new breed of Nokker that is trying to infiltrate humanity rather than simply wipe it out, and along with all of that has come the question of how much these creatures deserve to live in this world, the same as any other person. This makes for a cool twist on the usual conflict, but there are still some remaining issues.

For one, the issue isn't quite as morally gray as the show seems to think it is. At the end of the episode, after all of the craziness with Nokker!Funa is dealt with, Tiny Beholder tries to hit Fushi with the old “Is what you're doing any different from our enemies?” routine, and it falls flat because, yeah, kid, Fushi and the Nokkers aren't the same. Fushi's “collection” of friends and loved ones is gathered as a way to memorialize them and keep a part of them eternally alive, rather than a conscious effort to subsume and replace. Also, there has never, to my knowledge, been any indication that the spirits along the ride with Fushi are in any way displeased or distressed by the connection. The Nokkers may truly be too emotionally underdeveloped to understand the ethical quandaries of their behavior, but it is still fundamentally selfish. They don't prey on the emotionally compromised and the dying because they want to make their host's lives better; they want to justify assuming control of those lives for themselves.

Secondly, there is only so much time the show can spend on Fushi waffling over what to do about the Nokkers, regardless of whether they will ultimately be seen as uncompromising enemies of mankind or not. The time spent stewing on Fushi's internal conflict is much more easily spent in episodes like last week's, where Mizuha and her mother were being portrayed as complex beings effectively. Aside from the admittedly hilarious moment where the two Nokkers recognize Fushi in his chicken form during home-ec class, Funa never really gets portrayed as anything other than an obviously antagonistic obstacle for Fushi (or Tiny Beholder) to figure out.

There are still plenty of things to enjoy this week, though. For as awkward as the conflict played out, it was really cool to see Tiny Beholder transform Funa's Nokker into a flower and burn it out of existence. Also, Yuki actually managed to be useful for once this week! I will admit that, even after all this time, I don't quite understand how Eko and her pots work, but it was awesome to see her again, and she inspired our optimistic club V.P. to find a way to communicate with Fushi without altering the Nokkers. Time will tell if this will be of any real use, but I can't help but suspect that Fushi is going to have to start committing to playing offense sooner rather than later. It's awfully sweet the way Yuki just wants to shake hands with the Nokkers and call it a day, but there's no way a show with this many episodes left in the run is going to close out such a significant storyline without introducing some messy complications.

Episode Rating:

To Your Eternity Season 3 is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.

James is a writer with many thoughts and feelings about anime and other pop-culture, which can also be found on BlueSky, his blog, and his podcast.