Takopii no Genzai Episode 6 Discussion

“People can be good and bad at the same time” therein lies the true message of this story. It’s messy, it’s hard to watch, but at the end of the day it’s a story about broken people perpetuating the cycle of violence and abuse. The word “masterpiece” gets thrown around a lot these days, but this is truly the textbook definition of a masterpiece. Studio Enshiya and everyone involved in this made not just one of the best anime of the year, but one of the best anime ever made and more importantly, they’ve challenged us all to be more empathetic and kinder.

There’s a lot I loved about this finale, but I’m going to focus on two scenes that encapsulate what made this story so special. The first is Shizuka’s breakdown on Takopi. “What else could I have done? I don’t have a grown up to look after me. They all told me I stink but where do I stink?” Is one of the most heartbreaking things I’ve ever heard and exactly why I will always defend Shizuka’s crash out. She had absolutely NO ONE on her side to stick up for her or even teach her how to deal with things. How could you EVER blame someone when they were never taught an alternative? While Marina was abused, at least she had a dad(sometimes) and a mom(half the time before one of her episodes), Shizuka had her dog and the clothes on her back. Some of the best voice acting you’ll hear this year in that scene.

Takopi’s “I’m sorry I can’t do anything for you” line broke me too because it’s a reminder that Takopi himself is just a scared little kid who comes from a planet where everyone’s happy and kind. This is all a new experience for him and he doesn’t have anyone to talk to or get advice from either. He was too pure for this world. His farewell to Shizuka was such a profound scene. In his last moments, all he wanted was for his two friends to finally understand one another.

And that they did. As I’ve been saying since episode 3 or so, the only way this was ever going to end was Takopi somehow getting Marina and Shizuka to understand one another and become friends. They both have so much in common and their mutual pain could be the foundation of a beautiful lifelong friendship, which it seems like it is now in the post credits scene. I absolutely love the moment where Marina and Shizuka realize their souls still remember takopi and they just start crying together. You can see the moment they become friends.

“To you, my dearest, I hope you find what you want.” What a powerful send off to one of the most emotionally taxing and painful watches ever. It showed the worst in humanity, but also gave us a blueprint on how to become better. Takopi might be a fictional alien, but there’s real life lessons we can take away from this and I hope everyone reflects and will go on to try and understand people and be kinder.

P.S my only issue with this ending is the parents really got no consequences and will probably never change. Both the girls should’ve been taken by cps. While the girls are innocent, the parents should’ve been arrested/marina’s mom needs to be committed to a psychiatric facility.

And with this, Takopi's Original Sin comes to an end... What an amazing anime, yet, at the same time, this ending was a bit disappointing, but I'll dive into that later.

First, I have to say that this talk between Azuma and Takopi was really emotional honestly, and foreshadows the ending that is about to come. Azuma basically comes to thank Takopi for being his friend, and honestly just being a source of strength to him, in those few days they were together. Even so, Azuma understands that he can't continue to see Takopi, as he has decided to move on with his life, showing once again the power of talking, and how much opening up to his brother changed his perspectives. This way, he couldn't see Takopi anymore, as that would fix him in this past he wants to get over with, and is bringing him and his family so much pain and trouble.
This is where the anime starts to suffer from not being more objective with what's happening in the story. Azuma says his brother ended up getting fired and might not end up going to college due to what happened. So the question is: did he get fired because his brother is suspected of being involved in a murder? It seems a bit excessive. So you start to wonder if that's because it was Junya that assumed the blame (which goes against what episode 4 seemed to indicate), and that would make more sense for this to happen. I suppose this comes from the fact that the family had to close down the clinic, and affecting the business, the family might not have money to send Junya to college, and this connection to his brother could also affect Junya negatively when applicating to a college. Either way, at the end of the day, it's not really explained what really happened in this aspect, but it's also not something crucial for the story. But Junya spending his last paycheck on his brother really was so sweet... Junya really is the best human character of this anime.

This goodbye between Azuma and Takopi was hard to watch. It was the first time someone said that to Takopi throughout the anime, and Takopi learned more about the human nature too, and after that, Takopi spends months in the same place waiting for Shizuka, that ended up going foward with the plan of seeing if her sisters had eaten Chappy, as we can see by the newspapers, showing once again how mad she was, to the point of kidnapping her own sisters, and doing something we don't even know what it was.

