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The Fruit of Evolution: Before I Knew It, My Life Had It Made
Episodes 9-10

by James Beckett,

How would you rate episode 9 of
The Fruit of Evolution: Before I Knew It, My Life Had It Made ?
Community score: 3.3

How would you rate episode 10 of
The Fruit of Evolution: Before I Knew It, My Life Had It Made ?
Community score: 3.5

A couple of weeks ago, The Fruit of Evolution broke me. It was not any one thing—the eighth episode was not especially more terrible than anything that had come before it—but the slowly seeping poison of the series as a whole finally managed to work its way through my system and wreak havoc on my mind. Though I have no memory of this, I apparently became enthralled by the sheer, unrepentant shamelessness of The Fruit of Evolutionthat I began to believe myself some kind of prophet, with Seiichi Hiiragi enthroned as my one true god.

I was unwell, in other words, and my loved ones wisely checked me into a local clinic to recover. It was here, at the “John Trent Mental Wellness and Recovery Center”, that I would rediscover my lost mind. Even after spending two or three sleepless nights thrashing myself out of my fugue state, I couldn't quite bring myself to say that I felt “well”, exactly. Given everything that I've seen over these last ten weeks, I don't think any reasonable mind would be able to walk away unscathed. Still, in order to be deemed fit enough to return to society, the good folks at the clinic assigned me my very own psychoanalyst, Dr. Cane, who would help me sort out the mess of fantasy and nihilism that I had been lost in.

Our session was going to be unorthodox, though straightforward enough: Dr. Cane wanted me to sit down and watch the latest episodes of The Fruit of Evolution, and then I'd talk through my feelings on them. That was all. “You know,” the doctor said (with a slightly condescending chuckle, no less). “Like a critic is supposed to do?” After being claimed by visions of anthropomorphic donkey girlfriends and screeching idiot gods for so long, I found myself strangely deflated by the act of seeing The Fruit of Evolution for what it was, what it really was: A genuinely terrible cartoon about some idiot isekai protagonist and his ever expanding harem.

“So!” Dr. Cane said, when I finally came into his office, that day. “Why don't we start with Episode 9 first. What did you think?” He was perched a few feet away from me, sitting in his leather chair with all of the poise and effortless authority that I'd seen a thousand times in movies and TV shows. Had one of those expensive looking leather notepads in his hands. His pen was upright and at the ready, and he hastily scribbled his notes as I spoke.

“Okay,” I began, “Let's see. Episode 9. Right. 'Black Cat Oliga.”'God, where do I begin? I mean, hell, doc, are you even going to understand half of what I'm talking about? Do you even watch anime?”

“You're stalling,” he said, not looking up from his journal. “A classic avoidance technique, but it will do you no good, here. It's only been a week or so, Mr. Beckett. Don't act like you've forgotten how to review an anime. And, to answer your other thinly veiled attempt at wasting our precious time, I have seen a few episodes of Robotech in my day. I even took the opportunity to read your prior reviews of the series. For context.”

“Uh huh,” I said. “So, you've gotten at least some understanding of stupid the show is, then? The screaming, the terrible jokes? The gorilla fucking?”

“I don't like to use the word ‘stupid’ in here, James. It's demeaning and out of fashion. I think you mean to say that it has 'a very “particular” sense of humor.”

“Well, either way, its goddamned awful. It has been from the very first episode. That hasn't magically changed nine episodes in, or anything. The art is still embarrassing. The jokes are still corny and unfunny. The only thing that's different is…”

“Is what?” Dr. Cane stopped jotting down his notes, and looked up at me with an expression that was difficult to read. Was he concerned? Was he confused? Was that…amusement I was seeing creep its way up from behind his lips?

“Don't look at me like that, doc. I'm not crazy anymore. I know the show doesn't mean anything more than what it is: A cheap comedy made by people who have apparently never even heard another human laugh, before. Except…”

“Except…what?” The doctor tapped his pen impatiently on his notepad. “James, we're never going to get anywhere if you keep trailing off for dramatic effect. I'm not one of your readers. You don't need to ‘entertain’ me. I simply want to know what has you so…agitated, about this show.”

