The first episode of To Your Eternity made a huge impression on me. Aside from one of the biggest cries I have had in a long time, it left me wistful and I found myself checking every couple of days if a new episode was out. Even though I knew full well that it aired on Mondays. One of my readers told me that the Boy’s story was the one that affected them the least so I was a bit scared but still, I needed to now what happened next.
The good news is that I just finished episode 2 of To Your Eternity about 10 minutes ago. And here I am ready to write about it all dried-eyed and together. The bad news is that I’m not a big fan of little kid characters. There are exceptions, tons of them in fact, but much like for child actors, I can be picky with little kid characters. I just find that young children are hard to write and easily feel off to me.
For example, March is a perfectly lovely young lady with an awesome name, but to me, she was just so twee. She never quite felt like a precocious little angel but rather like a character that an adult writer wanted me to think was precocious. I’m not sure if that makes sense. As a side character, I’m sure she would be great and bring a nice break in the tension, as a main character she’s a bit much for me.
I also don’t really like ritual human sacrifice as a hook in fiction. It’s sort of always written in the same way and rarely very interesting as far as I’m concerned. More of a McGuffin than an actual plot point. And there were some inconsistencies that distracted me. The entire village, including her parents, keeps up the charade that everything is fine and happy and being chosen is a great honour. But then at the last minute every single one of them is crying out of the blue. I think a few scenes showing how other people around the village aren’t happy about the ritual would have smoothed this out. And if no one believes this is necessary and joyous in a way, why are they doing it?
On the upside, I think the episode got much better when the still nameless boy got in the picture. Characterizing him as still acting like a wolf was unexpected and I think it was a great twist on the traditional odd couple dynamic. I also really appreciate that we have a lighter and more action-oriented episode after last week’s emotional gut punch. I quite liked the narrator’s line at the beginning “no death is wasted“.
I’m full of questions now though. I thought that by taking the shape of something or someone “it” gained an inherent understanding of it. Guess not. It also seemed o learn much better and quicker when it was a wolf, which seems odd. I’m very curious to find out what it is. I’m quite looking forward to the next episode despite the few gripes I had about this one. The fact that To Your Eternity seems to be settling into a more classic adventure type of anime, is very good for my heart!
