To Your Eternity: Sticking to the Pilot

Warning: The following article contains spoilers for the Pilot episode of To Your Eternity.

One of the hottest spring season anime of 2021, To Your Eternity, took me completely by surprise. Compared to most other anime with powerful pilot episodes (That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime, Death Note, and My Hero Academia) it caught my attention right out of the gate.

While each of these anime caught massive attention from their pilot, To Your Eternity demanded attention with its iconoclastic main character. Not being given any dialogue for the first episode the viewer is required to connect with a mute main character, a feat made surprisingly easy by their heavy empathetical portrayal. What made it stand out, though?

The massively popular fall 2018 anime That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime (TTIGRS), created an audience seemingly overnight. The lighthearted Isekai series portrayed a late Satoru Mikami who (as the name implies) reincarnated as a slime. Specifically, Satoru reincarnated as a Rimuru, generically the weakest creature in a game. However, he was reincarnated with a “Great Sage” perk which accrued him a massive buff to his intellect stat and serves as an overpowered ability due to his human lifestyle as a shut-in.

In the pilot, he immediately befriends a dragon named Veldora Tempest, one of the four most powerful creatures in the world, and absorbs him to gain his power. Suddenly he becomes an overpowered main character, not unlike One Punch Man‘s Saitama. As a result, the anime becomes an Isekai adaptation of a game played on God-Mode.

Death Note, perhaps one of the first anime series of any fan of the Japanese animation style, became an immediate cult classic with its first episode. Light Yagami, a model student, and son, came across a black-covered journal called the “Death Note”. “The human whose name is written in this note shall die,” it read. Light took it as a joke until he tested it on a would-be rapist killing him in a grizzly accident.

Driven by a questionable moral compass, he takes it on himself to go after all the worst criminals of Japan and eventually the rest of the world, killing them almost indiscriminately. He quickly becomes revered as a god of justice called “Kira” or literally “killer” in Japanese. Writing hundreds of names in a matter of days he is soon met by Ryuk, the owner of the Death Note. Ryuk emboldens Light’s efforts to become a god of justice despite learning that he will never go to heaven nor hell when he ultimately perishes.

My Hero Academia, arguably the most popular anime on this list, captivated the audience by different (less violent) means. Izuku Midoryia had always wanted to be a superhero and sought to be just like his role model, All Might, the number one hero. Sadly, Midoriya was doomed to be “quirkless”, or without powers. He gets the opportunity to meet All Might after a run-in with a villain, but All might seems to need to rush away.

The hero haphazardly tells the boy to follow his dreams without giving it much thought, thus provoking the young Midoriya to cling to his role model even more, literally. As All Might leaps to his next task he discovers the fanboy attached to his leg, several hundred feet in the air. Forced to carry the boy to safety he lands him on a rooftop where his true form is revealed, a shriveled and twisted body nearly destroyed from previous bouts with the core villain, All for One.

Each pilot episode was powerfully mesmerizing as they managed to pull an audience seemingly overnight. They’re all known for their powerful character development and dialogue. However, each main character has a distinct goal or moral that sets them apart from any other in their respective universe. Every action from there on is based off this trait to further their developmental narrative. So, what happens when a pilot seemingly lacks these traits?

Here we discover To Your Eternity’s pilot with the no-name, androgynous main character. This no-name character (let’s call them NNC) was born into the world as a non-verbal orb by a dark-clad near-omnipotent being. Given a single objective, “to seek stimulation”, it absorbs information from the world around it and grows from it.

For much of the season, this is consistently the primary goal. NNC travels to absorb stimulation and learn what it is to be mortal despite being very much immortal. Despite being cut apart, drowned and much worse, NNC always manages to jump back up and stroll forward as though nothing had happened.

Of course, compared to the other anime on this list, To Your Eternity might not sound like much. The first episode has zero combat scenes in it, not even so much as a verbal argument. Yet, it manages to pull in its audience through its powerful narrative development. So much so that I would compare the emotional appeal of the pilot to that of the whole season of Angel Beats or Made in Abyss.

