The Fall Anime 2025 Preview Guide - To Your Eternity Season 3

In the beginning, an "orb" is cast unto Earth. "It" can do two things: change into the form of the thing that stimulates "it"; and come back to life after death. "It" morphs from orb to rock, then to wolf, and finally to boy, but roams about like a newborn who knows nothing. As a boy, "it" becomes Fushi.

Through encounters with human kindness, Fushi not only gains survival skills but also grows as a "person". But his journey is darkened by the inexplicable and destructive enemy Nokker, as well as cruel partings with the people he loves.

To Your Eternity Season 3 is based on the manga series by Yoshitoki Ōima. The anime series is streaming on Crunchyroll on Saturdays.

The first two seasons of To Your Eternity were a lovely but incredibly mixed experience. After its jaw-droppingly gorgeous premiere, the first season chronicled Fushi the Orb's journey of self-actualization and discovery in a mostly excellent fashion, though the story's pacing became increasingly wobbly as Fushi himself became a more complex creature, as did the production values. The second season continued this trend of inconsistency, with the many fascinating story developments and new characters being weighed down by production woes that even a new studio and director couldn't solve. Now, three years later, Fushi the Orb is back, with another new studio and another new director at the helm. If nothing else, the direction of this new season is a perfect opportunity for To Your Eternity to reinvent itself.

After conquering his enemies and giving most of his loved ones a second chance at life, Fushi has spread his roots across the world and created a seemingly peaceful world. This world, as it so happens, now resembles our 21st-century reality, with the only major difference being the millions of miles of Fushiroots that have grown to encompass the planet. Despite its flaws, the ending of Season 2 was a fairly conclusive one; it honestly would have been a perfectly fine series finale, if need be. As of right now, my biggest question is what new adventures Fushi can find in a modern world that can live up to his mythic origins. Well, that, and I'm also curious to see if the show's artwork can finally do this complex and emotional tale justice.

We'll start with the second point. While premiere episodes are never a perfect indicator of what an entire series' run will look like, I am happy to report that Studio Massket and director Sōta Yokote have made a very good first impression. The show doesn't exactly look like a high-gloss blockbuster, but that's just as well, because the tweaked new aesthetic reminds me of one of the solid mid-budget anime that I might have pulled off my library's shelves back in the mid-2000s, probably with an ADV label on the spine of the DVD case. I think it's a great way to preserve To Your Eternity's art style while signalling a fundamental shift in the status quo.

As for the new story, signs are just as promising. I like the cast of new characters, even if - or, perhaps, because - they fit perfectly in the usual mold of Japanese high-schoolers who are about to find themselves wrapped up in a larger-than-life adventure. Mizuha seems to be our new human lead, and her depressed, nihilistic state of mind makes her the perfect candidate to get her perspective changed by an encounter with an immortal, shapeshifting Orb-Thing.

What I'm even more interested in, though, is seeing how the more familiar faces we've already gotten to know react to this completely alien new world. It's so nice to see friends like March find a new life of happiness now that they're free of the Knokker threat…for now. Poor Fushi has a panic attack when he realizes that, for as much as he's grown and changed over the millennia, he's just as vulnerable to loneliness and isolation as ever, even when he turns into a fish and makes cute little pictures in the sand. I get the feeling that this new season is going to invest its time into asking what happens when peace is not enough to guarantee your happiness. That's a very clever direction to take this story, indeed, and I'm looking forward to picking back up with Fushi and Friends to find out whatever answers await them.

I am really glad to be keeping up with Fushi's Orb-ventures in To Your Eternity, again, and I am really starting to get behind this decision to catapult his story so far into the future. Now that Fushi's culture shock has worn off a little after the season premiere, we can finally get a better idea of how Fushi's experiences in this new era will connect to all of the relationships and accomplishments that defined the first two seasons. Specifically, we're getting some insight into how Mizuha, the depressed young woman we met last week, shares a significant connection to everyone's favorite Orb-Thing.

Before we dive further into that, though, To Your Eternity has other friends to catch up with. I find it very funny that the resurrection of characters like Bon, Kai, and Hairo is the stuff of viral social media videos in this new world —but, of course, they would be. Half of the appeal of this new arc, in my mind, was seeing how the story would comment on modern trends and story ideas while retaining its connection to Fushi's mythical past. As nice as it would be for Fushi's plan to reunite all of his loved ones to go off without a hitch, it makes for a much more compelling story to have the collision of past and future explore the kinds of hijinks that would actually follow a bunch of people from ancient, magical times suddenly waking up in what is essentially modern-day Earth. My favorite bit has to be the fact that, even a thousand years later, Bon is still being followed by his retinue of old-man ghosts. It is also insane (in a good way) to see Gugu walking around in slacks and a sports jacket while also still wearing his dragon helmet.

The episode also serves as an excellent recap for viewers who need a reminder of just how many gosh-darned best friends Fushi made during his very long first life. I reviewed the first season-and-a-half of the show, but it's been years since I've gone back to any of the older episodes, so even I am having a hard time keeping track of every single person that has been carried forth across time to be reunited with the Orb. If there's one person I definitely remember, though, it's Hayase, who was perhaps the most interesting supporting character from the original storyline. I am assuming that her spirit has once again been reborn in the form of Mizuha, considering her conflicted emotional state and her penchant for what we'll call “intense” relationships. That, and the fact that Fushi immediately inspected her arm for the presence of a Nokker, which makes the connection pretty clear, I think.

