I have to give it to To Your Eternity, even after 32 episodes, it can still surprise me. Just when I think I know where it’s going with something it veers in a completely different direction.
For example, at the end of the last episode, we were told the citizens of Renril would find out Fushi’s true identity. If you haven’t been paying attention, that means not just inexplicable immortal shapeshifter but also declared heretic demon and enemy of the Church of Bennett. I figured things were about to get rough.
The reveal didn’t happen right away though. First, the episode continued to show us just how thin Fushi is spreading himself. Creating an entire city-state out of his own body is going to take a toll on anyone. Take it from me! and on top of that, he’s empathically feeling everyone’s emotions. He hasn’t slept, rarely eats, and is clearly getting to the end of his rope. This might be literal since Fushi does in fact have a rope tied to him like a tether almost all the time.
The show is doing a pretty good job at creating the atmosphere here. Even though I, myself, was well rested and bushy-tailed, I couldn’t help but feel Fushi’s exhaustion through the screen. and considering what Fushi is capable of, and honestly, all the things we probably don’t even know about yet, having him this tired all the time is rather frightening.
There has been an ongoing question in my comments regarding why exactly Eko is here. It’s not one of those mean discussions. We don’t think Eko shouldn’t be here or anything. In fact I quite like Eko personally. But as a character, she’s odd. Her narrative role is very vague and her characterization is somewhat uneven and difficult to pin down. I guess the question isn’t really why is Eko here but rather Why is Eko?
and now we know, Eko is a savior! (It’s tough for me not to put an “u” in that word. It really looks like it needs one.) Eko is the one that saves Fushi. I mentioned before that Fushi’s efforts have largely been in vain. He rarely saves the people he cares about and when he does there’s usually a great sacrifice involved. The Man in Black is pushing him toward this grand champion role and Fushi has never been able to achieve even the simplest task without having to pay a great cost.
Except for Eko. Saving her was easy and Fushi didn’t even set out to do so. It was almost incidental. And since then, she’s been consistently happy just to be by his side. And now, when he needs it most, she works very hard to make herself useful. What is that if not a saviour?
I was a little surprised to see March. I lost track of things and I was sure that she was one of the vessels that were lost at the moment. It’s too bad we haven’t seen more scenes from Bon’s point of view lately. I would be curious to see what ghosts are still following Fushi around. When he loses a vessel, do the corresponding ghosts go hang out with the nokkers? That could be a fun notion.
Also, Fushi is getting a lot of mileage out of the doctor’s vessel. He turns into him whenever he needs to patch up anyone. Is the knowledge not transferable? I understand that Fushi will turn into different vessels to use their physical abilities and properties. That makes sense and that’s how he’s done it so far. But with the doctor, he turns into him to bandage people. He could bandage people regardless of his shape. Is it just force of habit? Does the doctor’s vessel have some type of muscle memory that’s useful in those cases? Am I way overthinking this? You bet I am!
Anyways, it’s at this point in the episode that the red flags start to appear. Fushi’s web is all over the town and people are noticing. Fushi himself is slipping up a bit in his dealings with others and people are getting suspicious of al these new folks in town that seem to heal right away. Also, the buildings spring up really fast. Seems like that should have been a concern right off the bat but I guess it’s just another minor clue that something could be amiss.
Here’s what I figured would happen. Either the citizens would turn on Fushi, maybe even selling him out to the Church. And he would therefore have to protect Renril from the outside without the people’s cooperation. This would have added another level of complexity and obstacle to his quest. And at episode 13 out of 20, it’s a good time to throw in that kind of curve ball.
Alternatively, the people could have started down that route but a long series of individual speeches about how Fushi has helped would have stayed their hand when it comes to the worst of it, and over the next few episodes, we would see how they come to know the real Fushi and trust and respect him.
But none of that happened. There were a few speeches about Fushi’s vessels helping around town. We did see a montage of it and it would have been odd not the mention it in this situation. But it was a very brief and matter-of-fact affair. And it got no reaction from the crowd. Whatever happened to make the citizens of Renril to come to their conclusions, happened offscreen and without Fushi’s knowledge. And now, he’s a hero. Or something like that. Maybe there’s another word for it.
