English Dub Review: To Your Eternity “Gift from the Past”

Overview (Spoilers Below):

Rene invites Fushi and Gugu to her sixteenth birthday party, and Fushi and Rene make hand sewn gifts for Booze Man and Gugu. Then Gugu’s older brother Shin visits and tries to make up for his actions. Gugu doesn’t want anything to do with Shin anymore and returns to work. Before leaving Shin asks them to give the ring he got from Gugu years ago back to him, and Rene realizes that Gugu is the boy from the market. Rene talks to Gugu about his drunken confession, but storms off when he admits to forgetting about it.

Gugu and Fushi get Rene gifts for her birthday party at the market. After giving her the purple flower Gugu gets the news that it was the same flower Rene picked up during the accident. Another guest pushes Gugu into the fountain after trying to take off his mask, and Rene helps him dry off. Gugu goes outside while Rene meets her betrothed. Rene asks about Gugu’s mask and he admits to being the one to push her away from the runaway log. However, a Nokker attacks leading Gugu to fall off the crumbling balcony. Meanwhile Fushi notices his creator’s presence at the party.

Our Take:

This week’s episode hits the climax for Gugu and Rene’s romance as the Nokker stirs up trouble at the last moment.

For starters the buildup between Rene realizing that Gugu saved her as a kid was good. The ring that Shin gives back was a nice way to circle back around to their encounters as kids. It provides a bit of closure to his situation with Shin and him moving on from his past with his new family. The animation when these two talk about Gugu’s drunken confession was a nice emphasis to their flustered reactions. There’s also Rene and purple flower known as the Dreambell flower. It works well to further deepen their relationship now that Rene knows that Gugu saved her as a kid.

Then there’s the unexpected show of the Nokkers literally separating Gugu and Rene instead of going after Fushi at the party. Speaking of Fushi, the immortal grows up literally after four years and hasn’t transformed at all. It’ll definitely spur Fushi to decide on remaining human or becoming something more now that Gugu is under attack. Furthermore it will be an interesting test to see if Gugu’s new mask will help Fushi against the Nokker. It’d also be a good turning point if he reveals his fact to Rene on accident, and her reaction would make or break their relationship.

Overall the episode was good and leaves at a suspenseful cliffhanger. I do hope that Gugu survives the fall and that we get to see some action with the Nokker.