Agitated?” I practically spit my next words at Cane. “You want to know what's got me so agitated, doc? It's the fact that this shambling, soulless imitation of an anime spoof keeps trying to get its audience to take its story seriously! Aside from pointless filler and bad jokes, most of this ninth episode is just setting up the show's dumb ‘Epic Fantasy War’ plot, which literally nobody asked it to pursue. Attempted regicide and mind-controlled child assassins? Please. ”

“I don't understand. You've frequently criticized the show for being poorly paced and written? Isn't it a good thing that The Fruit of Evolution is trying to take a more serious approach?”

God no!” I was pacing around the office at this point, stammering and stuttering with every word as I tried to collect myself. “I mean, Jesus, why would anyone ever want a two-bit gag anime to try and sell you on its “drama” and “world building”? The Fruit of Evolution was already a pathetic and cringe-inducing failure when it was selling itself as a comedy! Now it wants to have it both ways with a bunch of scenes that focus on developing side characters and subplots that aren't even trying to be funny?”

“I suppose…” The doctor searched for a response. “I suppose I might find that rather confounding,yes. Maybe even somewhat irritating?”

“You bet your ass you would!” I said. I was definitely beginning to raise my voice, then. “Especially when the show keeps trying to pull the same trick, week after week. Why, after enough time, it might even start to drive you just a skosh insane.”

“Is that why you had your…episode? Pardon my pun.” I hated the tone that Dr. Cane took when he said that last part. I got the sinking feeling, not for the first time, that he was enjoying this. That he was getting some kind of twisted schadenfreude pleasure out of seeing what watching The Fruit of Evolution did to me. “In any case, I get it. The attempts at world building and whatnot fall flat. And you're certain that absolutely none of the jokes worked for you?

“You mean the sketch where the masochistic thong guy got stuff shoved up his ass by the bondage queen while the whole cast uncomfortably watched? Or the part where Artoria somehow gets jealous when she daydreams about Seiichi getting swept up in a bunch of dating-sim shenanigans, despite having absolutely no frame of reference for any of our world's pop culture?”

Cane continued to write his notes as I spoke. I began to fear that maybe the good doctor wasn't here to ensure that I was well, after all. There was something sinister about the way his eyes darted back and forth over his own furious scribblings. Something slick and too calm about the relaxed veneer he wore as I described the fresh new horrors of The Fruit of Evolution. Why wasn't he affected by it like was, like any man ought to be?

And why was he smiling so much?

“Okay...that's progress!” Dr. Cane finally said, though I had no idea what he could possibly mean by that. “What about we try something different with Episode 10? I want you to come up with something positive about it before we go on.” He flashed me an infuriatingly smug Cheshire grin.

“P-positive?” I stammered, hating how small and frail my voice sounded. “About The Fruit of Evolution?”

“Surely, there must be something nice you can say about this silly cartoon! It's been months now, hasn't it? I can't accept that a professional critic such as yourself could possibly—“

Alright!” I hissed. “Alright. Episode 10. 'Creeping Kaiser Empire.' I guess…I dunno…I suppose I appreciate that Oliga the loli cat-girl assassin isn't turned into some gross piece of underage eye-candy. Given the anime industry's track record, I suppose I should be thankful for how little sexual chemistry the show tries to force between this nearly adult man and the tiny child soldier with fuzzy ears.

“See!” Dr. Cane clapped with delight, which made me very certain that I hated him. “That wasn't so hard, now was it, Mr. Beckett? I don't suppose you have anything else nice to say about the episode, hm?”

“Hell no. Just because I didn't find it offensive doesn't mean that it wasn't terrible. If anything, the show's insistence on telling its Super Serious Epic Isekai Story is even more aggravating here. We get whole scenes devoted to the tragic backstories of random knights and assassins that simply do not matter, and don't even get me started on the useless classmates of Seiichi's that keep popping up for no reason. This whole final chunk of episodes is twisting itself into a pretzel to make the battle between the human and monster armies the big climax of the show, and it is literally impossible to care less!”

“I see…I see…” the doctor muttered, writing all the time. In that moment, for reasons I couldn't articulate even though I felt them so deeply it made my stomach churn, I was convinced that, whatever the doctor was writing down in that notebook, it was not to help me. I knew, all the way down to my bones, that all of this was off, somehow. It was wrong.

