To Your Eternity Season 3

Episode 10

I'm not going to lie: When I first read the episode summary of this episode — “Rikuya is found destroyed. The Nokkers confront Fushi.” — I had absolutely no idea who the hell Rikuya was supposed to be. It's a side-effect of this show having so damned many characters combined with the fact that I can't easily just look up character names to remind me of who someone is, because the To Your Eternity manga has been finished since this past summer. If I so much as type in just a character's name and the show title, it's all too easy to imagine the very first result being some article titled “Character X's Shocking Death!” or a Reddit post asking “Can Anyone Explain Why Character X Betrayed Everyone and Murdered All the Characters We Love in the Season Finale Before Revealing that the Whole Show Was Just a Dream Inside of a Snow Globe?” Such are the perils of enjoying media in the 21st century, I suppose.

Anyways, it turns out that I was worried over nothing. For one, Rikuya is one of the new Modern World kids who goes to school with Fushi and Co., and he doesn't take too kindly to what he perceives as Fushi's two-timing with Funa. Easy enough to figure out. More importantly, though, is how “Become as People” makes it quite clear why this Rikuya kid is important right now. The Nokkers, you see, are finally ready to have a face-to-face chat with Fushi. Naturally, this involves a lot of suffering and bloodshed.

Riyuka getting “destroyed” is just another consequence of the Nokkers' influence on people's lives. As you might have guessed based on everything we learned about Mimori over the last few weeks, Mizuha's bloody episodes of sporadic amnesia have been caused by a Nokker inside of her body taking over to “deal with problems.” This could involve anything from murdering Mizuha's mom to breaking every last bone in Rikuya's body, to stabbing poor Funa in the gut with a naginata for getting just a little too close to Fushi. In an almost hilariously grim and depressing twist, a Nokker immediately takes over Funa's body, since the girl was depressed and suicidal anyway. This allows Nokker!Mizuha and Nokker!Funa gets to grin maniacally and splash around in a pool of blood while poor Fushi has to just sit there and develop all sorts of new mental scars while he processes just what in the hell he is looking at.

Not only am I a big fan of any episode that pivots so hard into a tone of pure horror, but I am fascinated by the evolving characterization of the Nokkers, including the one from that previous Guardians' arms that has already caused the Orb so much strife. If you actually believe every word the Nokker says — which I don't, for the record, but it's all we have to go on for now — this parade of bloodshed and psychological horror has been the Nokkers' attempts at reform. They no longer “steal” human lives; they simply look for humans who already want to die and assume control over their forms so the original souls can get an expedited trip to “Paradise.” Sure, the Nokkers' still resort to wanton violence and emotional manipulation to achieve their goals, but c'mon, they're getting better, right? Doesn't that give them the right to live alongside humanity just as Fushi does?

Obviously, it does not, but you can't blame Fushi for feeling confused and conflicted over everything that he experiences this week, especially when characters like Tonari are tossing out more love confessions that complicate matters even more. Will it be possible for this quest for 'a peaceful world' to end in anything other than bloodshed and misery? I have no clue, but I sure am interested to find out.

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.