Attack on Titan – The Final Episode – Fear and Love

Hoo boy, this was a ride and a half. I’m always a little overwhelmed trying to review a movie-length episode, and that did not change with this nearly 90-minute finale of finales of one of the biggest animes in history. There’s also the reality that the drip-drip-drip of final episodes and specials sapped a little of my enthusiasm, much as it did for iconic shows like The Sopranos, Breaking Bad, and to a lesser extent, GoT.

But for now I’ll break down the desperate final mission of the now-united faction of Titan and non-Titan Scouts to save and/or stop Eren from, well ending the world. He doesn’t make it easy, nor does Founder Ymir, who is able to conjure a seemingly unlimited number of iterations of the original nine Titans to defend Eren from their aerial attack.

Reiner and Pieck are the only Titans in their first wave, with Armin holding his Colossal powder as a last resort. But as the non-Titans start running out of ammo and stamina, it’s starting to look like they have to shift to a Kill-Eren strategy, something Mikasa never wants to hear. The group gets a big boost from the surprise arrival of Annie, who decides to join the fight after all, along with Gabi, who are riding Falco—now a very handy winged Jaw Titan.

Before they arrive, however, Armin is scooped up by an okapi Titan, and after yelling at himself to wake up, ends up in the Paths with Zeke. The older Yeager believes the meaning of life is to simply multiply, and that they developed fear in order to do so with more urgency.

Armin takes a more personal tack: there are times he believes he was only put on this earth to run around with Eren and Mikasa back home, behind Wall Maria. He even accepted that there was a specific order to that: Eren leading, Mikasa pretending to trail, and him bringing up the rear.

Both men manage to escape the purgatory of the Paths when Armin finds a leaf from that tree he and Eren and Mikasa always used to run to; to Zeke, it appears as the baseball that gave him so much joy to throw back and forth. Amrin ends up being freed from the okapi Titan and caught by Annie in her Titan form. I’m glad they got to reunite, even here at what may well still be the end of all things.

Armin and Zeke aren’t alone: they called upon those former Titans who died, in order to fight the multiplying Titans Ymir was sending at the others. Zeke offers his neck to Levi, who beheads him, and the Rumbling stops just a few yards short of thousands of men, women, and children trapped upon a sheer cliff.

Armin orders the other scouts to retreat aboard Falco so he can blow up the gigantic Attack/Founding Titan with his Colossal Titan’s explosion. But while the Rumbling has ceased, a weird translucent caterpillar thing still works to get back to Eren’s Titan, which would start it back up again. It even turns everyone back at the military camp, including Gabi, into a gaggle of Titans to defend it.

Only those who are already Titan wielders and the Ackermanns are immune, so Levi and Mikasa head back to where Armin’s Titan continues to do battle with Eren’s Titan.

Then, suddenly, Mikasa wakes up, as if from a long dream. She’s with Eren at a bucolic cabin up in the gorgeous mountains. This is the life they’d have led if Eren had gone with her and left their life of fighting and killing behind.

In reality, it’s just an illusion within the Paths, but it does enable Mikasa and Eren to talk again, since the last time they were in person he said some horrible things.

With Levi’s help, Mikasa manages to break through Eren’s Titan’s teeth to where his body is located, where she beheads and kisses him while Founder Ymir watches.

Armin has his own time with Eren within the Paths, first as little kids but gradually growing older as they traverse landscapes both familiar and trippy. Eren admits to Armin that as the Founding Titan, there’s no true past or future; he sees it all at the same time.

His plan was to have him, Mikasa, and the Scouts defeat him so they could be lauded by society as the heroes who saved the earth, in hopes the conflict between Marley and Eldia could end. By attempting this plan, Eren’s Rumbling killed 80% of humanity, and left Marley in a diminished state that they couldn’t fight Paradis if they wanted to, at least not for some time.

Armin doesn’t let Eren carry the entire burden; after all, it was he who showed Eren a book about the world beyond the walls and the sea. The two embrace as brothers, with Eren telling Armin that when everything is over he’ll remember everything he told him, while Armin tells Eren they’ll suffer the consequences of what they’ve done together.

Back in the present, Armin comes to, and learns that not only him, but everyone who knew Eren had some time in the Paths with him, and only now when he’s dead do they remember those times. Mikasa heads off with Eren’s head, intending to bury it beside the tree they used to run to.

Three years pass, and we see that Historia and her child continue to live in peace, which is what Eren wanted. Marley is still picking up the pieces of their civilization, while Eldia has grown more extreme and militaristic. Armin, Annie, Connie, Reiner, Pieck and Jean have ditched their Scout uniforms for business suits, and tasked with using their status as saviors of humanity to attempt to forge a peace.

