The following review contains major spoilers for the entirety of To Your Eternity’s first season.
`<br>#If you're here to figure out if you should watch the series, you should. I'm giving it a 95/100. Please go watch this. I recommend it to everyone.<br><br>#In order for me to express how this series made me feel, I have to talk about very spoilery things that happen throughout the series, some of which will be in-depth. The first episode, all the arcs, and the final episode in this season.<br>`
#Do not read this review if you want to avoid spoilers for To Your Eternity.

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Usually when I'm reviewing a show on Anilist, it's a show that is generally overlooked and I think deserves more attention.
Not this time. To Your Eternity has gotten the exact amount of attention that it deserves. It's the kind of anime that I wish we had more of. So seeing everyone saying that they felt disappointed with the direction this season took in its second half, I want to throw my hat in the ring to express how I feel about the series.

I'm taking a very different approach to this review. I typically just say my feelings on what I liked and didn't like because that usually is enough to fill up a review. But instead of that, I want to go over the five main parts of the first season. The first episode, the last episode, and the three arcs in-between. Because this is a series where people's feelings are mostly reliant on the arc.

Which I disagree with.

Yes, some arcs are stronger than others, but there's an obvious purpose to it all.

So let's start at episode one.

Is episode 1 the best episode of To Your Eternity? It tells a complete narrative, sure, but in my opinion episode 12 is the season's best episode. What matters is that this episode floored everyone that saw it.

The series starts with God (actually he’s “The Observer” but he’s got Old Testament God vibes, I’m calling him God for this review) dropping an orb onto Earth to see what it does. The orb is an immortal lifeform. It's able to duplicate inanimate objects, as well as take on the form of living creatures that it connected with in a strong way. The first living creature the orb takes on is a wolf that dies next to it. As the wolf, the orb walks back to the original owner: a boy who doesn't know that the wolf has died and assumes they are one and the same.

The rest of the episode follows the boy as he searches for the tribe that he last saw 5 years ago, all of whom have died. After suffering an injury, the boy also dies.
In his final words, the boy asks the orb to never forget him. The orb grants his wish, as it takes on the form and identity of the boy, becoming the main form it identifies as throughout the series.

You wanna know when I cried? It was when the boy’s soul passes on. The boy doesn’t know that he has died. Because as he passes on, he sees his pet wolf and his villagers. The only thing that matters to him is that he got what he wanted.
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He found paradise.

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The short tale of the boy is one where the boy embraces death. The tale of March is of a girl who doesn't want to die.

March is a girl in a village who is to be sacrificed by a woman named Hayase to appease a god they call “Oniguma” . While escaping, March finds the orb in the form of the boy, naming him Fushi. Fushi is similar to an artificial intelligence in that he learns from experience. At this point, Fushi has the brain capacity of a wolf, so he acts like one. March decides to be “Fushi’s mommy” and try to teach him how to be human. Or at least have common manners.

For a series that takes itself relatively serious, it's one that is not afraid to have a little humor spliced in, as one of the episodes in this arc ends with Fushi speaking his first words to March.

In his wolf form.

The rest of the arc follows Hayase, interested in Fushi's immortality, taking him, March, March's sister Parona, and an old woman named Pioran to a larger city. This is where To Your Eternity establishes its ambiguous setting. Exact times are never given, but it's early enough in time that March and all of the villagers are illiterate, while also having bustling nations relatively close-by.
Hayase is only truly interested in Fushi and his immortality, however, and soon throws them all into a prison. They quickly escape, but just as quickly, they are pursued.

And in the crossfire, March is shot and soon after dies.

This is an important death for the series because, beyond the shock of killing her off, March is a character that didn't want to die. Most people that die prematurely don't want to die. Hell, several people in old age don't want to die. They try to fight the inevitable.

March's death signifies the two things this series is about. It's about Fushi's search for humanity

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and it's about death.

Leaving the village, Fushi encounters Pioran in the wild. Seeing Fushi's interest in writing, she starts to teach him how to write and speak. Thanks to her, Fushi is now able to speak...robotically. Baby steps.
But then God shows up to inform Fushi of the Nokkers. The Nokkers are the impending doom of the series. We don't know too much about them, but we do know that they want Fushi dead, and will destroy anything in its path to do so.

Fushi and Pioran go to Takunaha, where we meet the arc's protagonist: Gugu.

As a boy, Gugu supposedly gets his face mangled after saving Rean, a girl he has a crush on, from a falling log. I say supposedly because, if I recall correctly, we never see Gugu's face after the incident. All we see are people's reactions to seeing his face. Pioran's old lover, who Gugu refers to as Booze Man, saves him and gives him a mask to cover his face. Several months later, Fushi and Pioran arrive. Gugu connects with Fushi, thinking of both of them as ugly monsters, while Fushi is like a child who has no understanding of connotation.

I'd love to keep summarizing the pre-timeskip half of the arc but this is a review and if I keep summarizing this arc pre-timeskip I'm going to sound like Wikipedia.

