To Your Eternity - Reviews

PROLOGUE
When the first episode of this anime aired, it was instantly labeled as a masterpiece for making everyone cry with how sad it was. Extra hype came in by mentioning the author being the same as in A Silent Voice. It used all the classic tricks of cryporn, such as a tragic backdrop story, an unfair death, and a blank in personality protagonist that looked like a cute doggie. It did its job perfectly for that one episode, and if it ended there it would be remembered positively.

PROBLEM #1: REPETITION
Unfortunately there were more episodes and more arcs, and in every arc the exact same thing was happening. The protagonist met someone with a tragic backdrop story, spent some time with him, and then he died. No matter how good the execution may be, the repetition alone was making each time to be less impactful than the previous one.

PROBLEM #2: LACK OF CONTINUITY AND CLOSURE
Constantly killing the support cast had the issue of not giving catharsis to anyone, since they died without resolving their problems. They tried to make it seem like the protagonist was transforming into them for continuing what they were doing, so there wouldn’t be any actual closure. That never happened, since he was not trying to bring closure to whatever they were suffering from. He only assumed their form, moved to a different place, and assumed the form of the next person who died. Basically there was no continuation to the stories. They were just cryporn that went nowhere.

PROBLEM #3: LACK OF TIME INVESTMENT
Furthermore, latter characters didn’t even spend that much time with the protagonist before dying in order for the audience to care about them. Not even the plot cared about them after awhile which is why it was killing them in a hurry just because it has to.

PROBLEM #4: IDENTITY CRISIS
On top of that, a quest to save the world from monsters was eventually introduced which caused a major identity crisis. What began as a fantasy drama had now become a sort of shonen action adventure. Fight scenes with superpowers became more frequent, it completely changed the tone of what the show was at first and alienated most of the audience.

PROBLEM #5: MESSIAH COMPLEX
Because of that change, the protagonist turned from a powerless wanderer to a super powerful messiah. He was no longer a sad nobody in a harsh world, he was now a special chosen one destined to save it by thinking and feeling more and more like a human being. It didn’t have the same vibe as in the beginning of the show when he was just a powerless nobody.

PROBLEM #6: MESSY CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT
There was also no way to like him for gradually turning from a nobody to a messiah. The transition was either too fast for happening in the span of a few days, or out of screen through lengthy time skips. He gets rewritten into a different character without ever showing you how.

PROBLEM #7: MISERYPORN
Furthermore, some of the characters the protagonist met didn’t even die by something bad that was happening in their lives. They kicked the bucket because they were interacting with the protagonist, so evil monsters and mean people wanted to make him suffer even more by killing his friends. What began as tragic coincidence eventually became deliberate miseryporn. Hey, mister protagonist, you suffer because we want you to suffer! Be miserable all the time. This is after all the only hook of the show.

PROBLEM #8: LACK OF STAKES
If the protagonist could die during all this mess, it would ruin everything he is going through, so at least there could be tension regarding his success or failure regarding the salvation of the world. But the thing was, he couldn’t lose because he was an immortal who always healed instantly no matter how many times they killed him. There was nothing to worry about; you were just waiting to see when he was going to win instead of if he wins.

PROBLEM #9: EMPTY VICTORY
Since everyone else around him was dying, there was also no sense of accomplishment regarding his inevitable victory. What kind of a victory would he achieve if nobody was left alive to enjoy it with him? Can you imagine going through all this suffering for the sake of saving the world, and eventually nobody is left alive at the end? Who thought this was a good idea? It’s just more suffering for the heck of it.

PROBLEM #10: DROP IN PRODUCTION VALUES
As if all these issues weren’t enough, the production values got worse as the show went on, and what began as a polished cryporn through the use of proper cinematics, became a typical to bad looking fantasy action adventure. And as simple as that, the initial hype for the show evaporated and now very few care for another season.