In the first minute of the episode, NNC begins its “life” as nothing more than an orb that touches a rock and becomes said rock for what is estimated to be a year. We gather this from the singular cycle of the seasons, such as moss, dead leaves, and then snow. Then, chance happens upon it in the form of a wandering dog, later referred to as Joaan. This Joaan immediately dies of cold exposure right on top of NNC who takes in the stimulation and adopts the dog’s form.

This is where the anime begins to become interesting as NNC takes on Joaan’s exact form after they perished. They even absorbed the dog’s wound on its leg and were stimulated by their first sensation of pain. This early stimulation creates a long-lasting effect on NNC which becomes one of the core struggles later in the season.

This becomes ever more bold as the season develops and it becomes the moral cornerstone of the main character. However, NNC is immortal and thus is not impacted much by nearly any injury, instead they simply heal and move on. Though they do recognize the sensation of pain, NNC has a supernatural empathetic sense of what other creatures are feeling.

Already the anime sets itself apart from the others mentioned. It is dark, but not by any sense of actual violence, at least not in episode one. There is no malicious intent, unlike Death Note yet not so misleadingly lighthearted as My Hero Academia or That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime. Of course, to those who do enjoy fight scenes, there are plenty that come along later in the series. Imagine a rapidly healing immortal taking on lesser mortals but with restraint so as not to actually kill anyone if they can help it.

Instead, To Your Eternity focuses on the approach of extreme fantastical realism, literally the exact opposite of TTIGRS. It demonstrates this immediately in the first minute of the pilot, but it comes across so organically that you cannot pull yourself away.

For example, the description of the blizzard in which Joaan had already perished was witnessed through NNC’s eyes. The powerful narration of the dark omniscience portrayed NNC’s stimulation and development via a third-person limited-omniscient perspective.

It learned the struggle of life: learning how to walk and experiencing its first pain, as well as the extreme nature of the storm and sensory overload. Wandering mindlessly and aimlessly through the wasteland it learned the first core struggles of life.

All of this occurs in the first two minutes and thirty seconds (2:30) and already Brain’s Base Studio developed a powerfully unique and relatable character without NNC ever having spoken a word. In fact, each of the previously mentioned anime relied on main character narration for exposition. However, the outside perspective narrative of the androgynous orb of To Your Eternity could coax nearly all audiences with its blank slate character development. The only issue might be that perhaps an animal main character isn’t what you’re looking for.

NNC begins to truly develop as a relatable character when it meets the boy in the hut. The boy is never named and beyond a brief backstory of familial abandonment, he remains an enigma. Gathered from “first” introductions, we learn that Joaan was his dog and last family member in an abandoned settlement. This connection is further deepened by the pictures of the boy’s family members clumsily drawn on his wall, clearly a sign of his inspiration and the source of his happy attitude despite his solitude.

The guilt of watching him fawn over the faux-Joaan creates a powerfully mixed emotional response. The boy seems so happy to not be alone after three whole months without his dog. He ties Joaan to his wrist at night to avoid returning to that solitude, an immensely powerful symbolic gesture. Their connection continues to develop, piggybacking off the prior relationship with the real Joaan interpreted through the boy’s acts of kindness.

To this end, the boy tries to feed Joaan their favorite meal, a steamed fish head, to which Joaan stares at it in question. At this point, we already recognize NNC as an immortal capable of changing shape, but this scene shows just how immortal they are. NNC has no understanding of something as basic as food, the intake of energy for any lifeform.

The boy even asks, “What’s wrong? That part’s your favorite. Have you forgotten how to eat?“. The boy shows NNC how to eat, to which they clumsily devour the fish head in a manner that is self-evident of the fact that they have never had to eat anything prior. Their connection continues to develop as the boy expresses a desire to “leave this place“.

Heading toward the mountains he leads Joaan behind him through the same wasteland that had already claimed the original Joaan’s life. Taking them through the empty landscape with a carefree and hopeful spirit, the boy stops to search for firewood. However, he falls through the ice and narrowly manages to climb out.

Carrying on his carefree attitude, he laughs at himself as he climbs out of the frozen water. Not allowing himself to be discouraged, he boasts of his “discovery” of the river and recommends fishing. However, his demeanor changes slightly when he discovers large splinters in his leg from the firewood. His leg bleeds significantly in the cold environment, a perilous situation.

