The following article contains spoilers for To Your Eternity: Season 2 Episode 2, “Beating Will,” now streaming on Crunchyroll.
Following on from the events of To Your Eternity: Season 2’s premiere, Episode 2 picks up with Tonari, Fushi’s main ally during the first season’s “Jananda Island” arc, confronting Hisame, the 9-year old-leader of the Guardians and Hayase’s granddaughter. Tonari warns Hisame to leave Fushi alone; while she believes that the guild itself is mostly harmless, it’s Hisame’s alliance with a Nokker that makes her a real danger to Fushi.
Hisame objects, stating that the Nokker taking root in her arm is her friend, having been passed on from her grandmother to protect her. When Tonari tries to remove the Nokker, it fights back, inflicting a mortal wound on Tonari and fleeing with Hisame in tow.
When Fushi awakens the next morning, he learns of Tonari’s condition, still unaware that the woman is his old friend. He rushes to her bedside where she lies dying, although she still tries to be her jovial self in spite of the pain. Fushi beats himself up for another person to get killed on his watch and asks if there’s anything he can do for her, but all she requests is his company.
Tonari asks Fushi why he’s been isolating on the island for 40 years, and he explains it was due to a mixture of wanting to train for battle against the Nokkers and his fear of seeing more loved ones die. Tonari counters that grief shouldn’t preclude him from seeking out friends, and she requests to see his various forms. Fushi accepts, taking on the appearance of various fallen comrades, from the boy in the snowstorm from To Your Eternity’s very first episode to March, Parona and Gugu.
As Fushi cycles through further forms, he’s devastated to learn he can take on the appearance of characters whose deaths weren’t depicted, such as Gugu’s brother Shin and their mutual friend Rean. As he fails to take on the form of Tonari, he’s relieved to know that his friend is still alive elsewhere — completely unaware that she lies dying before him. As Tonari asks what she was like, Fushi explains that despite disliking her at first, he grew fond of her after fighting alongside her.
Tonari seems relieved to learn this and encourages Fushi to keep letting people into his heart so that he can better appreciate being alive. She passes away shortly thereafter, and Fushi finally discovers who the woman was after assuming her form for the first time. Their mutual friend Sandel tells Fushi that Tonari trained to resist poisons for Fushi’s sake so that she’d be useful to him once she passed, before adding that they both loved him and his friends didn’t live just to make him suffer.
Thanks to Sandel and Tonari’s actions, Fushi finally decides to end his self-imposed exile, and he heads to a nearby city to make friends. His fear of exposing others to danger persists, and the immortal always makes sure to leave for a new city after three days so as not to attract the Nokkers. He repeats this cycle multiple times to the extent that entire decades pass, and over this time, he accumulates further knowledge and forms, including Tonari’s pet owl Ligard.
Unfortunately, Fushi’s lifestyle, as well as his fear of others’ deaths, continues to make it hard for him to forge any new bonds, and decades pass without him making any new friends. While he travels, the Guardians accumulate further influence, becoming a powerful enough organization to fight the Nokkers in Fushi’s stead.
During this montage, the Guardians see a constant change in leadership between Hayase’s successive descendants, culminating in the episode’s final scene. Fushi, having grown lethargic over his Nokker-defeating duties being taken over by the Guardians, is greeted by the guild’s newest leader: Kahaku, Hayase’s first male successor.
All in all, it’s a shocking note to end the episode on. To Your Eternity’s first season was very delicately paced in showing Fushi’s growth, and Season 2’s premiere took great pains to establish its new status quo. To kill off Tonari so suddenly as well as have Hisame die off-screen and depict an even longer time skip than the first episode’s 40 years shows that Season 2 has a completely different set of priorities compared to what came before. Clearly, the audience is in for a much more unpredictable series this time around.
