English Dub Review: To Your Eternity “Monster Brothers”

Overview (Spoilers Below):

After the girl, Rean asks to work and stay at the distillery Gugu tests Fushi’s immortality ability which makes Fushi mad at him. Then Gugu finds out that the old man installed an organ that could produce distilled alcohol inside of him. Disgusted Gugu runs away as none of them try to go after him. Fushi takes charge of the cooking and cleaning but fails at it and goes to the old lady who tells him to find Gugu.

Gugu attempts to go back to his old lifestyle but the people reject him. When he runs low on cash he decides to sell the ring but at the last moment decides against it Gugu reunites with his older brother, Shin who spent all their money and lies down in an alley. Gugu gives the ring to him and leaves, cutting all ties with Shin. However two guys kidnap him, but before they could get away Fushi scares them away by changing forms. The two move on from their argument.

Our Take:

This week’s episode heavily focused on Gugu rather than Fushi. However, the theme of being human as a monster bridges the two together like brothers at the end of the episode.  The plot for the episode was linear and worked well to get to that reconciliation between Fushi and Gugu.

Aside from Gugu’s crush on Rean. Gugu is a nuanced character with a soft heart. He didn’t have to give the ring away to Shin but he still did it. He has insecurities about his face but tries to move away from it even though society won’t let him. The parallel between the old man’s experiment on Gugu to Gugu’s experiment with Fushi was good. Although an organ that makes distilled alcohol inside a person’s body is something I’ll suspend my disbelief over. The worldbuilding of the world grows slightly with the episode because of it. Although it makes me wonder how Booze Man knows how to do an organ transplant.

Fushi, on the other hand, grows with Gugu’s influence, and they find out that he can make things that have hurt him in the past. However, when he gets burned he feels the pain and is hurt by Gugu’s lax comment. Then when Gugu leaves them his growth is stunted. Gugu’s presence in the household makes up for the cooking and cleaning. Fushi tries to take on his job the immortal creature fails and goes to Pioran for help. Pioran’s harsh with Fushi and tells him to go find Gugu because he’s the only one who can teach him these things. After Fushi saves Gugu from the kidnappers the two reconcile and the buildup to it was nice with Gugu connecting with Fushi.

Overall it was a good episode exploring humanity and Fushi growing his abilities. Hopefully, in the next episode, we’ll get another bonding moment between Fushi and Gugu.