The animation was certainly one of the most captivating aspects of this pilot, as the emotion of the boy’s face carried much of the background dialogue. However, this silent dialogue was not toward NNC but toward the viewer, instead. To understand this one must recognize that NNC has zero comprehension of basic emotions or human expression, let alone language. It had only learned of pain a short time beforehand and had to be shown how to eat. Instead, these breaks in the boy’s persona served as foreshadowing, unbeknownst to NNC.

It’s here that the boy discovered a tombstone, a rock with a blood-drawn cross, of a member of his family that tried to escape the valley. Taking a long break, he slowly turned to witness the group of stones, each representing a dead member of his family. The boy, obviously filled with dread, quickly recomposed himself for Joaan, who looked at him with utter confusion about the boy’s behavior.

At this moment the boy shows Joaan his true, unfiltered emotion and expresses his readiness to head back home, seemingly broken. The shot focuses itself on his wound, the bandages swelling to show its severity. He collapses on the way back and breaks down into tears as soon as he walks through the doorway. The boy cries in front of the wall depicting the images of his lost family, now all presumed dead.

Joaan watches from his bedside as the boy spirals from infection and becomes bedridden in mere moments. Once more that pang of guilt strikes the viewer as it becomes clear that the boy tries to remain strong for Joaan, and even uses the dog as his own inspiration to continue to live. However, the foreshadowed wound has officially begun to catch up with the boy, undermining his cheerful demeanor.

The viewer is able to immediately understand the signs of fever and infection, but NNC continues to struggle to understand the situation. They watch the boy from the edge of the bed and occasionally nudge at him curiously as to his change in demeanor. The boy, however, takes Joaan’s actions as a sign that they’re hungry and attempts to feed them.

Barely able to climb out of bed he made Joaan food and casually jokes about his situation. NNC, Joaan, sniffed of the boy’s injury clearly recognizing it as the source of his change in demeanor. NNC recognized the boy’s pain and fumbles to aid him without any real knowledge to do so, much like an infant or toddler. In this scene, the boy settles down into his chair and seemingly aware of his fate he dresses himself to be found, presumably by his deceased family.

The anime takes extreme close-up shots to emphasize the duplicitousness of the connection, and lack thereof, between the two characters. The boy speaks lightly of his desire to not be “laying down” when they (his family) return to find him, a flippantly cold response resembling the acceptance of his fate. The shot ends with him resting his head back until it goes limp with him looking at the wall of his family, soon to join them.

All the while NNC watches him as his life slips from the boy’s body. Eventually, his body collapses onto the floor with a heavy thud. NNC pulls at the boy’s jacket in a fruitless attempt to get him to wake up. Instead, it is stimulated by the boy’s death and takes on his form. NNC is still unable to speak, for now.

His new form still resembles the wound on his leg (much like Joaan’s) from which he died, as well as the rope on his wrist. NNC places the boy’s corpse back into the chair as he wished to be found. As they turn to exit the hut they are rushed with memories of the boy’s life, his family, and even a happy Joaan.

The late boy carries the same happy demeanor as his voiceless family greets him into the next life. Both he and Joaan have a new color to them as though they are finally where they are supposed to be before the memory fades away. NNC wanders off into the distance with no certain plan, driven only by the last desires shared by the late boy, “…meet all kinds of people and feel all kinds of things…just as the boy had wished to do.”

The first season has ended and is a perfect anime to binge for the weekend. The season contains twenty episodes in all with a run time of about twenty-five minutes each. An androgynous shapeshifter that takes on the tales of several others, it is a story that remolds itself repeatedly.

With a remarkable range of emotional depth and narrative development, it will certainly become one of your favorites. Each new character creates a new lesson for NNC to overcome and become ever closer to being almost alive.

To Your Eternity was approved for a second season to come in fall 2022, and you can check it out here. Now is the perfect time to jump into the narrative and become absorbed in the deeply diverse cast of supportive roles dedicated to NNC’s development. For more content on anime and anime adaptations be sure to check out all the latest content here, such as the article on the Cyberpunk 2077 anime adaptation.