English Dub Review: To Your Eternity “A Small Evolution”

Overview (Spoilers Below):

March gives the orb a name, Fushi however as Parona tries to escape her binds something draws closer. A large wounded white bear appears, luckily Parona manages to escape in time. In the meantime, Hayase’s group catches March with Fushi. March is told to eat black jelly food and they head to the altar. They get to the altar and set her sleeping body down on a stone slab with a bed of flowers.

However before they can leave the large white bear arrives, and so does Parona who tries to free the sleeping March. They close the gate just as Fushi arrives with fruit. Fushi transforms into a wolf and battles the bear. After defeating the bear Hayase decides to take all three of them back to her home, Yanome for various reasons. March wakes up to see Fushi in its wolf form as it thanking her for the food.

Our Take:

This episode features Fushi in action, but it builds up its immortal identity to the humans. The pacing is a bit slow, but the story is about the orb’s journey on the earth and its interactions with humans.

Even though we don’t get any dialogue from Fushi until the end, its actions make up for it. Fushi gains an identity with March naming it, and when Hayase’s group sees it battling the bear in its wolf form. The animation for that fight was good, especially with how detailed the regeneration was for Fushi. Humans change with emotion and since the orb is in a human form it applies to it as well. Why else would it go to save March from the bear? Furthermore, the last scene proves that Fushi is evolving with the tiniest nudge even if it was for the fruit that March would toss to it.

Then there are the humans reacting to Fushi’s display of his immortality. It catches the attention of Hayase who takes them to her village. March names him before her capture. Admittedly seeing March surviving the ordeal gives a ray of hope in the depressing tone of the series. At the same time, she didn’t really get to be a “mother” to Fushi before Hayase’s group found her, and it felt like they were dropping her desire to grow up and be a mother in order to get the more action-packed scenes with Fushi against the large bear. Maybe we’ll get it in the next episode since she still lives albeit as an outcast with Parona.

Overall the episode was good Fushi getting involved with March’s situation. I do have to wonder how Hayase is going to explain the talking wolf to her village.