© 大今良時・講談社／不滅のあなたへＳ３製作委員会

“The Attack” is an absolutely deranged episode of To Your Eternity, and I mean that as a compliment. Mostly. I figured that the little Nokker girl that reignited Fushi’s war against the parasites was going to come back into the picture sooner or later, which is exactly what happens this week. What I most certainly did not expect, though, was for most of the episode to be a descent into the psychological horror that Nokker!Mimori has inflicted on the girl’s obsessive, pedophilic older stepbrother.

There are a couple of things I should probably clarify up front. The first thing is that, even though the jobless and antisocial Hirotoshi is very obviously characterized as being the kind of otaku that holds some kind of attraction towards the little-sister types he obsesses over, there’s no indication that he’s ever done anything legitimately untoward or dangerous to a real kid like Mimori. The absolute worst that it gets is the way Hirotoshi admires Mimori’s legs when he helps to tie her shoe, which is gross, but it doesn’t make Hirotoshi a monster.

This ties into the second point that bears mentioning, which is that I don’t actually think that it is morally reprehensible or irresponsible to have a character like Hirotoshi put in the role of a sympathetic protagonist. If anything, I think it probably makes for an interesting challenge for writers who want to see just how well they can handle the incredibly difficult balancing act of honestly representing a character’s flaws while still portraying them as real people. After all, people like Hirotoshi exist all over the world, and there is genuine artistic merit in questioning how much of the character we can tolerate when he does truly seem to be trying to build a positive and caring relationship with Mimori…even though his motivations and urges are so tangled together in ways that will make it impossible for most viewers to resist turning away and cringing in disgust.

The problem isn’t that the Hirotoshi and Mimori dynamic isn’t that it’s bad. It’s just really, really weird. I think that this is a purposeful tactic on the part of Yoshitoki Ōima, but it is still a very sudden and strange shift in tone and direction for this story to take. What I will say is that the narrative and emotional payoff of all this bizarre setup is, at the very least, pretty effective: When Hirotoshi realizes that he is the only adult that cares enough to attend the Parent’s Day at Mimori’s school, he rushes to support her in his father’s best and most ill-fitting suit, only to witness the girl fall (or leap?) from the school roof to her death.

It’s a shocking and dark moment that becomes all the more horrifying when Mimori immediately stands up and begins acting like a completely different person. This whole scenario puts Bon’s profile of the girl into much sharper (and more bizarre” relief. Not only did the Nokker steal this little girl’s body, but the only person in her family that even noticed the body snatching was the kid’s creepy stalker of a brother. My god.

Another credit I have to give this episode is that it turns the action dial up a few notches and really acquits itself well. Despite how ludicrous the nature of Fushi and Nokker!Mimori’s battle is, the whole sequence is storyboarded and animated quite well, which gives me a lot of hope for how the rest of this season will play out. I am more than happy to accept a story’s unexpected, challenging, and frankly insane turns when that story is being told with enough confidence and skill.

**Episode Rating: **

• To Your Eternity Season 3 is currently streaming on Crunchyroll. *

*James is a writer with many thoughts and feelings about anime and other pop-culture, which can also be found on BlueSky, his blog, and his podcast. *