To Your Eternity: 5 Ways It's Classic Shonen

To Your Eternity has been one of the standout series this anime season. Find out how it does this by perfectly balancing the old with the new.

Shonen anime has always been one of the most popular and commercially successful anime genres. Much of this success has to do with the tropes and story arcs that have eternal appeal for specific audiences. While many of these tropes have persisted, others have fallen by the wayside as manga and anime have evolved with the times.

To Your Eternity cosplay is a fascinating blend of old shonen stand-bys and existential science fiction. The combination can be heady at times, and it's a delicate balancing act. While the show feels entirely original in many ways, there are still aspects of the riveting new anime that feel like classic shonen.

 The Central Protagonist Has Powerful Abilities

Shonen is the genre of the chosen one. More often than not, a shonen protagonist is special in some way: they've eaten the Gum-Gum fruit, they've found a Death Note, they've inherited All-For-One... the list goes on and on. Fushi fits this mold well enough. As the single entity of their kind, cast unto earth by an omnipotent creator as an experiment of sorts, Fushi wasn't just chosen but invented. Both immortal and a shapeshifter, it is doubtless that Fushi will manifest even more powerful abilities as the story continues.

Other Characters Gravitate Towards The Protagonist

Ensemble anime casts have often been mocked by outsiders. Some opening credits feel like a roster of faces no one could possibly ever memorize. In fact, a massive cast of allies and villains is pretty much an essential aspect of most shonen. Usually, these supporting characters all find themselves connected with the protagonist, either by fate or fury... a rival, another cursed individual, a girl who has a crush. Fushi only becomes interesting to watch if other characters interact with them. Right from the start, Fushi becomes more endearing through the eyes of March, the little girl who sees him as a work-in-progress. As the story moves forward, Fushi will remain a means by which to explore the lives of other characters.

No Parents

Orphans are ten a penny in shonen. Fushi falls easily into this category. Created directly by a deity, Fushi begins life without a body, let alone parents. In most shonen series, the lack of parents is usually a sore spot for the protagonist, a loss that drives them forward. But Fushi can't even register the lack. As they accumulate losses throughout the course of this story, these losses will doubtless be felt more. For the time being, the viewers must feel even those things that Fushi cannot.

Classic: The Protagonist Is Pitted Against Fearsome Foes

So far, To Your Eternity lacks the traditional structure inherent to many shonen series. There isn't yet a nefarious organization, no one-on-one duels with evolving abilities in play. Yet there are still monsters to vanquish.

The first among them, the polar bear mountain god Oniguma, proves a challenging foe. It can't be easy for an author to create suspense when a protagonist literally can't die, but Yoshitoki Ōima knows that it's not Fushi alone, but those who surround them for whom the audience will care. As the story progresses, Fushi will have to fight not for their own sake, but for the sake of others. That's about as shonen as a series can get.

Classic: The Protagonist Frequently Fails

Shonen protagonists are not without their flaws, and that's what makes them sympathetic. They lose battles, they sustain immense emotional and physical damage, they fail to save their friends. In this sense, Fushi is as classic a protagonist as they come. Right from the start, they fail to save the first human they encounter and thereafter fail to replicate humanity, too. Eventually, these failures will help this character, like so many other shonen heroes, become a protagonist worth believing in and rooting for.

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