Mikasa is also at peace, having left her life of fighting and killing far behind. She visits and tends to Eren’s grave, still wearing the scarf he wrapped around her, and which he asked her to get rid of. Instead, she keeps wearing it, and keeps visiting, until she passes away.

Time goes on, both the tree and the city below the hill grow larger and taller. Over a period of untold centuries the city evolves into a futuristic metropolis, and is then leveled into ruins by weapons of mass destruction.

Who knows how many hundreds or thousands of years pass when a young boy and his dog discover a cave in the ancient tree that survived all of that history. Somewhere within its massive roots, a small stone tablet, Eren’s grave, still dwells, and his remains below it.

This final scene has an almost Made in Abyss like vibe; taking place as it does so long after everything and everyone we knew in this world had long since passed on. More than anything, it most definitely feels like a finale. This is the end; there is no more Attack on Titan.

I’ve described, with variable levels of accuracy, all the crazy stuff that happened in this movie-length episode, but it remains hard to actually put my thoughts about it into words. It was at times a hard watch, and at times an immensely joyful watch.

I guess my main takeaway is that we are all pretty much children, and our time on this earth is short, and perhaps the best way to live our lives is with as much love and as little fear as we can manage. Love can obviously instill fear—fear of loss or change—but loss and change are inevitable qualities of mortal life.

Attack on Titan never pretended to know how to answer all of the hard questions it asked about the cyclical nature of war, death, hate, extremism, and suffering that are the products of our inability as a species to achieve universal love for each other and the failure to keep fear at bay.

But simply by addressing them, sometimes awkwardly or controversially, within the limited the scope of this band of flawed, scarred, intensely human members of the Scout Regiment, and watching them grow up, drift apart, then come back together, was a monumental achievement to watch.

RABUJOI WORLD HERITAGE LIST

NieR: Automata Ver 1.1a – 12 – (Part 1 Fin) – 420 Seconds

That giant beam from the sky that iced Adam? That was a satellite weapon that the Council of Humanity did not authorize YoRHa to use. And yet, it was used. When 6O asked Commander White if “this is okay”, White says, cryptically, “this world needs a god, even if it doesn’t really exist.” When the Pods detect a faint ML symbol, 2B and 9S ride them down into the blast area, where Adam is still “alive” but in rough shape.

2B prepares to finish the job, but hesitates briefly, as Adam recalls his promise to Eve and grabs her leg. 9S takes hold of 2B’s sword and plunges it into Adam’s head, defeating him for good. However, moments later 9S’ eyes turn red; the result of being infected by his hacking encounter with Adam.

This means 2B has to kill him before he goes berserk (he slashes her mask off with a metal sword arm), with no chance at backing up the personality of the 9S she’s come to know and care about…again. Even so, she does her duty and eliminates the threat.

Afterwards, 2B cannot help but weep at having to say goodbye to her friend once more. Fortunately for her, it’s only a temporary farewell, as all of the ML husks’ eyes start to glow green in sequence like fireflies, not only in her vicinity but all over the planet.

A larger ML mech rises to meet 2B, who draws her sword, but lowers it when she hears 9S’ voice. Turns out his uncorrupted personality data had been backed up in the ML network. 2B smiles in joy and relief, showing a great deal of emotion despite her past insistence that they’re forbidden.

9S gives 2B a ride back up to street level, and Bob’s your uncle: the end credits roll, announcing the end of the series less than eleven minutes in. When the credits end, we’re taken back a couple of hours to the Bunker, where the recently delivered 9S is undergoing diagnostics and checks.

In the process of connecting to the Bunker server, he hears a weird, unexplained sound. He does a little digging in the virtual archive and uncovers some forbidden data protected by a firewall. He’s then chased around the construct by defense systems.

Rather than destroy him, the units corral him into a black cube, within which he is confronted by a pair of seemingly identical girls in red dresses, whom we caught a slight glimpse of during the drunken battle omake after episode 10.

These girls in red talk in a bunch of cryptic riddles, but the gist is that they’re the ones controlling and watching the war between the Machine Lifeforms and the Androids. In other words, a Big Bad beyond Adam and Eve.

The voice of the Council of Humanity eventually chimes in, and 9S is given unprecedented access to top secret information. Among this info, something is revealed I had suspected all along; humanity really is extinct, and has been so for a while. There’s nothing on the moon but a communications server maintained by other androids.

The fiction of humanity surviving, and the establishment of YoRHa, was meant to improve the moral of the androids. This is all very intriguing, and I look forward to these mysteries being explored further in NieR’s confirmed second cour. Hopefully we’ll be treated to more fun 2B/9S interactions… along with more omake puppet shows.

