To Your Eternity is known to many for its methodical, slow-paced story of Fushi’s growth and the despair he faced throughout his life. Unfortunately, Season 1 sputtered to a conclusion following an underwhelming final arc around the events of Jananda, which was more action oriented, and less gripping overall. Season 2 of To Your Eternity literally follows in the footsteps of that arc, as it continued to sputter through quite an underwhelming story, that has lost most of its original charm of slow paced storytelling. The new characters introduced are okay at best, with some being decent, and some being downright awful. The pacing is fast, like an action story, which in my opinion, is not what To Your Eternity’s charm ever was. It felt like a bunch of ideas mashed together, and it felt like the author ran out of ideas now that Fushi is basically just a normal human being now, albeit with world-changing powers.

The plot this season was quite a mess, to put it lightly. Season 1 was an emotional roller coaster, this season lacked most of those charms, and left me baffled at some of the writing decisions that potentially even took away from the emotional moments that we witnessed from Season 1. The timeskips are jarring, the pacing is zooming, and with that, I wasn’t nearly as invested. Fushi learning how to speak was interesting, but him getting every single overpowered skill known to mankind, enough to become an isekai protagonist, now that’s pushing it. With this type of shift, it’s only fitting that the entire season felt way more action oriented, and was less focused on what made Season 1 great, which was the emotional buildup and world building.

Perhaps a reason why the world building felt markedly weaker this season was also a product of the animation this season, headed by Studio Drive, a lesser known studio compared to the likes of Brain’s Base. The backgrounds felt very “static”, if you catch my drift. Very watered down compared to some of the shots that Season 1 provided.

Music wise, nothing to write home about either, and as much as I like “Pink Blood”, the OP, the fact that they reused it is so uninspiring. I’d much rather have heard an inferior OP to it than seeing it reused. The soundtrack was also quite forgettable.

Another huge drop off was the quality of the characters, none of which elicited any emotion out of me. Fushi, being all grown up now, just does not have any meaningful qualities anymore, besides containing the numerous vessels of presumedly dead characters from Season 1. He gets all these powers, he’s like God, but this isn’t the Bible we’re reading here, so being overpowered doesn’t mean a thing to me. A new addition to the cast is Bonchien Nikolai La Tastypeach Uralys (nice name, I know), and I will admit, I liked him, and his mannerisms, but as the series went along, his energy virtually disappeared, and so did my interest in his character, who felt so useless to the story.

A character that frustrated me a lot was Kahaku, a descendant of Hayase, who inherited every single creepy gene, who felt like a manipulative weirdo, trying to form Fushi’s vision of things into a way that benefits his obsession with him. The difference between Kahaku and Hayase seems to be only at a biological level, their gender. The relationships overall in this show befuddle me, because I don’t see how the sexual orientation of Kahaku matters, why let heteronormativity reign? Have some gall and just jump down the same path as Hayase did, regardless of what “gender” Fushi is assuming.

Simply put, To Your Eternity has gone in a completely different direction, and it hasn’t worked out, in virtually every aspect. It feels like an anime that has lost its identity, and is trying so hard to find one, but it’s constantly stuck in a limbo of deciding whether it wants to be slow paced, fast paced, emotional, or epic. There were definitely a few enjoyable episodes here and there, and the effort was there at times, but overall, it just wasn’t all that great, inheriting all the problems that the second half of Season 1 had, and then some.