To Your Eternity Season 2

Episode 5

Given how the first few episodes of Season 2 were paced, I was fully expecting this Bon Arc of To Your Eternity to be over and done with in just a couple of episodes. Now that it's clear that story is going to have at least a little more breathing room than that, it's easier to enjoy the somewhat meandering and scattershot “The Holy Man's Voyage” for what it is, and to appreciate the genuinely interesting story and character developments that we're starting to get hints of.

The first and obviously most important thing we have to talk about is Fushi's ability to apparently bring the dead back to life. I don't think I have to spend much time explaining why, in this particular show, this is a huge deal for Fushi, and the fact that Bon is willing to hide this information from his new “friend” to secure Fushi's loyalty gives the prince some much-needed depth. Yeah, his Sixth Sense backstory is sad and all, but the guy is just so damned much that I was worried that I'd never be able to appreciate what the character might bring to the story, but I really like this turn of events. The fact that the prince shows (seemingly) genuine concern and affection for all of his soldiers in the face of danger tells us that Bon is still a decent guy deep down, but the pressures of his royal position have him hiding the single most important revelation Fushi might ever have about his powers, just because Bon can't risk being abandoned. That alone is a more compelling character dynamic than what we got for most of the Jananda Arc.

It's also worth mentioning that Bon is completely aware of The Beholder's presence, and between that and the possibility that Fushi might someday be able to speak to all of his old friends again in the flesh, I can't tell you how refreshing it is to shake up TYE's well-defined formulas like this. The flip side, though, is that the story could easily go off the rails if it decides to make even the consequence of death something that Fushi can just orb-goop his way out of. I'm honestly not entirely sure I love the implications this has for the world, or where this season might be headed plot-wise, but I'm willing to be patient for a little while longer to see where things go.

Outside of the brewing Bon/Fushi conflict, though, our hero also gets to spend some time with the arc's side characters, and it's…fine, I suppose? The show is handling the reveal of Todo/Iris being a woman about as gracefully as you could expect, and there's definitely a lot of promise in exploring the ways in which Fushi can understand and define “love”, especially since Fushi has apparently decided that their first “lover” will be the cute doll they found in the local markets. Still, a lot of this material is going to need a lot more time in the oven for me to be confident that it will pay off. Kahaku is still too thin of a character for me to really care all that much about his love confession to Fushi, and I really cannot stand Pocoa's “cutesy-cutesy nyan!” shtick; it feels ripped out of a completely different (and much worse) anime.

Still, this is the most positive I've felt about this second season of To Your Eternity so far.

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To Your Eternity is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.

James is a writer with many thoughts and feelings about anime and other pop-culture, which can also be found on Twitter, his blog, and his podcast.