NieR: Automata Ver 1.1a – 10 – Missing Eve

In the aftermath of the big Adam & Eve battle, 9S is shuttled back up to the Bunker for repairs (whether his memories are wiped again isn’t mentioned). Commander White orders 2B to finish the job solo and destroy Adam. Adam, as you’d imagine, is extremely blue, and has no patience for a ML dressed as a priest taking Eve’s place at the brothers’ table.

From the moment 2B arrives at a huge derelict factory festooned with religious banners, seething with proselytizing ML zealouts spouting boilerplate dogma. There’s some light comedic moments surrounding the fact 2B now temporarily has two Pods; they talk over each other and 9S’ wants 2B to converse more. Meanwhile the religious MLs get more and more fired up, while half of Adam becomes covered in tattoos.

You get the feeling 2B just stepped into the middle of a tinderbox, and while I’m not certain Adam’s change in body art triggers it, suddenly the yellow eyes of every ML in the joint turn red, and 2B and her Pods find themselves locked in a fight with a swarm of them. She does manage to escape to the elevator, whereupon she meets a still yellow-eyed ML, remotely controlled by 9S from the Bunker.

The happy semi-reunion vibes don’t last, as 2B jumped out of the frying pan and into the fire: specifically, an arena for a boss fight with a giant spherical ML with several legs. 9S uses the ML to hack into the factory in order to shut off the power so the boss’ shields drop, sacrificing the ML unit in the process. 2B manages to defeat the boss with a cool coup de grace. Unfortunately, she’s surrounded all over again by the hordes of red-eyed MLs. Back at the Bunker, alarms are going off all over the place.

It comes as no surprise that even in when White approves sending backup to 2B, comms are jammed. She’s on her own, and when she releases the Pods’ limiters, they barely make a dent in the ML numbers before going into low-power mode to recover. Fortunately, these Matrix Sentinal-like hordes of MLs aren’t interested in 2B, and pass right by her as they dive en masse into the tank of lava below, with the intention of becoming like Eve.

As for Adam, he’s destroyed his table, and looks ready to jump to his death…or do something else.I gotta be honest, while cool-looking and sounding, he’s simply not the most compelling villain. He has no one to blame but himself for Eve’s demise, as he’s the one who captured and tortured 9S and provoked 2B.

Could it be Eve, and his singular control over the network, was actually keeping the MLs from going berserk? Whatever the cause, that is the situation as the episode ends, with even the Resistance Camp threatened by escalating enemy action on all sides.

We close with a longer than usual puppet omake, involving the soft-spoken Popola and more rowdy Devola (both voiced by Shiraishi Ryouko, a fave of mine), 9S, and some desert rose wine. Hijinx ensue. I particularly liked the touch of using human hands to draw on the chalkboard and raise glasses for a toast.

NieR: Automata Ver 1.1a – 09 – Into the Lion’s Den

It took four months, but we finally learn where 9S ended up: right in Adam’s clutches, as expected. The trap takes the form of an endless matrix of hallways and doors, and Adam has all the keys. He stalks 9S, then sidles right up to him and mocks 9S’ fondness for 2B. Meanwhile 2B knows something is up, so she follows the Pods to the art room, where she finds specific coordinates.

After a futile call to the Bunker for backup (there’s no backup to spare), she uses her Pod like a Mary Poppins umbrella, arresting her descent into the coordinates. A pure white “Copied City” coalesces around her.

She walks down streets, through a church-like structure filled with reliefs of humans and a grotesque construction made from captured YoRHa soldiers, and in a library similar to the one in Beauty and the Beast, Adam finally reveals himself with panache.

Adam reminds 2B that they met when he and his brother were first born, but that there “wasn’t time” to get to know each other, what with 2B trying to kill them on the spot. Now he’s in complete control, and like a cat with a mouse is content to simply mess with 2B in an attempt to get her to express emotions.

2B takes the bait when Adam shows her a crucified 9S at his mercy, and seems to feed off of her surge of anger and hatred. The two spar, but it becomes clear that physical attacks are pointless; Adam can regenerate his body instantly.

With 2B seemingly out of options, Adam produces a pure white copy of 9S. Though Adam is disconnected from the network and thus mortal, a group of 9S clones spring forth from the ground and restrain and choke 2B. But before she passes out, her Pod tells her “the appointed time has come.”

2B wasn’t really trying to defeat Adam; she was only buying time for 9S’ Pod to hack into Adam’s system. Once it does, the white city turns charcoal grey, the clones disappear, and 2B is free to impale Adam with her sword. And she would have, too, if Eve hadn’t stepped in her path.

Eve protects his big brother, but as I assume he is also disconnected from the Network, when he dies, he seems to die for good. 2B gets off relatively easy; her sword is destroyed, but Eve’s blow merely blasts her out of the library. 9S is secured, and 2B is 100% emoting when she says “let’s go home.”