So why is this the best arc in the season? Well, two reasons. The first is the characters. Gugu, Rean, Booze Man, they're all some of the most likable characters in the season. The romance between Gugu and Rean feels genuine and deserved. One of my favorite moments from the arc is when Rean wears the makeshift mask for Gugu after Fushi brings back his original mask, having both of them hide their faces for two different yet similar reasons.

The second reason I personally consider this to be the season's best arc is Fushi's development, and it becomes immediately apparent when the series jumps ahead four years.

After living with Gugu, Pioran and Booze Man for four years, Fushi is now capable of talking like a human. It's the biggest sign of the time difference besides Gugu's significant growth.

But this is not a show about friendship. It's a show about death.

The Nokkers appear at Rean's birthday party and attack. Fushi and Gugu are able to get everyone out of the collapsing building but themselves. Fushi is "killed" in his March form (causing Fushi to temporarily forget March), and Gugu, just like before, sacrifices himself to save Rean.

Now's as good a time as any to bring up the music. I adore the soundtrack composed by Ryo Kawasaki. It's without a doubt in my mind my favorite anime OST of the year, making scenes so much more powerful with it in the background. Give it a listen when you can.

I was originally going to call this "The Tonari Arc" but she isn't really the arc's main character. This is the arc where Fushi is, by and large, the main character.

This arc is, in a sense, the reason that I felt the need to make this review. Reception to this arc is mixed, as people say the story is weaker and the animation gets rougher. I didn't think the animation quality got worse whatsoever, so take that as you will.

Is this the season's worst arc? Well, by process of elimination, yes. But that implies that I think this arc is okay or of lesser quality. I think this arc is still great. And it's all because of Fushi's development.
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We realized this show was about death when March died. But Fushi never realizes it until Gugu dies.

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Gugu was Fushi's best friend. To people watching the series, he was our best friend too. So losing Gugu made Fushi want to avoid death as much as possible. When he sees the next arc's group of new characters, he at first wants to avoid them because he knows that death constantly follows him like a curse. He starts to lose trust in God and tries to go on his own but Pioran tags along with him. She takes him to a new island but both are labeled as prisoners and sent to a different one.
There, to rescue Pioran, Fushi becomes a successful gladiator thanks to his immortality and changing forms to the various people and animals Fushi has come across, which no one thinks is breaking any rules. Fushi does this so that he can rescue Pioran and escape the island with the rag-tag group of friends he finds there, including their leader Tonari.

But eventually, his final opponent turns out to be Hayase (from the March arc). She has become obsessed with Fushi, even murdering March's sister as a "gift" to Fushi. He makes a deal with Hayase that he'll let her do as she pleases as long as Tonari and the rest of the prisoners are set free. She agrees, kinda, but Tonari and her friends end up getting off the escape ship in order to save Fushi.
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As if that wasn't enough, the Nokkers show up.

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In a change of pace, Tonari DOESN'T die! But her friends do. And Hayase almost gets Tonari killed because she's a crazy yandere who really wants to bang Fushi. If you've seen the show, you know I'm not joking.

After the battle with the Nokkers, Fushi strands Hayase on a boat in the middle of the ocean, where Hayase confesses her love for Fushi. After everything he's been through, and knowing the people Hayase killed to get her here, Fushi responds by leaving her to die.

I didn't think I'd have to dedicate a whole section to the last episode before watching it, but of course this episode hit me like a truck.

Throughout the season, there has only been one recurring character besides Fushi and God: the old woman, Pioran. It's ironic that, in a series about death, the human that has shown up in all three arcs has been an old woman. A woman who is satisfied with life and is comfortable waiting until death arrives.

After several months go by of just Fushi and Pioran on their own, Pioran lies down and asks God (who only Fushi has been able to see up until this point) if she can be reborn as something to help Fushi on his journey.
And that's when we see a young Pioran, about to enter "Paradise". She's the first person close to Fushi that dies peacefully of natural causes.

This scene hit me hard because of how close it was to how my grandma died.

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She was a very close relative, living next door and for her last years in the same house, and she had been through a lot, including a near-fatal head injury that she was able to recover from. A religious person, I remember as a child her telling me that she had hoped that in heaven she would look a lot younger than she did now. So seeing a young Pioran about to pass on really got to me.

On her last day, my dad told her that he was going to drive me out to the college I commute to (responding with "Okay."). When he came home, she had already passed on. After everything she had been through, she died peacefully in her sleep.

It's been three years since her death.

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It's worth noting that Yoshitoki Ōima conceived To Your Eternity after her grandma's death.
This is not a series where characters are created just to die. It's about the encounters and friendships that Fushi develops with these characters. Fushi is an immortal being. Even if he succeeds at stopping the Nokkers from killing anyone else in his life, those people will still die of old age if it gets to that point.

By the end of the first season, Fushi is able to transform into seven people, as well as three animals. He doesn't do it as a form of "collecting", he does it so that he will never forget the people that have affected his life.

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Because they were his friends.