Dr. Cane looked up with that same knowing smile of his. “What else then?” I stiffened my back and did my best to put on the face of a man whose reality wasn't actively crumbling apart yet again, in real time. I didn't want to say what I knew had to come next.

“There's nothing else,” I said. “That's pretty much it.” The doctor tilted his head, like some overgrown puppy who just got told that he wasn't going to get another biscuit.

Nothing else? Really? No exceptionally terrible jokes? No especially unsightly animation gaffes? Nothing at all?”

“Nope,” I lied. I prayed harder than I had ever prayed before that he could see how hard I was gritting my teeth in between every syllable I uttered next. “It's just a cartoon show, doc. A shitty one, but still. There's no need to go all mental over it.”

“So you're saying…you're fine? You've been cured of the mania that possessed you?”

“Yeah, I guess so.” I said. “I'm not going to go off the deep end again, if that's what you're asking. I'm all better. Really.”

Cane shut his notebook, slowly. “Then all that's left,” he said, “is for you to write your review, I suppose! Take everything you told me just now and simply write it down! Minus all of our chit-chat, of course. That stays between us, naturally. After that…you'll be free to go.”

I was taken aback. “I'm sorry, what? You want me to write the Fruit of Evolution review first? Why can't I just go home?” Dr. Cane tut-tutted under his breath in a manner that I was certain had to be mocking. His face, though, was deadly serious.

“That just isn't how recovery works here, at the Trent Clinic. We believe that every patient has unique journey that leads then to their own psychosis, and therefore they must find their own way out of it. Ergo, I want you to use your writing to really let go. I mean, talk about good old-fashioned catharsis, am I right? That's how you make it all real! If you put everything you have down on the page…you might just discover what you're really capable of.” Dr. Cane clapped me on the back conspiratorially and opened his office door. “Just tell your readers what you told me!” he said. “Don't leave a single thing out.”

“You, uh, want me to come tell you when I'm all finished?” I asked. “Or do I just deliver it to the lady at the front desk?”

“I'm sure I'll get word once you've finished your work,” Dr. Cane said, grinning that toothy grin of his. I didn't trust him, but I didn't have a choice. I wanted to get out, and he was my only ticket home.

“…sure thing, doc,” I said, and I returned to my room on the other side of the clinic.

Except it wasn't a sure thing. All night, I sat at the small desk that was in my private room at the clinic, staring at the bright white screen of the tablet they provided me. There weren't even any false starts or meandering detours for me to reckon with. The page remained blank, all through the night. I couldn't write a single word.

I knew why, too. Dr. Cane had laid a trap for me, damn it all, and I'd fallen right into it. He'd gotten me all worked up before with that talk about “finding my own way” out of my madness, and all the while he must have known that I didn't really say everything I'd meant to about the tenth episode of The Fruit of Evolution. That I couldn't say everything, because the one single memorable aspect of that episode had been…

That bastard! I'd show him. I'd show all of them. I wasn't crazy. I was simply a rational, creative man who'd been forced to reckon with true insanity, and then asked to tell the tale. Well, I'd tell it, all right. I'd give him the best goddamn review I'd ever written! I would…

[Later]

I fell asleep with the blank page of my tablet's Word app still blazing bright in the night, mocking me with its emptiness. Nothing changed when I woke up hours later, though before I could curse my own insipid writer's block, I was struck by how freezing cold I was—I wasn't so much shivering as I was rattling like some old cartoon skeleton. The air was practically chilling me to the bone, as if I'd been tossed right out into the winter night.

That's when I sat up and looked around, noticing everything wrong with my surroundings. The lamps had gone out, but I could still see perfectly clearly, as the full moon's glow shone brightly through the gaping hole in the roof of my room. The moonlight was tinged that ruddy orange-brown color that spoke of ash and smoke filling the air. The previously pristine baby blue walls had gone a sour, ashen gray, with cracks running up and down the concrete. From where my room was positioned, as I looked through the window I could make out the boarded up front doors of the facility, and the overgrown and completely empty parking lot that stretched out beyond it, leading into a forest that seemed so much darker and stranger than it had just a few hours earlier. A busted-up sign that read “Jo n T nt Men l Wel s Reco Cen “ in fading letters hung limply from above the barricaded entrance. The light on my tablet dimmed as its battery died.