Any day’s a good day when you and your partner are able to walk away in one piece. But while Adam was once merely very curious and pushy in his desire to learn everything he can about Androids and 9S and 2B in particular, now that they’ve killed his brother I imagine they’ve made a mortal enemy of him. In other words, they might’ve taught him how to be vengeful, and thus even more dangerous.

After a production-related hiatus, the final four episodes of Nier:Automata have surfaced, and a second cour has been confirmed. I’ll be watching and writing about both. And no, I still haven’t played the game!

To Your Eternity – S2 18 – Bringing Out the Deathless

March is just a hair too late to reunite with her “child”, as all of Fushi’s vessels are stolen from the Nokker in Kahaku’s arm. When he chops that arm off, it escapes and runs off, leaving a distraught Kahaku, March…and Horse. So what now? March gets on Horsey and rides to find a doctor.

Her path takes her through swarms of Nokkers overruning the city and its defenses, which are now crippled because there’s no Fushi to repair structures or replenish ammo. The three immortal warriors are also out of commission. All hell is breaking loose. But March does manage to attract Bon’s attention. He comes to Booze Man’s house, and is soon follow by Eko, who recovers Fushi in orb form, still attacked to the city.

Bon believes the only way to bring Fushi back is to remind him of the sights, sounds, and smells of the ones he absorbed, since there’s still something of them within him in that orb. He achieves this by stabbing himself, dying, and becoming one of the ghosts that once haunted him. Then he, Gugu, and all the other dead vessels place their ghost hands on the orb, in hopes of bringing him back.

That resurrection can’t come soon enough, as Renril has been all but lost to the relentless Nokkers, who as we know are determined to “free” every person on earth from their physical bodies. A desperate fight outside the hospital ends with Kamu getting smashed by a Nokker ball, then Sera getting arrows in the back from what appear to be Nokker-controlled metal puppets.

Eko, who has a Nokker infecting her arm, spends a good deal of the final third of the episode preparing to leap off the tower (a scene foretold in the OP), but that arm stops her fall, and from it emerges Fushi’s head, this time with those purple eyes Bon bestowed upon him way back when. I am not entirely sure what is going on, but it definitely was a lot, and I can only hope that the fortunes of Fushi, his friends, allies, and the people of Renril will improve when all’s said and done.

NieR: Automata Ver 1.1a – 05 – It Takes a Village

Lily sends 2B and 9S on a delivery mission that takes them through a derelict shopping center. The extreme wide shots that dwarf the two androids, the merging of nature and the man-made, and that terrific Okabe Keiichi score all conspire to set the mood exquisitely as always. After showing his cruel side when he extinguished the ML “family”, 9S seems back to his chipper self.

He dreams of a day when the fighting’s over, the mall can reopen, and they can spend the day shopping for T-shirts. 2B says she has all the clothing she needs, and that “emotions are prohibited”; ironic considering she’s clearly had her share of emotional reactions in the past four episodes. She’s someone wrestling with the contradiction between her programming and directives, and the things she’s been feeling.

If last week’s amusement park demonstrated that the MLs emulating humans without proper context results in a state indistinguishable from madness and psychopathy, this week’s ML village demonstrates that a more tempered and realistic form of humanity mimicry can be replicated by the androids’ enemy. Led by the green-eyed gentle giant Pascal, a large population of MLs live in harmony completely severed from the ML network.

In a scene that is half-Laputa, half-Ewok Village, all shapes and sizes of MLs have their specific functions in the village, but rather than working like a well-oiled machine, their movements and behaviors are thoroughly human. They also have familial connections such as big and little sister (with the big sister being smaller). 9S is simply astonished that Pascal is able to converse with them so eloquently.

2B and 9S are given freedom to explore the village, and when they find a ladder that plunges far below ground into the darkness, I was waiting for the other shoe to drop. Thankfully, there are no flayed androids, but there is a very strange large head that is neither android nor ML. When 9S hacks it, a number of strange images of fellow androids flash by before his connection is severed.

Pascal joins the two and notes that this giant head is the one who inspired him to stop fighting (something he’s apparently done for thousands of years), and is now an object of worship. 9S gathered enough data to identify it as a creation of humanity of yore, perhaps also as a weapon, but like Pascal it seems to have found a new reason for its (now sedentary) existence. The vivid palette of Pascal’s memories is a neat contrast to the subdued earthy tones of the village.

The more 9S observes this seemingly perfect society, the more he resents them as “selfish” for deciding to suddenly stop fighting a war both they and the androids were designed to fight. It’s clear that like 2B, there’s a part of 9S that wants the fighting to stop, and a part of him that believes its the only reason he exists. For her part, 2B asks her assistant bot to properly map this place so that she and 9S can return someday, to buy those T-shirts. The clouds part, and 9S’ mood brightens when she says this.

