To Your Eternity 2 ep. 19- Victory

Posted on by Irina

There’s a basic formula that’s been used in dramas since the dawn of time. It probably has a name but I just call it “darkest before the dawn”. That’s when the narrative really lays on the despair and angst super thick right before giving our heroes some type of glorious victory. Basically, it’s exactly what To Your Eternity did in the past few episodes. It’s cliché and predictable and gosh darn it was I relieved to see things turn around.

I never said I was a particularly sophisticated media consumer.

Despite being relieved at this episode, I can’t say it was great. Over the past few weeks, To Your Eternity has been setting up a lot of potential reveals and dilemmas and I don’t think any of them got a very satisfying conclusion here. Except that is for Bon’s sacrifice.

First it’s great to see Bon in all his Tasty Peach glory again. Even if he is a ghost. I hadn’t realized how much I missed the doofus Bon. I still don’t completely understand why Bon didn’t just spell everything out for Fushi. It’s looking more and more like the explanation might just be plot reasons but I did enjoy that for once, his sacrifice seemed justified, reasonable and did in fact serve a great purpose.

As we guessed, possessing Bon as a vessel did in fact give Fushi the ability to see ghosts like him. And with this ability and the understanding that it brings, Fushi went from superpowered eternal to actual god in the blink of an eye. He can now just vaguely wave in a ghost’s direction to bring them back to life.

This was satisfying to me in a very basic dumb/fun way. To Your Eternity often dwells on misery and to have the show embrace this impossibly over cheerful outcome with absolutely no introspection was oddly cathartic for me. I’m not saying it was smart or even good, but I enjoyed it. This probably says more about me than about the show.

Everything else though was iffy. I had been waiting for the big reunion with March for weeks now. We all have, haven’t we? The show hyped it up so much, there wasn’t any other way. But when Fushi finally sets eye on March it’s a nothing. He just saw all his old friends that he thought gone for centuries and as such March ended up being just another face in the crowd. A very anti-climatic event indeed.

As nice as it was seeing Fushi and Gugu reunite as you could actually feel the friendship between those two, all things considered there was really not much ado at all considering how huge this reveal should have been for Fushi.

I understand that they were technically in the middle of a ranging war for the very survival of the city. Not the best time to have a sit down and deep dive into the implications of everything that has just happened so maybe we’ll get that next week. Still, it felt a bit rushed considering this is probably the biggest paradigm shift in the entire series.

With the undying soldiers, To Your Eternity started to question the nature of humanity and whether the ability to die is an inexorable part of that nature. Are we indeed still human if we cannot die in any real sense. It’s a pretty trite question however I don’t mind it. And it was a clear theme around with To Your Eternity could construct its thesis. Suddenly though, it’s been rendered largely irrelevant.

Fushi can now resurrect people with little to no effort and apparently consequence. 70% of the people in Renril are zombies and it doesn’t matter at all The episode didn’t even bother mentioning it. So what now?

All in all it was an o.k. episode. The writing was a but weak and it’s really going the easy route in resolving everything but at least it wasn’t unpleasant. High praise indeed!

Season 1

Season 2

4 thoughts on “To Your Eternity 2 ep. 19- Victory”

  1. I have a real problem when death in an anime essentially becomes meaningless. It loses much of the emotional impact. I feel manipulated because all the anguish I feel turns out to be a joke someone played. Haha! Fooled ya..

    Reply

    1. To be fair death was Always more or less temporary in To Your Eternity. I’m actually pretty surprised they didn’t resurrect the princess

      Reply

  2. I’m actually grateful the reunion was this understated. It could easily have been too mushy and made me roll my eyes. As for the payoff at the end of the arc… yeah, that was weak. Not sure what the fallout’s going to be. I did enjoy the arc, though.

    I’m still not sure what the show did with Eko. There’s gotta be a setup for a future arc, somehow. I still think that maybe all the pot people came from a single orb.

    I do wonder how long the show’ll be going on. If this show continues into the space age, we’re going to have a really huge cast…

    Reply

Leave me a comment and make my day!

%d bloggers like this: