Anime Spotlight #82: To Your Eternity (2026 Update)

Article by Sean Wilkinson
a.k.a. the Anime Toastmaster

When people say hello to you, please remember to acknowledge them. Especially if they're providing you a service; servers and service providers are not your servants, despite starting with the same four letters. For example, "fuck" also begins many words and phrases, some of which have vastly different meanings. You can even create whole sentences with them, such as "Fuck off, you fucking fuckwit," but since saying that at work would get me fired, it's best if you just take a second to say hello to me instead of demanding whatever it is your addicted mind believes you cannot function without. Unless that's just how you greet people in your language; I don't mean to judge, if that's the case. But if you do say hello by saying "hello," I'll feel like I have value, and you get to have whatever family-friendly whatchamacallit fills your empty hole at the moment. It's a win-win, and it doesn't cost anything but your words and your time.

Also (since I made this a thing in my last To Your Eternity post FROM September 19, 2022), it's important to exchange pleasantries because according to National Day Calendar, today is Family Day and Good Neighbor Day. And (because this becomes important in Season Three) September is the month of Self-Care Awareness, Self-Improvement, and Suicide Prevention. Now let's have some Strawberry Cream Pie, Drink A Beer, and try not to get Rabies!

Here's To Your Eternity:

To Your Eternity is an anime adaptation of a thought-provoking manga by Yoshitoki Ōima (A Silent Voice) that follows its main character across boundaries of time that are beyond the understanding of mortal beings (with a similar, depressing but profound vibe to Frieren). Set in a primitive world (like Dr. Stone) and visually stunning (like Vivy), To Your Eternity follows Fushi, a shapeshifting, immortal being that begins Its life as an orb, but through chance encounters with a boy and his dog (and later, countless other life forms), gains powerful friendships, new experiences and memories, and (upon the deaths of those he is close with) new forms and abilities. Along his journey of self-discovery, Fushi not only makes friends, but enemies mortal and immortal alike (including the obsessive warrior woman Hayase, the soul-devouring Nokkers—essentially a dark mirror equivalent to Fushi that exist to hunt and feed on him—and the Beholder, a.k.a. the "Black One," who is Fushi's creator and mostly passive observer). The character development arcs of Fushi and those who pass through his long life are engaging, well-written, often heartbreaking, and definitely not worth spoiling here.

The series uses Fushi and his companions as allegories to explore themes of death, grief, memory and loss thereof, self-actualization (being oneself vs. the combination of people and experiences that affect one's life), religious fanaticism, spirituality, fate, love, and gender fluidity (including the opening theme, "Pink Blood," which is performed by Hikaru Utada, a highly regarded, non-binary, Japanese pop artist; it's slow and melancholy at first, but turns into quite the bop, and it was good enough to remain the OP for the first two seasons, where most anime change themes seasonally, if not by cour).

At the time of my original Anime Spotlight, Wikipedia said there were four seasons of the show, with only two having seen production due in part to the COVID-19 pandemic. But with the conclusion of the third season, it seems that was just Wikipedia being Wikipedia, as there was no teaser for a fourth season and no mention of any further production despite the concluded manga having more material to adapt. And although the second season makes suicide a tactical plot convenience and almost turns Fushi into the personification of a micro-managing surveillance state, To Your Eternity is well worth watching (and bingeing multiple times)...to a point.

That's what I thought throughout the first two seasons. But the third season was...difficult to watch for several reasons, and with how neatly the second season wrapped up Fushi's conflict with the Nokkers (all of them dead, Hayase's bloodline seemingly terminated, Fushi achieving an omnipotent and omnipresent state and figuring out that he can resurrect the dead, his mortal friend group reviving to live out their days naturally, etc.), a third entry also felt unnecessary.

A hundred years after the supposedly definitive victory against the Nokkers, Fushi revives his friends in a fictional version of the modern world (they've just been waiting around as ghosts the entire time, because they love him that much, I guess, which is disturbing, but not the most disturbing thing about this season), where they are forced to acclimate to a foreign culture and drastic improvements in technology while Prince Bon (the flamboyant Prince facsimile in the Season 2 poster, who can see ghosts) and his propaganda foundation throw money at whatever problems they have. Unfortunately, the Nokkers have also been waiting around in Paradise (this series' afterlife dimension) for a century, and can just come back to the living world any time and with any size and abilities they choose, so following the advice of the Nokker who had been a legacy of Hayase's bloodline, they hide on Earth en masse at a size Fushi cannot detect, and begin infecting the bodies of people with suicidal tendencies so they can take over when their hosts choose to ride the sewer slide to an empty save file. It's an obvious homage to films like Invasion Of the Body-Snatchers or The Faculty (especially the latter) that I don't think handles its subject matter with the greatest sensitivity or the clearest message. Is it healthier to share your burdens or hold them as your own unique challenges? Would the person that everyone else wants you to be live your life better than the person you are? Is the pain of enduring your anguish worth the search for someone who understands that anguish? Season 3 doesn't seem to know or clearly present a satisfactory answer. And it doesn't help that the initial focus of this is a timid preschool girl and her adoptive masochistic NEET pedophile father-brother...which is coded as a warm, healthy relationship (when the girl's Nokker version isn't trussing him like a baked ham and taking a cat-o'-nine-tails to his love handles) because Japravity is funny?

Add on the main plot where Fushi constantly abandons the friends he literally ghosted for a century so he can fight the Nokkers without them knowing, but fails at saving a descendant of Hayase (because overt BDSM and suggestions of pedophilia are okay to depict, but villain sex happens offscreen so the plot can exist) from her family's cult because he doesn't know what love is despite having witnessed it and sensed the associated emotions dozens of times (and even called out a few characters on their repressed romantic feelings in the second season). At least the third season competently handles the dilemma of trying to keep others happy to make yourself happy, versus finding peace in letting others be happy. Too bad the way Fushi learns this is when he has a birth orgasm as a dead pregnant turtle, and then almost has a Mommy Dearest breakdown when the circle of life decides his children look delicious. Yes, I'm serious. These are things that actually happened in an anime I watched this week. In an anime I used to revere.

And the solution that the series comes up with by the end? If the Nokkers can't be killed permanently, and they're everywhere,

the theory is to treat them like humans (with enhanced strength and agility, a healing factor, viral ecology, mind control, motor control, telepathy, and tentacle powers, but whatever), right down to having legal consequences for criminal activity and giving people voluntary access to inoculation against possession. Life is a choice, death is a choice, letting a Lovecraftian soul monster have its way with your corpse is a choice, and welcome to Whose Eternity Is It Anyway?, where the plot is bullshit and choices don't matter, but at least I get to make a joke about the male villains having huge Nokkers.

There's plenty more I could criticize, but I lack the drive to put that much extra emotional investment into a series that took so long (roughly two and a half years) to drop the ball (puns! Because Fushi was an orb!) this hard. No wonder the anime isn't getting a fourth season.

I was wrong about this being the end of my September content, so Stay Tuned for my real final review of the month (a Zenescope - Omnibusted on Zombies: The Cursed).

As always, please continue to support me and what I do by Becoming A Ticketholder (none of you have yet), leaving a comment at the bottom of this post and any others you have opinions about, helping out my ad revenue as you read because all I wanted was a Pepsi, and follow me on BlueSky, Tumblr, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube, Patreon, and LinkedIn to like what you see and receive the latest news on my content.

And if you or someone you know is contemplating self-harm over self-care, there is a lifeline with resources and a better means of addressing the topic than did the series I reviewed above.

7

Animeister,

Out.