When the two return to the village to say their goodbyes, they see a group of ML “kids” bickering and getting violent over a music box one of them found, so like humans, the ML village isn’t without its problems.

What was the deal with the images 9S saw when he was hacking the head? Was the visual glitching he experienced—during which time the very environment around him and 2B changed—related to that hacking session? As an anime-only NieRer, I’ll have to wait to find out.

As for Adam and his brother Eve, the two highly evolved MLs are evolving steadly, going from wearing tighty-whities in the cold open to full-on pants and gauntlets in the parting shot. They don’t just look dangerous, they look just like YoRHa androids. Coincidence…or design?

To Your Eternity – S2 17 – No Exit

When Fushi spots March’s tiny handprint on the wall, indicating that she’s alright, he recreates her body and disconnects it, just as he does for the three immortal warriors. The body doesn’t come to life because March is still alive somewhere in the city. Fushi just doesn’t know that. No one does.

Hylo faces a moral crisis of sorts when he encounters a thief breaking evac protocols. The old man doesn’t care about consequences, he was born and raised in prison and never had a roof of his own under his head. Hylo lets him go, but that same thief ends up killing a young boy when he robs a house. Is he damned if he does and damned if he doesn’t?

The biggest blow to the immortal allies, however, is Messar. He arrives at the palace to find Alme mourning the death of her father the king. Then she runs to the nearest balcony to jump off, and he catches her. He lifts her veil to reveal she’s become infected by Nokkers. He’s forced to kill her, then asks Fushi to bring her back to life. He produces a copy of Alme’s body, but there’s no sign of life.

Being asked to bring Alme back reinforces Fushi’s suspicion that Bon, who gathered the three allies, is keeping something from him (which is true!). That’s confirmed when Bon says he can’t discuss it until the battle is over and won. He won’t talk about it, just as he hasn’t brought it up ever, because he doesn’t want to shoulder Fushi with yet one more thing.

And yet, in the closing hours of this, just the fourth day of the Battle of Renril, the weight Fushi already carries threatens to crush him. His nose is almost always bleeding, forcing him to shift from one vessel to another constantly. Kahaku frees himself (by killing Kai), then accidentally kills the three when they resurrect at the Booze Man’s house for dinner.

Fushi initially says he wants “a breather”, but then confides in Kahaku that he wants this al to end. The constant death, pain, anxiety, and creeping  defeat as the Nokkers continue their relentless advance—it’s all too much. Kahaku says he’ll help Fushi, but then his left arm suddenly goes berserk, tearing and slashing at Fushi’s vessels one by one.

In the midst of this, the March he unknowingly resurrected bursts through the door, having been brought there by Horse. She scuffles with Kahaku and his arm, begging him not to kill Fu-chan. His mother, the one who named him two centuries ago, is finally here. Will she be able to save him not just from this assault, but his own feelings of despair and futility?

To Your Eternity – S2 16 – Cheat Code

Fueled by rage and his hatred of Nokkers, Fushi punches it into overdrive, constantly transforming into different vessels once he gets exhausted, which happens at different intervals with different vessels. Then, when the Nokkers have Fushi cornered, he is rescued … by Kai, Hylo, and Messar, who have been resurrected.

We later learn Bon did so by disconnecting the bodies from Fushi by cutting the rope. It’s Bon’s way of easing Fushi into the realization that he is capable of resurrecting dead people; the three warriors are a trial run. Fushi puts them to good use, but in cases where he transports them from one distant location to another, the fastest way to do so is for them to die.

As the logistics of defending Renril continue to grow in complexity as the battle rages on, the cycle of death and rebirth, and recycling of material (both rubble and corpses) takes on a nightmarish scale and level of efficiency. Fushi can pretty much infinitely conjure crossbow bolts, gun bullets, and the bodies of his three deathless allies.

This is the kind of shit that gives Kahaku pause, because the more Fushi takes on and creates with his expanding powers, the more he risks losing his humanity. You can see it in his relatively blank expression when the warriors decide to kill themselves as a shortcut.

When Kamu and the other citizen soldiers restrain Kahaku, they fear he’s a Nokker (he also cuts off Yuiss’ arm because she got infected, so he really saved her life). Kahaku, perhaps given unique perpective by his left arm, still sees “the black demon” as the ultimate puppet master and not someone deserving of loyalty.

Kahaku is on Fushi’s side; the only one looking after his well-being as a person. Everyone else considers that a luxury they can’t afford, they, including Bon, need him operating at peak efficiency and, where the Nokkers are concerned, peak lethality.