Season 1
- To Your Eternity ep. 1 – Forever
- To Your Eternity ep. 2 – Precocious
- To Your Eternity ep. 3 – Manners
- To Your Eternity ep. 4 – Pain
- To Your Eternity ep. 5 – Orphan
- To Your Eternity ep. 6 – Maker
- To Your Eternity ep. 7 – Dreams
- To Your Eternity ep. 8 – Freaks
- To Your Eternity ep. 9 – Home
- To Your Eternity ep. 10 – Flamethrower
- To Your Eternity ep. 11 – Confession
- To Your Eternity ep. 12 – Rebirth
- To Your Eternity ep. 13 – Empathy
- To Your Eternity ep. 14 – Arrow
- To Your Eternity ep. 15 – Return
- To Your Eternity ep. 16 – Freedom
- To Your Eternity ep. 17 – Promises
- To Your Eternity ep. 18 – Mercy
- To Your Eternity ep. 19 – Dato
- To Your Eternity ep. 20 – Happiness
Season 2
- To Your Eternity 2 ep. 1- Loneliness
- To Your Eternity 2 ep. 2- Useless
- To Your Eternity 2 ep. 3- Friends
- To Your Eternity 2 ep. 4- 6th Sense
- To Your Eternity 2 ep. 5- Love
- To Your Eternity 2 ep. 6- Betrayal
- To Your Eternity 2 ep. 7- Noble
- To Your Eternity 2 ep. 8- Family
- To Your Eternity 2 ep. 9- Invitation
- To Your Eternity 2 ep. 10- Daughter
- To Your Eternity 2 ep. 11- Loyalty
- To Your Eternity 2 ep. 12- Games
I really like Eko, I think she’s a cool addition, and she really brings Fushi back. Back from what I’m not sure as I don’t want to say humanizes him as he’s not really human and I think that makes his story unique ( a very nonhuman character) but she grounds him lol. Plus he stramge noises amuse me along with her large eyes .
That’s a good way of describing her
I’m still wondering about the rope. It seems like an problem moving around. Cats would want to play with it. It would get shut in doors. It could become a tripping hazard. Sometimes it seems much longer than others. Why not just untie it?
It’s a bit like an umbilical cord, isn’t it?
Yeah. It implies he can only form in the last image he saw of the deceased. Yet other forms don’t follow this rule.
The leg injury must surely hurt and slow him down but he never shows it. I have to assume the form he takes is therefor a purely visual representation of what he saw and not a biological copy. His interior is anyone’s guess. If he were to remove his clothing, there ought not to be anything there if he hasn’t seen it already.
OTOH, if it is an authentic copy of a body, that leg ought to heal. Hasn’t be been in his boy form when it was more grown? That’s human biology. I’m so confused!
It does heal when he stays in the boy from but when he turns back it resets. The rules are still a bit fuzzy…
Remember when I jumped the gun, by christening Fushi an adult? Just before he went all moody teenager on us. Eko was one of the reasons. I thought he’d become a surrogate father of sorts, the way March viewed herself Fushi’s mother. Symmetry! How pretty!
I thought the bond with Eko would ground him with a deeper sense of responsibility. I thought it would allow him to finally accept the heavy duty, bestowed upon him by his powers. He couldn’t afford not to, with a daughter depending on him.
Well, maybe she’s more little sister than daughter. And I think the above sells Eko short. But she works hard to support Fushi & bring him joy, and I think that’s one of the unique blessings of family.
Another important Eko-related aspect worth bearing in mind, is this mud-communication nonsense. That stuff’s way too random to just be some decorative world-building element. Let’s see where this goes.
Am I the only one who thought Kahaku’s eyes looked zombie-dead, when he admitted to Fushi “actually Eko cooked that”? It’s been a long list of failures for him. I really hope he goes nuclear, and soon!
Only Americans spell “saviour” without a “u”. Traitor.
Awww man. I knew that savior spelling would come back to haunt me…
That’s crowd dynamics for you. When everyone found out things could have gone either way; it’s Cam so passionately and sincerely defending Fushi that tipped scale. And it wouldn’t have worked if Fushi hadn’t casually helped them all round before. With something so out of the ordinary as Fushi, there’s really little middle ground: it’s either for or against (that’s what makes crowds scary; it’s an uncomfortable place to be for me).
And yeah, Eko got him to calm down a little and rest, something others have tried in vain.
As for Fushi taking the doctors shape to bandage people; that’s probably just what goes together? Some sort of association? Fushi, in has natural form, is really just an orb, and everything else is an extension of that. I mean, whenever Fushi transforms into his favourite shape anew he reverts to the original form. At the start of the season, he’s been in that form for quite a while, so he has aged, but then he reverts, recreating even the bandage and wound around the leg. I think of it like the shape literally being Fushi’s memory. He probably wouldn’t know how to bandage people if he didn’t take that shape. A human analogy would be that it’s impossible to bandage people without activating the relevant brain areas.
Oh I like that. The shape is his memory. I really like that!