"Fumetsu no Anata e", or "To your Eternity" (which I'll be calling TYE from now on) is an anime that perplexes me, it has the ideas to be a great series, but ultimately the execution of it fails horrendously, the final products ends up being a hideous joke. TYE has several problems and I'm going to point most of them out:
1- Tonal Shifts
2- Annoying Characters
3- Cheap drama
4- Pacing
5- Plot Conveniences
6- Plot Holes
7- Inconsistency
8- Pointlessness
9- Identity Crisis
10- Visuals
Starting with Tonal Shifts, this anime suffers from a thing most dramatic anime I've seen do: Creating a tense or dramatic situation, just to make a joke right after. Now, I get adding comedy for the sake of relief, considering some series are very heavy on drama, but TYE abuses of this every time they can. Oh, we just revealed that a character is fated to die? Let’s add dead eyes and then proceed to ridicule the entire scene by making a character do a cartoonish tantrum that completely offsets the dramatic ambiance. This scene right here could have been powerful by only adding a tantrum of a character that doesn't know what awaits them and questioning the customs and the decisions of the tribe, but no, let's just make a visually cartoonish tantrum for the sake of doing so. This kind of things happens repeatedly and gets old pretty quickly. By the 3rd or 4th time this happened, I found myself rolling my eyes, because it's not even funny at this point, only adds to the frustration of a product that could have been actually emotional rather than a tone deaf one.
Moving up to the next point, this anime has so many annoying characters on it, and boy, the focus of each arc is usually the most annoying one, and the worst part? They don't seem to use their brain at all. Oh, a character is about to get shot? oh don't worry, let me just jump and receive the shot myself, dying in the progress on a completely meaningless sacrifice that wasn't really needed, add salt to the injury considering that our MC, Fushi, had the power to avoid this, but sat still not doing anything until the worst happened, conveniently tragic. Fushi is actually the worst offender when it comes to annoying characters, he is as inconsistent as a third world country internet speed, and he is a walking contradiction filled with conveniences and plot holes. He should be very powerful, yet, he barely does anything and let’s people around him die for no reason but to add for shock factor. There is this scene where he decides to flee an island of criminals, acknowledging that said place is unredeemable, but at the very moment he's about to escape with its allegedly now girlfriend, then, the Knockers (our "villains") attack and Fushi is somehow forced to help an island of criminals, because, oh boo hoo, poor things, they don't deserve this (after stating that this island is full of criminals mind you) and what does this achieve? Nothing, Fushi goes, fucks up, and gets himself 3 friends killed for no reason and then flees until it's convenient for him to do a "heroic" comeback and save the day. Another annoying character is a recurring one, Hayase, a god damn bitch that appeared on the 2nd arc, that somehow gets a very unhealthy obsession with Fushi after a time skip we didn't see, getting all powerful on a time skip we didn't see, killing and being on a rampage during a time skip we didn't see, who suddenly becomes the main antagonist of the final arc and boy, her whole persona is just extremely disgusting, incoherent and completely infuriating. Talking about her, she has some "guards" with her which are as great at guarding as potting plats, man, are this guards so damn stupid, blind and useless, it's as if they were paid actors because it's incredibly how negligent they are at their job, conveniently useless.
Moving Forward, cheap drama, each arc has this side plot of a character that either is fated to die, or has an utterly tragic backstory on them, now, this is not bad by all means, there are some great anime out there that are great at creating characters like this and driving their story through character arcs like: Violet Evergarden, Kobato, Natsume Yuujinchou and many others, but the characters in TYE aren't memorable at all, and their backstory is often ridiculed by the tonal shifts I spoke about earlier, and the way the plot conveniently set up things adds to the feeling of being incredibly cheap it makes Clannad look like the second coming of God (I'm not too fond of Clannad mind you), so not only the drama stinks, the characters and the plot direction is ridiculously bad where every faint good intention of trying to make you feel for a character is wasted.
Next, pacing. Dear God, the pacing is very inconsistent, either it moves at snail pace, it does a time skip, or it moves pretty fast. The worst offender here is the time skip that happens during an arc, because it makes no sense, and from it comes a lot of conveniences that are never explained or explored properly (which I'm gonna tackle later) During this time skip, Fushi ages and "learns" things, but then, all this is thrown to the garbage can after the nokkers attacked. The show goes like this: Introduction of a character, make that character know Fushi, attempt to make Fushi "learn" and bond with them, add tragedy, Fushi devolves as a character, Fushi conveniently makes a comeback and wins, then add more tragedy, rinse and repeat. Now, if only the plot and characters were coherent enough to make this edible, but all this bonding happens during very short time periods and it's constantly being thrown away in favor of inconsistency all thanks to the identity crisis this anime has (which I'm gonna tackle later)
Now, plot conveniences, plot holes, inconsistency and pointlesness. This show is filled with them to an alarming extent. Fushi being the center of it all. What is he? What limits does his power have? Is he an idiot? Is he useless? The answer to all of that is yes. We have no idea what he is but a creation of "God". His powers has no limits, unless his brain capacity is on high demand, his powers have no limits as long as the plot demands it to, if the plot doesn't demand it, Fushi ends up being incredibly useless, letting characters die for no reason despite him having the means to succeed. Like when he battled against Hayase after the time skip, where he somehow loses against a human that got invaded by the spirit of a Yandere. It's all pointless.
