To Your Eternity 2 ep. 9- Invitation

Posted on by Irina

Ok, I think To Your Eternity needs to spell out its ground rules a little better. I understand that ultimately Fusgi is a very unreliable narrator, not because f any malicious intent but simply because he doesn’t know or understand a lot of things. Despite that though, I still think that if a story is going to establish such an expansive universe with was is essentially a detailed magic system that is a very important part of the plot, it has to be clear on what the limitations of that system are.

To be sure, there are a lot of shows that are worse than To Your Eternity in this regard. However, if the second season is going to keep adding new powers to both Fushi and the nokkers, it could get messy quickly. That’s where clear rules would help a lot.

They spared us most of the details but the battle at the church looked like it might have taken a real toll on the town. We haven’t seen nokkers attack a huge metropolis yet. So far they have gone after Fushi in fairly isolated venues. Tonari’s settlement was the most expansive and although it certainly was populated, it isn’t anything like this town. It was starting to look like a good ‘ol zombie movie for a while there.

Since this is the first time it was brought up this season, I was reminded about the fact that Fushi loses forms when he fights the nokkers and how poetic that is. I’m not sure how many new forms Fushi has picked up since he last fought mind you. We now know that he can recreate living people and anyone he simply meets. There was a flash forward at one point and Fushi has lived in a large city for numerous generations. Shouldn’t he have access to hundreds of forms now?

I understand that for the purposes of the show, we’ll only get to know a handful. It wouldn’t be practical to have Fushi constantly changing into people we don’t know. However, at the end of the day, is losing a form now just as traumatic as it was when he only had a couple? Am I being too practical about it?

I don’t know how to feel about Kohaku’s new role as nokker spokesperson. It’s kind of odd, isn’t it? I don’t remember if I went into this in season 1, but I don’t dislike an unknowable evil. The fact that nokkers seemed to be an almost thoughtless force of destruction, more akin to a natural disaster than an actual enemy, was something I liked about the show. They were too different, too alien to understand. There was even a chance that they didn’t have a motivation at all. In a way that makes them scarier.

It also linked them to Fushi. Both the nokkers and Fushi were something that seemed very alien to the world they inhabited. They were both somehow outside of the rules that bound everyone else. So having the nokkers just destroy everything in their path without reason constantly made me wonder if there was any of that nature lurking in Fushi himself.

But if they can communicate and explain themselves, it changes the whole dynamic a lot. Honestly, it could go either way. It might ad depth to what is the main protagonist of the series, which would be great plus. But it could also destroy the menace the nokkers inspired and bog them down in ill-tought out or over complicated rethoric.

So first we have a talking pet nokker, now we get a feisty immortal horse. What is this show doing? So I have to admit, when the horse got hurt and plunged off the cliff, my heart sank. I don’t like seeing animals hurt, even in anime. So I was pretty happy to see the horsy heal himself up. And if it had stayed at that, it would be fine. Fushi now has an equally eternal companion to travel along with him. And it makes sense. Fushi usually has a horse or a dinky of some kind with him so why not have one that is immortal like him.

But did they have to give the horse an attitude? Why? It’s supposed to be made from a small part of Fushi, right? Fushi doesn’t have that type of personality. And it also took Fushi like a century to get any type of personality at all. Why is the horse already a fully self-actualized comedy relief character who has his own ideas about what they should do next ad enforces the through violence? It’s a weird choice. I’m not sure it meshes well with the rest of the show.

I wrote that paragraph grumbling about the downside of a nokker with a voice, knowing full well what would come next. This idea that the one nokker we can talk to is unreliable, uninformed, and alienated from the others. He can still relay messages though which makes me think they have some sort of hive mind after all. Like borg or something. Once again this changes things. I still stand by a lot f what I said earier in this post, but I do think that making our nokker friend an outcast is probably a good idea. It’s a safe one in any case.

It will be possible for the story to quickly separate the nokker we talk to from the rest, reestablishing them as an unknowable evil and just having this one node as a quirky side character.

I do wonder why he would be branded a traitor. From the little we were told, the nokkers are acting in what they believe is the kindest way. They are freeing their brethren from prisons of flesh or something. Now humans die all the time even without nokkers so I figure that for them, it’s not that big a deal. It’s like trying to free your buddies from jail when they are due to be released in a couple of months anyways. Sure, getting a few extra months of freedom is great but if you fail, it’s not that big of a deal, right?

Also, I got the impression that they didn’t see Fushi as an enemy. Maybe as an obstacle but ultimately they figured he just didn’t know what was going on and he was being tricked by the man in black. It is very possible that I decided most of that without any regard for the actual events of the show. As it seems that the nokkers do see Fushi as an enemy regardless of the fact that they attacked first, and were very quick to brand the Kahaku nokker as a traitor for nothing more than trying to save himself (I don’t know if it’s a him but my sentences are already super confusing and I’m not confident that I can pull off the third person). Doesn’t seem like the deeply compassionate creatures we were told about, now does it?

I have been holding out hope that Bon will have a shot at a full life. And one of the ways I thought that might be possible is if h was actually taken out of the main storyline for a while. And since he’s separating from Fushi, that might be a bit more realistic. I mean, he’s also riding into war so maybe not but fingers crossed.

However, I haven’t mentioned Kahaku much. And that’s because I don’t think he makes it at all. And that makes me a little ad. Kohaku is a bit of a flimsy character, in that I don’t think his arc or development are very well handled compared to most characters in this show, but I still like him. I base my guesses about the future of the characters in To Your Eternity on very simple things. Like the OP. Bon is very present in the OP and since we are at episode 9 of 10, I think he’ll be around a bit longer. I also think his power of talking to the dead is too interesting to be lost now. I know it won’t be necessarily lost even if he dies but I do think he just brings too much utility to the story to be completely dispensable at this time.

On the other hand, we hardly see Kahaku. He is a character that has been present almost since the beginning. Even before Bon. Since he is essentially Hayase’s legacy, he is deeply tied to the lore of To Your Eternity. In a way, he should be the most relevant character aside from Fushi and possibly the man in black. And yet, you hardly see him at all in the OP. And when you do, he is the only character in the scene, as if he is a generally irrelevant extra. So I figure this spells doom for Kahaku and it makes me a little sad. Granted, my foundations are shaky at best and I am happy to be proven wrong. I guess just want Kahaku to have mattered in this story. It’s the most important thing in To Your Eternity after all.

Season 1

Season 2

4 thoughts on “To Your Eternity 2 ep. 9- Invitation”

  1. I’m farily sure the horse has a fully-fledged personality, because she’s not a new character. It’s Piyoran! (Same hair colour as she had in the flash back; man in black made it for Fushi – why would he, if not for the promise to Piyoran, etc.). I did expect her to come back – but not quite like this. It’s… interesting. (Now watch me be wrong and eat my wprds.)

    As for the Nokkers; they seem to consider Kahaku’s nokker a traitor. Does that mean they have individuals, or is that just how they learned to talk through this one rogue? Not sure what to make of it; when there’s an interesting possibility and a literal one, it’s usually thel it’s usually the literal one, though. I’m not getting my hopes up.

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  2. I don’t like it when they give vast unknowable evil such a mundane reason. If you are eternal, just wait for them to die naturally.

    In point of fact, it is life that creates these spirits that the nokkers want to free. They should only kill nonreproductive people to maximize the number of spirits.

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