Takopi then finally meets Shizuka again, and we get this emotional breakdown from Shizuka. She bursts out to Takopi, taking on him all the anger she had inside her, finallu speaking her guts out on how she felt about her situation, on how she doesn't know how to take care of her, because her mother never cared about her, how her father just abandoned her to start a new family, how going to school was pure hell to live up with all the bullying. And Takopi just stood there and took the violence and Shizuka's pain. Takopi finally realizes what he should have done from the beginning: listening to Shizuka. And this brings us to one of the main messages of the anime: talking. Takopi's actions throughout the anime always end up doing more harm than good, because he never took the opportunity to actually listen to what both Marina and Shizuka had to say about what they were feeling, and did all of that from his own interpretations.
After finally letting Shizuka vent all of that sadness she had inside her, Takopi doesn't really have anything to offer Shizuka, other than being there for her. And at that time, that was enough for Shizuka. They then spend some time together, alone (somehow the police still hasn't caught up to Shizuka), but Takopi doesn't want Shizuka to continue living like that. Takopi wants that both Shizuka, Azuma and Marina have the opportunity to be able to grow and become adults in at least slightly happier life.

We then get a really emotional scene, where Takopi uses his "Happy Power", that in exchange of his life, he can use that camera once again, and rewind back in time again. This time around, he would not be there, but he was sure that all the 3 kids would be smile again.

And that's what we see in the last minutes of the anime. Azuma talks about how he had a fight with his brother, which implies that Takopi did what he promised Azuma to do, and that if he was able to go back in time once again, to tell him that "It's ok to fight with his brother". We can see that in this timeline, Azuma had that talk with Junya from episode 4, before something drastic happened, and that is reflected by how after leaving the classroom, he doesn't try to "save" Shizuka, he actually doesn't even talk to her, showing that he doesn't have that "saviour knight" complex, where he was searching to save Shizuka, not for her, but for himself, in order to seek validation from a figure that is similar to his mother.
On the other hand, Shizuka is still being bullied by Marina. But in one of the fights, Marina notices a Takopi drawing Shizuka made, and somehow that seems familiar to her, and asks her more about that. It's the first time these 2 talk about something, other than just Marina insulting Shizuka, and Shizuka taking all of that without doing anything. They actually start to bound over an idea they have of a being, that talks a lot, is completely useless, but has a really kind heart, and that they miss a lot. Seeing them crying over Takopi was really sad. They didn't know what it really was, but they felt they lost something dear to them, and in this case, it was Takopi. We then end the anime with the 2022 versions of Shizuka and Marina, that still live in the same conditions as before, Marina still ended up with that scar on her face, Shizuka still was ignored by her mother and discarded by her father, but they were living, and were able to laugh about that pen, that Takopi always showed to them. They still had their traumas and hardships, but now they could rely on each other.

For Takopi, it was sad seeing him saying things like "I should have said something to mom before going back in time", when he was sacrificing himself. From the 4 of them, the one that ended up not being able to live anymore was Takopi, but at least he went out happy, knowing these 3 kids will be able to smile again. And that was enough for this kind-hearted alien.

This was actually the first and only episode of Takopi to make me tear up, and seeing Takopi go, even if I was expecting that as a possible final outcome for this anime, was still hard. Hearing the ending theme now hits harder. And the anime ended with a big message: the importance of talking. The big realization Takopi comes to is that he cannot fix the deep-rooted traumas seen all of these characters, their stories are unfixable, as shown many times throughout the anime. There was only one thing that could make them better, and that was to share the pain they had with someone. We've seen this was a big part of episode 4 too, with Azuma telling his brother what bothered him, and in this final episode it was the time for Shizuka and Marina, that shared their pains with each other, and, that way, were able to heal enough so that their lives were bearable. This is a really important message, since Humans are social animals, we need to interact with other people in order to feel good mentally, but these 3 kids had the same problem: none of them had someone to talk to. As mentioned before, Takopi realizes he should have been that person with who they could share their pain, so the solution to make Marina and Shizuka smile again was to just make them talk to each other, since in that timeline there was no Takopi, and Takopi couldn't fulfill that role, due to the fact he does not completely understand the human nature.
This idea is something we all know it's true, after experiencing something bad, we all want to vent with someone, and doing only that makes us feel better. Venting doesn't make the problem go away, or delete what happened in the past, but it makes us feel more reassured that there's someone that can understand what we're going through. And that's enough. This is exactly the case here. One of the big themes of this anime is childhood trauma and how that affects the development of a child. Not only that, but it also shows plenty of times how that children end up replicating that trauma in the future. The source of these traumas are many times impossible to fix. That's why Takopi was failing, he was trying to fix the unfixable. But talking, and having someone there for these kids can help ease up this trauma.

This was the main message of the show, which was honestly a bit obvious ever since the episode 1. And I feel like it's a really beautiful message.

This anime really was amazing in the way it was directed and for all of the storytelling it showed us. I think I have shown how much I appreciate it throughout the episodes.
But I do have to say that the last 8 minutes of this final episode did a lot of harm to the anime, and I was disappointed with out things worked out.