EPILOGUE
Once again it was proven why hype is bullshit and why you should only judge something after it’s finished. To You Eternity belongs to the bulk of anime that don’t use well their good ideas and end up being forgotten as soon as they are over. Which, ironically enough, this was supposed to be what the protagonist was trying to prevent by turning into his dying friends.

Isn't living the reason for life itself?

Before I begin, let me preface this by saying that if you haven't seen this anime yet, at least its first episode, then don't read this review. In fact, don't read any review. Just take this first paragraph as a heartfelt reccomendation, to pick this anime up, and experience it for yourself. Because this review WILL spoil the first episode, which for me is necessary for a review of this anime.

Now, with that out of the way, let's move on.

let's see what's out there

I don't want to jump the proverbial gun and say this is the best anime ever made. But I can at least say I'm reasonably sure this is the only 10/10/10/10 review I'll ever make.

Anime and Manga are vast mediums with a storied history of creativity, culture, influence from other cultures, and evolution overtime. The sheer amount of creativity that's possible with Japanese comics and animation, with their unique types of storytelling, are perfect for crafting masterpieces of art. I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that To Your Eternity, especially its anime, is the culmination of a long period of evolution in crafting a masterful story and presentation. Using novel concepts, a detailed world, brilliantly written characters, and expert sound and visual composition, a work of genius was created.

The first episode of To Your Eternity sets the tone for what the rest of the anime will be, and what an astounding start to a journey it is. You'd naturally expect in a shounen to have a main character introduced who has a dream, large aspirations, and an event that kicks off their wild journey into the unknown world ahead of them, but nope! Too bad for people who are more comfortable knowing what to expect, the rug is almost immediately pulled out from under you.

The "hero" of this story, or rather, an experiment wrapped in a character, is an immortal entity capable of shapeshifting into and taking on the feelings and abilities of, anything it encounters that makes a strong impression on it. In short, this main character's only goal is to learn, and experience things. This is an important point for later on in this review, so remember that!

It takes on a few different forms, including a dead wolf who dies right on top of it, and becomes that wolf. Then, it eventually meets The Boy, who is what this whole anime is about.

Nice to meet you! My name is...

The Boy is a lonely creature. Isolated from the rest of his tribe, he's forced to try and survive in the icy tundra with nothing but a shack, the ability to catch fish, and his pet wolf... who has died, and unbeknownst to him, been replaced with our Main Character. Through this encounter, we experience the psyche of this lonely boy who has grown up for years wondering when his family will return to him. 

So, he decides to set out on a Journey to find them instead, and see the world. To experience things. Of course, taking his wolf with him.

But it wasn't meant to be. The boy is forced to give up due to an infection and the harsh cold, and returns to his shack to die. The music goes from hopeful, to somber. The cheery atmosphere put on by the boy's ever hopeful monologues and lively animation, give way to depression and slow, sad movements. That's when you realize how well everything is coming together, and you're forced to feel what the boy feels. Isolation. The brutal destruction of his hope. The realization he'll never get to know what fruit tastes like, or see any of the world besides the icy plains he lived on all his life, or see anyone he knew again. At last, he dies, surrounded by pictures of people he brely remembers, but before he does, he tells the main character, the immortal wolf, to "remember him".

The wolf transforms into the boy, and carries his wishes with him, while the nameless boy who had lost all hope, goes off into a fantasy where his dreams come true. The Immortal, having taken on the boy's form, sets out to gain more experience, and explore the world, just as the boy had wanted to do. He would never die, just continue learning and growing.

Mondays be like...

Now you may be wondering... Rascal! I thought this was a review. Why did you just tell me a summary of episode one? What good does that do?