You don't need me to tell you what I found when I left my room, or rather, what I didn't find. There was not a single sign of life in the whole damned place. The barren halls were littered with cast off belongings and countless scraps of old trash, along with several copper dark streaks along the walls and floor that I couldn't immediately identify…or perhaps I just didn't want to. In this sickly crimson hue, someone had written, “Hail the Idiot God! Hail his Dark Brides and their Buxom Steed!” It was nonsense, and perhaps the only evidence that anyone alive had ever walked these halls, save for me. I shouted for help for some time. Nothing answered back. Not even the wind. From the moment I left my room, the whole clinic was swallowed up by a singular and unearthly silence.

I had only one place to go, before I left that ghastly place forever. Dr. Cane's door was partially stuck by an overturned bookcase and whatever else was littering his abandoned office, but I got it open without too much trouble.

“Are you there, doc?” I called out, knowing I would receive no reply. “It's me. James. I'm here because…well, shit, I guess you were right. I had to find my own way out of this mess, to write my own way out of it, but I couldn't do that without being honest. Honest with you. Honest with myself.” I stepped over the fallen furniture and crept slowly towards Dr. Cane's imposing mahogany desk. Towards the truth that I couldn't possibly bear, that I couldn't possibly turn away from.

“There was one more thing, about that tenth episode of The Fruit of Evolution, that I didn't mention. Even though I knew I had to say something. I'm pretty sure you already know what I'm referring to, yeah?” I was talking as much to myself as I was to whatever ghost of Dr. Cane still lingered in this makeshift crypt. “It's the bit where Seiichi has to pull another random spell out of his ass to free the loli cat-girl assassin from her mind-control shock collar. Where, on account of logic that I cannot possibly comprehend, the motherfucking ghost of Abraham Lincoln is summoned through some dark act of Idiot Necromancy, and he uses his slave freeing magic to save Oliga, shouting 'Free! Free! Free!' the whole time. All of this, in the same episode that tries to sell the serious, tragic backstory of oppressed demon folk like Oliga, whose mother got sent to a concentration camp. By the Kaiser Empire. Just…what the actual hell? How!?”

I took a step towards the desk. Then another. The doctor's leather notebook sat perfectly at its center. The rest of the office was caked in dust and ruin, but the book looked as good as new, as if someone placed it there only seconds ago, just for me to find. I had not noticed before, but embossed on the cover was a grotesquely detailed portrait of a weird cartoon boy playing tonsil hockey with a giant gorilla.

“How…” I said, my voice barely rising above a whisper, “How is someone supposed to write about that? How am I supposed to go back into the world, knowing that something so terrible exists?” That was when I lifted the book from its little shrine, and opened up its first page. There was no name, no record of the doctor or any other patients he might have had before me. There, in glow of the moonlight, I read the first words that Dr. Cane wrote down when we began our session.

'Who ever said there was a world to go back to?' On the opposite page was one more line: 'You cannot erase what is already written...the Idiot God has come at last...'

I could barely stand. I knew that if I took another step in any direction I would collapse completely and maybe never get back up again. An errant gust of wind tumbled through a hole in the doctor's window, the first I'd felt since I woke up. It turned the page over in the book, and what I saw there was enough to drop me to my knees completely. Somewhere, out there in the woods beyond, a chorus of screeching, hateful laughter, oh so familiar, began to rise up out of the shadows and the wind. I could just barely make it out over my own screaming.

There were pages upon pages of manic scrawling, and not in the doctor's handwriting, either. This writing was my own. It was just like the good doctor promised. There were all sorts of strange runes and symbols that I didn't recognize, but I could make out just enough of it. I read and reread those pages for hours, cackling and sobbing and choking through the laughter and the tears as my eyes poured over the words that I had written.They began like this:

“A couple of weeks ago, The Fruit of Evolution broke me. It was not any one thing—the eighth episode was not especially more terrible than anything that had come before it—but the slowly seeping poison of the series as a whole finally managed to work its way through my system and wreak havoc on my mind…”

Rating:

The Fruit of Evolution: Before I Knew It, My Life Had It Made 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 Twitter, his blog, and his podcast.


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