First, the anime really shows us how one of the main problems Takopi had was trying to fix these deep-rooted problems with basically ducktape, that would not fix the the source of the pain, and would only hide its growth, and in the end all the ducktape wasn't going to be able to hold such pain, and then tragedy would strike.
So it's a bit ironic how the solution for all of this is just Takopi remembering he can use his "Happy Powers" to fix everything, and now, everything does get better.
This "Happy Power" came out of nowhere, and it seemed just like an easy way for the author to wrap up the story, which is disappointing, because for such a short anime (and manga since the manga is the original source, with only 2 volumes), you would thing that the story was all thought out ever since the 1st chapter, but this last minute power makes it seem like it wasn't. This "Happy Power" was never hinted in the last 5 episodes, which clashes, for example, the rocket Takopi used to time travel, that he mentioned since episode 1, and it seemed like it was going to be the important tool for the end, but was revealed he actually already used it in episode 5, which made it much more interesting. Honestly, it just felt like a cheap way to fix things, which is ironic. Not only that, they never really explained what this power does. Does it make Takopi able to use a happy gadget when it's broken, in exchange for his life? Like, that seems too extreme of an abillity.

Then the anime suffers from not being more objective with what's going on. I already mentioned the case with Azuma's story, but this time it's worse, because it affects the overall ending. So, for starters, if Takopi sacrificed himself, how is he able to talk subcounsciensly (if that what's happening, it's not even clear if that's the case, it just that in the start Shizuka seems to reply to Takopi's call to wake up) with the characters. And it seems it was not only with Shizuka, because if Azuma fought with his brother, it was because Takopi also talked to him, somehow. Not knowing what's really happening takes away from the overall message it was trying to send.

Then we have the "memories from other timelines" problem. For some reason, both Marina and Shizuka have memories from the other timelines we have witnessed in the anime, which is a common troupe in time-travelling, when the character returns to the "Real" timeline, it still holds memories from the other timelines. However, this doesn't make much sense, as it was never shown before the characters retained memories from those timelines wherever time travel happened. It's especially important considering Marina and Tokopi knew each other, and that was never shown in the first episodes. The only scene that might have hinted this was in episode 2 (I think, maybe it was episode 1), where Marina actually sees Shizuka talking to Takopi, and seems to be actually a bit jealous, maybe because she unconsciensly remember Takopi, and wanted to be able to talk to him too, since in the 2022 timeline Takopi leaves without Marina being able to even give him a name. However, I don't think the scene had that much power to it, and was probably shown for other effects (since shortly after Marina comes up with the plan to get Shizuka's dog put down). There should have been instances were the memories from the different timelines should have clashed, but never happened before. But now, for the finale, it happens for some reason.

But even considering that the memories might come from Takopi's "Happy Power", it still felt cheap to make Shizuka and Marina bound the way they did. So Marina sees an octopus that reminds her of something that she doesn't even know it exists, and starts bounding with Shizuka over that, and not over the fact that they both carry a big burden of trauma, and are victims of cruel parenting? It just felt like it was easier for the author to make things this way, instead of actually making the characters gradually starting to understand each other. The message of the anime is to "talk", but their problem is actually solved by a random drawing of Takopi, and not by talking with each other. Sure, having something the other person also understands is also a big thing in the anime, but this just didn't live up to what the anime was set up to. I remember watching the scene, and not really being able to connect to this message exactly because of this. To sum this up, this bounding felt forced, for an anime that until this point was always really pessimistic in the consequences of the character's actions, to the point sometimes it made the anime feel unreal.

Overall, the anime was beautiful, really well directed, an amazing storytelling and an important message, but in the end the execution of this delivery of the message was disappointing, and that actually hurts me a lot, since I was loving the anime a lot. There are other things with the anime I particularly didn't enjoy that much, such as the over reliance on the shock factor, in deterioment of actual character development or just expanding more on the narrative being constructed, that sometimes started to make the viewer dessensibilized to some things that started to happen. But I feel like the things I mentioned about this finale are really what's taking from me some enjoyment from the overall experience.

For this reason, I'm actually giving this anime a score of 9/10. Despite the disappointing ending, the first part of this final episode was still incredible. My favorite episode still has to be episode 4, for how beautiful it was, and how well it portrayed the message of this anime: how talking is what makes us happy. This anime surely was a journey, and an experience worth of watching, and one of the best anime of the year. I just feel like the ending and the final delivery of this important message could have been executed much better.

Some characters weren't able to say it, so I'll say it Takopi: Thank you Takopi, your sacrifice was able to make these 3 kids to be able to endure their traumas, and grow from them. I hope "Takopi" also reaches everyone that needs to overcome or deal with their own traumas.

Edit: Formatting of the text