Because Episode One of this anime, is more than just the pilot episode. It is the whole anime, in a sense. That isn't to say there aren't surprises, or that other things don't happen later on, or that it never grows and changes, it does. In fact, that is exactly what I mean when I say episode one represents the anime perfectly. It speaks for itself. It just... is. It's beautiful, from beginning to end, as well as sad, tragic, frustrating, happy, magical, everything. It's the embodiment of all the feelings you don't know how to describe or deal with, in anime form. The feeling of being alive, and the meaning of what it is to live. And it sets everything up that the show will deal with in the future. Ideals of family, relationships, remembering people, life, death, meaning, even simpler experiences that help one find beauty in the small things, like eating good food, or having a laugh. It all stems from this one episode and blossoms into what becomes the whole anime.

This anime isn't a tragedy, a comedy, or anything else you think it might be, at least the way I see it. It's a romance. A romanctic ideal of life, death, existence, and deeper questions that nobody knows how to ask. It's... just art.

That's giving it a lot of credit, I know. A simple animated TV show can't really be a transcendental experience that perfectly encapsulates life, and its meaning. I mean... can it?

I honestly don't know. At least I don't know any objective answer on that.

Talking about the quality of this show, if that's all you want from a review, I'd have to say it's pretty much perfect. The music, pacing, narration, animation, character designs, emotional peaks and lows, story, character arcs, realistic and meaningful dialogue it all works well together. Impeccably so, such that every episode feels like a deliberately crafted and meaningful experience.

But at the core of it all there's something a lot more meaningful that affects us on a different level than entertainment, and that's proven by its philosophy and how many people get something different from it.

I'm going to just straight up acknowledge, that there will be many people, some in the review section of this very webpage you're viewing this review on, that don't really see a point to this anime. They'll think, why does this even exist as a story? There's no goal, there's no actual motivation behind it. 

But this anime is the point. To me, the very act of watching it, is akin to the act of just living life. Sure sometimes it's hard to see a point. But at the end of the day, the "point" is to experience it.

To live life, is the point of life itself. To seek things out, experiences, a purpose, other people. That's the point of this anime, just to portray that.

For some people, that's not enough, they need solid motivations and a clear goal, and I get that. But for me, this romanticized portrayal of life, its beauty, and its fragility, is all I need, and it speaks volumes more than any other anime, movie, or TV show I've seen.

Favorite anime as of writing this review.

10/10

Good day! 

*Deep breath*

Look! I would not recommend this anime to you as a starter. Neither for someone who has been watching emotional animes lately. Only watch it if you are feeling that you are ready to have your emotions dragged through the mud! I have seen most of the well-known dramas. This is so far in the top 3 for me. 

Without any major spoilers, you are going to fall in love with all the characters. This is a story of an orb, who comes to life to set on a journey of learning from the world (mainly humans). The atmosphere is magical from the first minute! The narrator's voice is a perfect choice imo. There is not a single bad thing I could pick about the graphics nor the sound/music. The world is amazing and well-drawn. 

Only 6 episodes in but can not get enough of this anime. As much as I hate to admit it hurts like hell I just can't stop watching the whole thing. This anime makes Mondays a good day! 

To Your Eternity is a series written by the author of A Silent Voice, but she also had previous experience drawing the Mardock Scramble manga. https://www.mangaupdates.com/authors.html?id=10548&orderby=year

SPOILERS WARNING since this review will cover story points from the anime.

Story- The story doesn't start till after the first episode. In fact the first episode can be seen as its own separate story, mainly about a boy who was abandoned by his own tribe. Its a very melancholy opening episode, one that left quite an impression on me. And to be honest, I wish the anime had ended there, cause I can't say I enjoyed the rest of the anime the same way with the first episode.

First off, the main character Fushi, pretty much starts as a blank slate. (He did start off as a rock after all.) Then he gets a wolf form, and eventually the body of the abandoned boy from the first episode. Which is kind of creepy if you think about it.

Over the course of the first season Fushi meets a number of characters, including March, Parona, Pioran, Hayase(the fucking yandere, but more on that in the characters section.), Gugu, and finally Tonari. From what I tried to understand with the first season, The Beholder(he's the guy who created Fushi.) pretty much created Fushi to be a recording device, to store information and experiences.