What did he do during March's arc? Nothing, he stood still, then tragedy happened and he reacts when it's already too late. What did he do during Gugu's arc? Nothing, he wasted YEARS doing nothing, there was an entire time skip and he did nothing, then people died again, and he made a comeback and won, what did he do during Tonari's arc? waste time again, he did nothing but participate on a half assed "tournament", earning praise for no reason only to be taken away the moment Hayase is reintroduced to us again, where he again does nothing until everything is fucked, then he somehow gets useful again. What is the purpose of this character? He gets involved in people's life, just to let them down and kill them due to his own stupidity, it's all pointless.
I swear, Fushi enters on other people's life only to make them miserable: March? Gets himself a yandere waifu and some stupid and pointless deaths. Gugu? Fuels jealousy, forces romance, a strange and pointless timeskip happens and gets all characters of this arc involved in the Knockers' agenda. Tonari? Gets himself and a killer granny on an island of mindless criminal idiots, wastes time flirting with Tonari only to let her friends die, all because he didn't leave when he had the chance to do so. IT'S A DAMN ISLAND FILLED WITH CRIMINALS FFS, How pointless this is?.
Moving on, Fushi's power is inconsistently convenient, he's able to shapeshift into or create anything he had contact with: Arrows, food, weapons, you name it, even the "friends" he got killed, he's able to do all that without any consequence at all, he's able to do many things, yet, he falls short, his power conveniently is useless when people is dying, but is conveniently powerful when nothing matters anymore, it just doesn't make sense and it's never explored properly, it's just there, sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn't. By the start of the 4th arc, I've lost hope on this anime, I tried really hard not to get biased against it, given that I chose to give it the benefit of the doubt trusting the anime would clarify things, but ultimately, the 4th arc is where things got completely stupid, it's where TYE problems became more evident... It's when it became an irredeemable trainwreck... You guessed it, a pointless trainwreck.
We're almost finished with this abomination: Identity Crisis, and this is probably the worst offender of TYE, it doesn't know what it wants to be, at first, it looks like it wants to be a slice of life, making the MC interacting with people to grow, but then, it turns into a battle shounen, with power shenanigans and some stupid shit like the Knockers, powers are not explained properly, they just work and without consequence. The aftermath? nothing, Fushi doesn't grow, he gets people killed, he steal their "powers" (and by power I mean their body and whichever shenanigan they had, like Gugu's hilarious fire breath technique), he then acts like if their deaths meant anything but in reality it never did. During a fight, Fushi is beated to a pulp like a bitch, but either he manages to escape or wins somehow. He never trains, he doesn't polish his abilities, He even claims to be powerless, becoming a crybaby, focused on not killing because "it's bad", which, ultimately, makes him way more useless, but he never grows or learns from this, he keeps screwing up until it somehow works for him.
There's something so inept into trying to glorify not killing people, which becomes incredibly stupid considering that Fushi gets people killed because of that mindset. What is taking a single life, out of someone or something that killed several? Will you risk getting those you love killed just because you have this pretentious thought of being a child of light that doesn't kill anyone? Spare me the thought please, this is so stupid, by not taking action you're letting others get killed, which adds to your toll and you'll feel like shit anyway. Let me quote HBO's Chernobyl real quick: "you put a bullet in someone, you're not you anymore. You'll never be you again. But then you wake up the next morning and you're still you, and you realize that was you all along. You just didn’t know"... We have to get rid of characters that are so scared of confronting someone due to the scary thought of killing someone, it's ultimately very fake and will only get more people killed.
Last but not least the visuals, dear God, what in tarnation is happening on Japan? It's horrifying to think about the conditions and deadlines the poor animators have to endure to animate something like this, whoever directed this should be imprisoned. The art style and animation heavily declines in the 2nd half, especially during the last arc, where you see a wide shot of CG zombies, on a terrain that has no depth of field, no shadows and janky movement, it makes the zombies look like they're floating. I'm not going to criticize the animators, but whoever is in charge of directing and whoever is in the higher ups that decided the deadline for this anime. Animation in Japan is heavily declining, and destroying the poor animators life with deadlines and horrible salary is hardly the answer. We've already seen controversy in Cloverworks with Wonder Egg Priority, and recently, studio Mappa and others where these issues are getting more evident, looking at animation videos from talented people in YouTube looks like it's a work of passion, but when you get to know about the awful reality behind the industry it's sad to see that talent is getting wasted in favor of exploiting their workers on a terrible schedule, hopefully this changes someday.
I have nothing to say about the audio department, because honestly, it barely has any impact to my overall feelings about this trainwreck, the OST for me was only relevant during the first episode (which was the best one sadly), and after that, nothing else came close. It's hard to believe this work was made by the same author of A Silent Voice, what a complete and disappointing trainwreck.