So it’s heartening as Fushi continues to get swept up in a maelstrom of death and destruction with no end in sight, he happens to spot March’s unmistakable calling card: a handprint that indicates she’s “doing great”. I wish I could say the same of Fushi!

To Your Eternity – S2 10 – Eko From the Beyond

Fushi has been hard at work training on the beached galleon, but is running into problems replicating something so big and complex. He’s able to summon forth each and every part of the ship, but not the ship in its entirety. The Beholder advises him to develop better “awareness” that the objects he creates “belong to him.”

Prince Bon and Kahaku are also hard at work, defeating Nokkers and warning the crown princess of Renril that a Nokker attack is coming. While the masked, obscured princess refuses to abandon the castle or town, she does agree to an alliance. Taking a break from training, Fushi discovers a town.

There he finds new fruits and vegetables at the market, and pays for them with money. He then finds poor and starving people and gives them the food he bought, but when he tries to give money to a woman and her kid he’s met with resentment and suspicion. The woman won’t let him “control” them with his money.

Fushi then senses intense pain coming from a filthy girl with big eyes who is trapped in a cage in a circus tent. He breaks her and her little brother out in the middle of the night and rides back to his galleon base, but on the way the boy dies and he buries him.

Back aboard the ship, Fushi ensures the girl doesn’t meet the same fate, as he feeds her, shows her his menagerie, sews her a dress, bathes her, and cuts her hair. Since the only word she says is “-eko” in response to the presence of a cat (neko), Fushi decides to address her as “Eko.” She stays aboard while he continues his training.

When she senses her falling after trying to plug a leak, he transforms into her brother, and is able to communicate with her through her clay pot, which is apparently a particular ability of her people. This experience helps him to better understand the Beholder’s advice, and he rejects the idea that he “controls” anyone or anything.

Rather, he has to look at things as having always been a part of him. Everything he sees or has ever seen is not merely a collection of possessions, but his very existence itself. He surrounds the ship with an elaborate tangle of vines from his body, and from his spot below deck is able to achieve a number of tasks remotely.

After a while without any contact, Kahaku and Bon decide to return to the beach to check on Fushi, and find that he’s essentially created his own little mini-world. His face covered and body constrained by vines, Fushi confirms that everything within a 3km radius of him…is him. 

He’s also able to teleport, after a fashion, by creating an ambulatory copy of himself through the network of vines. He prepares tea and pastries for his friends and introduces them to Eko, whose people Kahaku is aware of. Fushi communicates with her again as her brother, and learns she has no home to return to, so she’ll be accompanying him on their mission to protect Renril. She seems fine with that!

Bon heads to Uralis to try to find “Immortal allies” that will help them, while Fushi, Eko, Kahaku and Horse head to the beautiful and imposing palace city of Renril, where they’ll likely meet with the crown princess and some of her trusted officers.

Considering her prominent presence in the ED, I was looking forward to Eko’s introduction, and was not disappointed. She rivals March and Rynn for cutest character in TyE, and I feel both we and Fushi have only just scratched the surface of her clay pot abilities.

To Your Eternity – S2 09 – A Horse of Course

The Nokkers attack the city, but as usual TYE has presentation issues when it comes to capturing the scale and complexity of the ensuing chaos. Events come down to Fushi in his various forms warning townsfolk to flee “east”, which seems somewhat arbitrary. People crowd and convene in the head church, only for that to be the location where the Nokkers appear. As Fushi battles, he loses his vessels one after the other.

By the time the sun rises and the dust clears, the Nokkers have been defeated, but untold people have been killed, while Fushi has lost Parona, Gugu, Uroy, Shin, and Ligurd. Bon and Kahaku are rightfully concerned: if he can lose five of his precious vessels in just one battle, he can scarcely afford to lose many more in the next. A kindly holy knight gives Fushi his blessing, but it’s not enough.

While Fushi has gotten a lot better at fighitng the Nokkers, we’ve arrived at a point where they’re a step ahead, hiding in quicksand and capitalizing on his lack of muscle (March can’t really fire arrows, for instance). The Beholder ends up bailing Fushi out with a Horse he created from a piece of Fushi’s flesh. The horse has a mind of its own, and keeps Fushi from rushing back into battle too soon.

While Kahaku shows that he can still fight the Nokkers off with his left arm, that arm Nokker relays a message from its fellow Nokkers who regard it as a traitor: they’ll be launching an attack on the largest human city in a year’s time. If Fushi wants his vessels back, he’ll go to that city and “play the game.”

Kahaku, Bon, and the forces of Uralis will aid the city in preparation and evacuation, while Fushi stays aboard a beached galleon from Uralis that Bon has designated his new base. There, he must learn how to create larger objects in order to gain a new advantage against the biggest Nokker threat yet.

