Dusk Beyond the End of the World

Episode 6

I have no preamble for all of you this week, I'm just going to let it rip because by the time the episode ended, there was only one thing on my mind: It feels more than a little hamfisted that upon finally visiting a more furbished library—one that got very hyped up, no less—what's presumed to be the history section is a nearly empty shelf, only barely peppered with just a few books, while all the other shelves in the area are filled to the brim. I know it's a small, seemingly insignificant detail, but I really can't get over how jarringly unsubtle this is. Subtlety doesn't necessarily equate to automatically being better—there are plenty of times where loud and bold have been excellent—but in a series like Dusk, which up until now has been trying to play the Orwellian nature of its world straight, this feels way too rudimentary and over-the-top.

Allow me to explain: Last week, I talked about what I think would be the most optimal way to suppress the study of history in the context of Dusk—more specifically, the study of a particular portion of history. After all, OWEL is suppressing knowledge about the AI War, but I can't imagine they have a particular qualm with people wanting to study, for example, Ancient Egypt or the Hundred Years' War. And the TL;DR is that they'd get a lot farther by making history available to study, but systematically making people ignorant of or apathetic toward the AI War by not teaching them about it, and making the pursuit of studying it unfeasible. But again, a big part of that is technically making history an available study, just not this particular portion. Even then, you have to go about it in a way that's not exactly advertised. Yet the barren history bookshelf we saw in this episode suggests that the study of history, overall, is barely a thing at all. It makes it feel as though this anime thinks that if it doesn't spoonfeed us the idea that OWEL is engaging in censorship, the audience won't pick up on it. And again: This works in some anime, but it's not working here.

To be fair, we never heard anyone specifically say “Alas, this is the entire accessible history section,” even if it felt implied. It's possible, for example, that's just the 21st-century history section. But if this really is the whole history section, then this really feels way too over-the-top for this anime. Maybe it's because I'm just so much more interested in the world this anime has built up than the main story at play, but I would've liked that to be clarified. Still, our squad is about to set off for Tokyo with hopes of even further pursuing their research, so maybe—hopefully—that'll deliver something more substantial instead.

I think the suppression of information can make for a really interesting—not to mention poignant—theme for fiction to explore, but I also think it's a lot harder to pull off gracefully than a lot of people realize. Orb is the most obvious example of this. Without derailing this into a screed the likes of which could be turned into a 3-hour-long video essay, it's an anime about misinformation and information suppression, which itself leans heavily into several (very disproven) widespread myths about the Middle Ages. I doubt this was intentional on the creator's part, since it makes its message ring totally hollow—if not downright hypocritical. It's an anime engaging in the exact thing it's criticizing. While I don't think Dusk has proven thus far to be quite so sloppy with its messaging (although we're only at about the halfway point, so this could change), it's seemingly tiny details like this bookshelf that give me pause about whether or not it's executing this increasingly important theme well.

I know that nobody is getting as hung up over this godforsaken bookshelf as I am. I think that has a lot to do with the fact that I think the world this anime has built up has proven to be infinitely more interesting than its characters and what they're doing. Speaking of which, yeah, I guess there was a date between Yuugure and Akira in the first half of the episode. But if I've said it once, I've said it a thousand times: I just feel nothing toward any of our protagonists, and the less this anime puts them in the spotlight, the better. And even side characters have been pretty hit-or-miss so far, with the biggest hit easily being the couple running the inn whose story would make for something better than what we're getting from Akira and Yuugure. I say this partially because the couple's story seems to have more going on (it's simple, but well executed enough), partially because I love the queerness of it all, and partially because, as we've seen, Akira just wasn't built to be a main character. Not even a cutesy date episode can move my heart when it comes to him and Yuugure. But as always, I'd love to eat my words by the time the series ends.

And at the halfway point, there's still a little bit of time for this series to turn itself around. This series has cool ideas, and the visuals are great. The potential is very much there. The problem is that all that delicious worldbuilding and lore is taking the backseat to a completely sauceless group of protagonists whom I can't find it in myself to care about, and I doubt I ever will. But if its priorities switch in its second half and it can do more for its exploration into censorship and the way(s) information is suppressed, I think this anime has enough going for it that it might save itself yet.

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Dusk Beyond the End of the World is currently streaming on HIDIVE.