That's it, he just stores stuff, though I do find the character being an infinite vending machine pretty cool.

Animation- The animation for the most part is pretty decent, although later on during the second half you can see it go down in quality. But for the most part its decent and that's a good thing.

Sound- Not going to lie, the music is pretty powerful. Its honestly one of the best aspects of the series, and its also what helps to carry the scenes.

Characters- Now when we talk about characters, I feel like they are a missed opportunity. Anyone of them would have made a more interesting protagonist than Fushi if I'm being honest, except Hayase. She was nothing more than that obsessive girl who took an interest in Fushi and later gets rejected by him, mostly because of all the evil things she commited during the season.

I think the best villains in anime/manga are the ones you can sympathize with, though its not always necessary. Which is why I found Sophita from Casshern Sins interesting. Fighting was a way of life for the character, and yet when she met Casshern, she became obsessed with the guy. By the end of the encounter she was different in a good way.

But if I had to complain about a character being mishandled, it has to be Gugu. He was abandoned by his brother, his face gets messed up during an accident when he saves his love interest, he faces the possibility of Rean being married to another man. And during all this Fushi chooses to stay despite attracting the Nokkers. The Nokkers cause rubble to bury Gugu and Rean, and he literally dies from exhaustion protecting Rean.

That is just too messed up, for Gugu to meet that end after having a hard life, that never sat right with me. Its like the author is trying so hard to make the viewers feel sad for the character, and I think that's what bothered me so much. Its a character tragedy that didn't feel natural to me.

There's also the fact that Tonari didn't die(not that it really matters), but even then I didn't feel super attached to the character. She was trying to help Fushi, but she ended up being more a burden to the protagonist.

Overall- To be fair, I felt pretty optimistic when I started watching the series. Then at some point or another during 2021, finishing the anime was the last thing on my mind, probably cause I was experiencing burnout. I did finish the anime later on, but ultimately my first impression remained the same: everything the protagonist did in the story felt pointless.

It has me wondering what the author is trying to do. Yes, the protagonist reincarnates and he meets other people, but I have trouble being attached to the characters. Cause every time he meets a new main character they die, almost every single time. So the series just ends up feeling formulaic and repetitive, but I guess a lot of shounen have a hard time avoiding that.

That was also the case with Tezuka's Apollo's Song manga, with the protagonist dying and reincarnating every time his love interest dies. Which got repetitive, but at least the series was short. To Your Eternity on the other hand has 16 manga volumes and still ongoing. I am left wondering what goal the author has, if she has any.

<div data-redactor="1">Now that I think about it, Astro Boy and Fushi are pretty similar to each other, they both start off as blank slates but learn to become more human. Which I'm not against, but when its just Fushi as the continuous main character, it feels boring. I need multiple main characters in a story, to bring the best out of each other. </div>

Now I'm not saying reincarnation is a bad thing. Inu-Yasha was able to implement the element with Kagome being reincarnated with Kikyo's powers. The entire goal of Inu-Yasha was putting the Sacred Jewel together again and dealing with the consequences. That and Inu-Yasha falling in love with Kagome, which was something the audience could invest in.

So what I'm saying is that To Your Eternity is not something I can invest myself into, whether it be the characters or the plot. That's the conclusion I have come to anyway.

I really don't get the fan rave about this anime.  There is no story.  Basically 2 to 3 episodes are mini-stories loosely throwing in the main character.  It is so slow developing the main character.  They are dark stories no happiness to them.  There is some character development but then they kill off the character.  Any character not developed may stay some extra episodes.  The first primise was god wanted to see what happens(interesting) somewhere along the line they forgot that and threw in a bad guy trying to destroy the world.  No explaination just here's a bad guy that wants to kill our main character.  I have put off watching the last episode and I doubt I ever will.  Nothing about this anime was good for me.