To Your Eternity Season 2

Episode 9

Well, that was pretty fun. Or, at least, it was a decent way to kill a half-hour, and that's not an awful place to be considering the ups and downs that To Your Eternity has been dealing with of late. I think it helps that “Expanding Consciousness” feels like the plot is beginning to shift into a new gear after stalling out for a while on the overlong Prince Bon Introduction Arc, and forward momentum is absolutely what this show needs right about now.

The downside to this being a fairly action-heavy start to a training arc is the fact that, as always, this production simply does not do well with action or spectacle. The opening Nokker attack has all of the same problems as the one that we got back at the beginning of the season, in that it manages to take this massive supernatural threat that should feel like a fantasy-infused zombie apocalypse, and instead manages to deliver cheap and weightless action that feels more at home in one of those crummy House of the Dead rip-offs you'd always find wasting away in the dark corners of the arcade (I think the one at mine was called, like, Karn-Evil or something?). The point is, the action and suspense scenes in this episode are generally lacking in action and suspense, which isn't great.

Fushi's more one-on-one Nokker battles are a little better, if only because there's the ever-constant threat of losing his different transformation forms, but the recent ghostly revelations that Bon has introduced have managed to make that more confusing than anything. The connection between Fushi's memories and the spirits of his dead companions feels tenuous, now that we know that the Nokkers taking out forms doesn't fully disconnect him from those personal connections. This is a good thing for Fushi, I suppose, but it takes even more weight out of the fact that Fushi lost five whole forms this week, if not more (including Parona, and Gugu again). The plan is already to just get them back at the earliest convenience, and seeing those ghosts still by Fushi's side makes the quest feel less like an all-consuming mission and more like a mildly inconvenient errand.

Still, it's good to see Fushi in action and using his powers more extensively, and while I have to ask why it took The Beholder literally centuries to explain the basic functionality and potential of Fushi's replication powers, I suppose late is better than never. It's honestly both cool and funny to be reminded of how ridiculously overpowered Fushi could be, if only he was given more information to work with. I'll admit to getting a little bored when the episode took quite a few minutes to simply explain the physical and spatial variables that affect Fushi's ability to sense and create matter, but I'm hoping it'll pay off in the form of more strategic and interesting fight scenes. Oh, and Pioran is back as a horse! That's fun.

At the end of the episode we get what every good training arc needs: A time limit. Thanks to the hard work of his friends (and the ever-mysterious motives of the Nokkers), Fushi has a whole year to Git Good and become his best Nokker-slaying self. Will he succeed? Who knows! The last time Fushi went on a little jaunt across the ocean, he ended up trapped in the worst arc of the show's history for, like, half a season. Let us pray that things never become that dire again.

Rating:

To Your Eternity 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.