To Your Eternity – S2 08 – Baron Spring Roll

Bishop Cylira is on the ground, as is the entire assembled crowd for the execution. But Bon lies dead, his bloody severed head next to his body, so Ligurd!Fushi was too late, right? Wrong. Bon wakes up in the brick shelter Fushi built, flanked by his dead companions, but he himself is still quite alive, thanks to Fushi.

Appearing as Rynn, Fushi explains that she studied Tonari’s journal and developed an easily-replicated poison that knocked out the execution crowd and gave her time to rescue Bon and replace him with a dead copy. Fushi makes clear that he wasn’t clever enough to come up with such a plan, but his vessels’ assembled knowledge (not to mention wings) aided him.

While the Uralis royal family initially believes their son dead, and Bon watches from on high (a bit like Huck Finn at his own funeral) Rynn!Fushi presents them with the still-alive Bon, and they gang-tackle him with elation and relief. That said, now that the church believes him to be dead, he can no longer carry on as Prince Bonchein.

That’s fine with him, as he cuts his hair and shaves to hide his past identity. He now realizes that he’s happy just to be with his family, and no longer thirsts for the throne. Todo is also reported to have died serving his prince, so the now skinny-from-malnourishment Iris sees no further need to hide her true self.

Meeting Iris, the girl he met at the palace who gave him the flower handkerchief, briefly breaks Bon, due in part to how he treated her when she was Todo. After meeting with Chabo, he sulks in his bedchamber, then chews Iris out, as he can’t believe she and Todo were the same person.

This leads Iris to run to the tea table to scarf down enough food to get fat again, but Bon stops her, apologizes for his harsh words, and asks her to stay at the castle with him and his family.

Fireworks memorializing Prince Bon light the skies, Iris agrees, and the two commit to taking care of Chabo; a new found family of three. It’s a beautiful, fairy tale ending for Bon, now known as Baron Spring Roll, Iris, FKA Todo, and Chabo. All thanks to Fushi.

As Rynn!Fushi prepares to depart for her next destination, Bon mentions how he said he’d reward her for her service. Bon probes her by asking how she’d feel if all her lost friends were immortal. But after asking this, Fushi feels a pang of pain—it’s Kahaku.

Distraught over the fact the Guardians are disbanding due to Fushi’s condemnation as a heretic and how he was rejected by the woman he loved (Parona!Fushi), Kahaku got ruinously drunk in the stables and tried to cut his Nokker arm off, but failed. The Nokker arm then grabs a knife, not to hurt anyone, but to communicate with Fushi.

It tells her that the Nokker are simply trying to “help everyone”, including their brethren imprisoned by the Beholder. Nokkers are souls, and wish to free the souls of humans from their bodies. “In death you can be free,” etc.  It also says that Fushi can revive the dead, but Bon erases those words from the dirt before they sink in for Fushi.

Finally, the Nokker arm reports that the next target for the Nokkers will be the head church of the Church of Bennett. That means the church’s only hope is the one they just executed for being a servant of the devil. Fushi heads to the church regardless; humans are humans, and they need his help.

Bon prepares to leave the palace for a while, perhaps to help Fushi, and Iris tells him she’ll wait as long as it takes for his return, which is hopefully before Chabo gets lonely. Bon also says that Fushi said he’d be happy if all his lost friends were immortal. If only he knew he could bring them all back if he wanted…

To Your Eternity – S2 07 – Prince of Principle

Bon and Todo’s imprisonment continues, and Cylira makes it clear he won’t be released until he confesses to consorting with Fushi, a demon and servant of the devil, and begs for forgiveness and mercy of the church. Bon’s…not in a big hurry to do that.

It isn’t until he’s spent a fair amount of time in the cell that Bon even notices he’s not alone: there’s a little boy named Chabo, who is accompanied by the ghost of his mom (Bon tells him his mom is dead, but he doesn’t believe him). When Bon horks down his bread for the day, Todo gives him half of hers, and keeps doing so, because she loves him.

In between inquisitions from the church, Bon, Todo, and Chabo haven’t a lot to do besides sit or lie around. Todo learns that Bon really can see and hear the dead—it’s how he’s able to perfectly recite scripture, and know that Chabo’s mother was murdered by a member of the church. One evening Bon sees Todo’s shadow on the rocks and sees that she’s lost a lot of weight.

As she and Chabo grow thinner and Bon’s beard grows longer, Fushi is still alive, constantly sleeping and waking up. With only a couple of breaths of consciousness each time, he doesn’t have enough time to remember where he is or what he needs to do.

But as the weeks pass, rather than completely forget himself and waste away into nothingness, Fushi learns how to burn red hot like the metal that encased him. He melts the surrounding iron and begins to ascend from his cell, delighting his devotees but angering the followers of the church.

