To Your Eternity Season 3

Episode 4

It just hit me how bizarre it is to see our Fushi wrapped up in a contemporary murder scandal. The Orb-Thing has been surrounded by death and despair for millenia, of course, but it just hits different to have Fushi sniffing bloody knifes and gutted corpses in a modern Japanese apartment. If nothing else, the change in setting for Part 2 of To Your Eternity has made for a fascinating recontextualization of the story's familiar beats and tropes.

Last week, the crazed and terrified Mizuha begged Fushi for his friendship, unaware of the eerie echoes from across ancient history that she was recreating in the process. In classic TYE fashion, it is equal parts heartwarming, sad, and disturbing to watch Fushi and Mizuha lay low together, talking about the wonders of bubble tea and modern food ingredients while also debriefing about the fact that Mizuha just murdered her own mother. Fushi may have learned a lot about humanity and empathy since he first came to this plane all those centuries ago, but he still has a fundamentally inhuman relationship with life and death. It's so interesting to try and read into Fushi's expressions when Mizuha is discussing what she does and does not remember about the murder, or the relationships that Fushi had with Mizuha's ancestors. He is at once the oldest living being on the planet and still very naive and childlike in his perspective. He means it when he says that he believes Mizuha is the one girl left suffering in this “otherwise peaceful world.”

Conflict still exists in this new world too, of course, as do pain, and anger, and all of the other negative experiences that color the human condition. Even though its played for comedy, we see a perfect example of this when Messar's penchant for gambling and carousing brings a whole mess of drama to Fushi's found family. Our poor Orb even has to confront the stupid cruelty of this arbitrarily gendered world when he gets all embarrassed for wanting to dress up all cute like girls can. Is there no end to the suffering, To Your Eternity?

Granted, Mizuha definitely has it worse than most. Not only did she murder her mother, but her mother is also totally back to being a alive, walking around the house and doing all of that breathing and talking that is just bound to drive Mizuha even crazier than she already is. It's not completely outside the realm of possibility for the audience to deal with, since we live in a world with immortal Orb-Things and Nokkers and all, but it's a lot for this one girl to bear. The plot thickens even further when we see the ghost of Mizuha's mother at the end of the episode, which means that something hinky is definitely afoot.

When the series first started, I don't know if I ever would have put “Bon gets Fushi and Co. IDs so they can go to school and get real jobs” on my To Your Eternity bingo card, but I think I like this direction for the story. Going to high school is, if not a truly universal experience, at least a rite of passage that contains many hallmarks of growing up and finding yourself that Fushi has yet to deal with first hand. Besides, I doubt that the show is going to fall into any kind of typical school-days anime pattern for long. There's no way that Fushi and his friends are getting their shot at a truly “normal” life just four episodes into the season.

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.