Thankfully, two episodes in, and there's no sign yet of the production completely falling to shambles. Anything could happen in the coming weeks, of course, but I have once again gotten invested in Fushi's endless journey, and it would be a damned shame if the anime fell into the same cycle of letting down the wonderful storytelling with bad direction and ugly visuals. I'll keep my fingers crossed as I continue to check in with the Fushi Fam this fall.

How times have changed for Fushi, our favorite shape-changing immortal orb-dude. Last time we left him, he'd become a tree with roots spread out across the world. In the hundreds, or possibly thousands of years since he went full arboreal, it seems the danger posed by the creepy, tentacle-like Nokker things has finally passed, and the world is fully at peace. It resembles our modern world, with schoolchildren in uniforms, high-rise buildings, and roads filled with motor vehicles, but it is still clearly not our world. The script in books and on posters doesn't look like any modern language, and the brief glimpse we see of a globe reveals an alien map. Much like Fushi awakening into this strange new world, we've no idea what to expect.

That's one of the great strengths of To Your Eternity: the story reinvents itself every few episodes, with a different setting and a diverse cast of characters. That can also be its weakness, as the character Fushi becomes increasingly close to inevitably dying, and he then adopts their forms. However, Fushi can now resurrect his friends at will, which leads to a very confused little March manifesting inside a dark museum. By the time Fushi tracks her down, he's heartbroken to find she's been adopted by a perfect new family and doesn't need him anymore. That's how he spends an extended period as a fish(!) before being captured by a very persistent new friend.

We have already been introduced to a bunch of new, modern characters who all attend the same school. By far the most interesting is the troubled Mizuha, who is clearly supposed to be a descendant of the Fushi-obsessed Hayase. She's a brilliant girl who excels at whatever task she sets her mind to, railroaded into each new pastime by a mother who is both pushy and neglectful of Mizuha's feelings. Mizuha feels such existential ennui that she wishes for death… but will that change now that she's met Fushi?

It's a slightly jarring change of tone for the show to evolve from fantasy warfare to modern high school romcom, but I trust Fushi will soon be embroiled in complex and heartbreaking drama of one kind or another again. The new characters have potential, and Fushi's strange new living situation may evolve in entertaining ways. (I particularly like how, although the rest of his companions revived far from Fushi's main body, he kept shy little blonde girl Eko and Horse from manifesting until he found a place they could all safely stay.) Last season, the production quality was frankly awful, with abysmal, limited animation that couldn't keep up with the story's demands. From the appearance of this very attractive episode, that particular criticism seems to have been addressed. I hope the animators can maintain the aesthetic quality without overworking and delaying. I'm thrilled Fushi has returned for a final season to wrap up his epic story. I'll be happy to follow it to its end.

The gang's all back together again! After rather thoughtlessly resurrecting and then depositing them at random places across the world, Fushi is finally reunited with all of the friends he's grown to love over the years, gathered together by the clearly super-wealthy Tasty Peach Foundation,” left behind by Bon. It seems Bon's country, Uralis, still survives following the centuries-long gap between seasons, and they've kept the faith about the immortal Fushi and Bon's eventual return all this time. That's sweet, and also slightly creepy. Tonari's back to being a child again, but Fushi can't do anything about Gugu's deformities because he never knew him before the incident that wrecked his face.

Following a “mishap” at the airport where Gugu's alcohol-fueled flames set off the sprinkler system, the Tasty Peach people are forced to bribe the police to allow Fushi and friends to leave custody. It's a quick joke, made without dialogue, which makes it more effective. Back at the house, Fushi engages in some impromptu and terrifying home improvements using his resurrected monster bear pal. When Grandad quite understandably wants the monster taken to a zoo, March has an adorable tantrum, and the other kids promise to look after him like he's an oversized puppy or something. Those spikes stuck in him look painful, but thankfull,y March cares enough to yank them out. I've got to wonder if the kid filming everyone for a video diary may not be the best idea. Surely if word gets out onto the internet about Fushi and his friends, they'll never have any peace, and who knows what sort of weirdos might seek them out…

Depressed girl Mizuha might not necessarily be one of those weirdos, but her disturbingly intense mother gives me the creeps, especially how her dad seems to be completely cowed by her. Her mother announces they're moving house, and her father sits in stony silence. What's that about? We already knew Mizuha was miserable, with a difficult home life and no time to rest outside of extra-curricular activities, but it seems like her school life is difficult, too. Propositioned by eight different boys over one school year, the other girls are jealous of her beauty and accuse her of stealing all the guys.

Quiet, nerdy friend Hanna knows differently, though. It's heavily hinted that the person Mizuha says she “likes” isn't a boy at all, but Hanna, and she's too shy to fully admit it. That scene where she kabedons Hanna and asks her if she would cry for her if she died certainly wasn't the most heterosexual scene I've witnessed this season. It looks like Hanna probably reciprocates the feelings, considering how the final third of the episode mostly comprises her desperate search for the missing Mizuha, especially since Mizuha left the feather hairband Hanna gifted her on the clubroom desk before disappearing. Mizuha seems to carry a vast amount of internalised pain, and Fushi knows this, so is this why he's been tailing Hanna, and assists her when she falls? The episode ends at a bizarre, abrupt moment, too. Perhaps the source material doesn't lend itself easily to weekly episodes.

This episode seems mostly about manoeuvring pieces on a chessboard rather than overtly developing the plot. It's not quite as beautiful as the first episode; however, it is still a damned sight better than almost anything from last season. Clearly, something terrible is going to happen with Mizuha that will shatter Fushi's hard-won peace, and I'm almost dreading it. As she's a descendant of Hayase, things could likely get very freaky indeed...