They douse the molten iron with water, resulting crude statue of Fushi frozen at the top of the metal cell. Cylira laughs and declares a great victory has been achieved by the church that will go down in the annals of the city’s history. He didn’t notice that Fushi actually escaped in the form of Tonari’s owl, Ricard.

Fushi flies to Bon’s cell, where Chabo has already wasted away and Todo is quiet on the other side. Once he burns through the bars and puts the gators to sleep, Bon tells him to take Chabo and Todo but create lifeless copies that will remain with him.

He’s decided to stay put and get released by the Church. He gets Fushi’s leave to confess to him being a demon, since that’s how he’ll stay alive. If Bon goes with him now, he’ll be a fugitive and the church won’t stop chasing them. He tells Fushi to tell Todo when she awakes that he’s sorry he didn’t make the right decision.

Of course, when morning comes and the church asks why a demon visited and killed Todo and the boy but not Bon, he claims that God protected him, proving he has God’s blessing. Cylira doesn’t quite buy it, but he does offer Bon a chance to confess and pledge allegiance to the church. But Fushi can’t do it. He won’t. He loves Fushi too much.

If that means he has to die, so be it. And so Bon is taken back to the capital to be publically executed by guillotine as a heretic. Bon is not alone on the walk to meet his end. The kind, gentle ghosts he’s seen and spoken with for years are right there beside him, assuring him death’s not so bad. Bon also meets his death with gratitude that he got to meet and spend time with Fushi.

No matter what the church says or does, It wasn’t able to destroy his faith or love in Fushi. Maybe his noble death will start a larger anti-Bennett uprising; maybe it won’t. But like Hayase’s will in Kahaku’s Nokker, Parona’s will in Fushi, and his ghostly friends, death most likely won’t be the end of Bon.

To Your Eternity – S2 06 – The Church of Heavy Metal

When Parona!Fushi mentions how they’ve been reading up on the concept of marriage and the “fluffy feeling” she gets from Kahaku and others, he embraces them, and that’s when Fushi becomes nauseous. As it happens, even if Fushi were open to becoming Kahaku’s wife, that’s not something Parona would tolerate. The very touch of Kahaku repels Parona, who was murdered by Hayase. Bon orders Kahaku to stay away from Fushi for the time being.

The campaign to gain Fushi followers continues in the next city, but this time many of the townsfolk have heard rumors that Fushi can now resurrect the dead. While true in the case of Anna, this comes as a surprise to Fushi, since Bon never told them. Fushi is shunted off into an alley, where a Bennett priest warns them that Bon is to be arrested and executed for heresy, but if Fushi surrenders willingly, their friends will be spared.

Fushi agrees, but neither Kahaku nor Todo buy what the Church is selling. Bon, when approached by Bishop Cylira, he grudgingly agrees to give Fushi up in exchange for a recommendation from the Church that Bon ascend to the throne of Uralis. It’s not what he wants, but it’s what’s best for his kingdom, and also what he’s been working for his whole life.

Todo whips up the crowd, and a town guard captain seemingly has Team Fushi’s back when he insists the church prove Fushi is a demon and not a servant of God. Cylira does so by giving Fushi a test: if they can’t revive a recently-deceased bishop, the church will have its proof.

Fushi, who at this point is still convinced they can’t revive anyone, copies the bishop’s corpse but is unable to revive him. They’re seized, and when Bon, Todo, and Kahaku try to intervene, Todo is stabbed by a sword and Bon is knocked out.

Bon comes to in an open-air cell suspended above a canyon, stripped of his gramps’ heirloom armor. Fushi is arguably worse off, as they’ve been sealed in a solid iron box. Fushi transforms into Gugu and breathes fire on the circular hatch, but can’t quite get it hot enough to melt the iron. After several attempts, Fushi starts to feel winded and nauseous.

The Beholder tells him he’s missing something they need (I’m guessing fresh air), and no matter who he transforms into, the bad feeling doesn’t subside. Then the hatch opens and molten metal starts to pour on them. The Beholder starts counting to see how long Fushi can last in a constant state of immolation and regeneration.

Of Team Fushi, only Kahaku and a handful of Guardians remain free. When they try to free Fushi from the cell in the dead of night, Pocoa emerges from her barrel and urges caution, and asks Kahaku to have faith in Bon and Fushi’s luck.

She might not be wrong, either! Todo, at least, survived the sword strike thanks to her embroidery stopping the blade before it could pierce her. Bon and Todo realize they’re in adjacent cells; perhaps they can work together. And even after over 100,000 seconds (over 27 hours), Fushi the immortal’s body still has form. All we can do is wait and see if that’s enough.