Episodes 0-3 – Dusk Beyond the End of the World

I’d love to know how many of you voted for this series because you’ve enjoyed it so far, and how many of you voted for this series because you wanted to see a clown forced to dance to the weird tune of a pseudo-incest anime that has to be censored. Because I have no doubt that both groups of voters did their part to ensure that Dusk at the end of the world (from now on dusk) comments every week. But which one is more dominant? How sarcastic (not) will the comments section become as the season progresses? Should I start taking tap dance classes? At least for now, I’m not sure about these issues. But no matter the journey, the destination remains the same: a natural sci-fi world dusk.

This series made me realize that, although it took a while, I was definitely starting to feel some post-apocalyptic fatigue. Although it is still far from reaching Another world Or reincarnation anime, it’s undeniable that, especially in the past few years, we’ve seen a significant increase in anime that explore (sometimes literally) worlds left behind after apocalyptic disasters. To name a few recent examples, Zom 100, The train to the end of the world and Tianqi Hotel Everything comes to mind. But this season only, we also have Post-apocalyptic tourI think there is a valid argument digimon beat— and that this is happening in a world clearly affected by climate change and disasters — is at least partly also important. i think the world dusk Has enough unique qualities to give it at least some level of appeal, so I don’t think it’s a boring issue per se – at least in that respect.

I think the most important point dusk Working in its favor is the political intrigue it went to great lengths to sow. We’ve seen some signs that OWEL – and we’ve yet to hear a full explanation of who they are, what they do, and how they came to power – are actively working to suppress information about the history, for reasons we’re still not sure of. Hence why Akira is considered their main target – it’s thought he risks “infecting” everyone with his knowledge of the past. The only problem is, Akira still doesn’t know what happened to the world since he was shot – which sounds like it was about 200 years ago – so he doesn’t know what information about himself would be considered dangerous by OWEL, let alone why. Still, any time a powerful governing body actively works to suppress historical knowledge, whether it’s going after a man who’s been frozen for 200 years or, oh, I don’t know, like, trying to exert power over a museum, you couldn’t ask for a bigger, more obvious red flag.

Also there duskThe corners are some great production quality. The animation looks great, especially in the (admittedly few) action scenes. Although the environment here is not that lush Post-apocalyptic tourthey remain strange landscapes in their own right, and feature an equally stark contrast between the beauty of a world returned to nature and the ever-present fear and loneliness. The voice cast features some heavy hitters such as Ishikawa Yui, Koshimizu Amiand Xiao Yasuo Among other things. To me, the introduction theme felt like something that most people would probably enjoy, but it wasn’t my cup of tea.

Where dusk Meanwhile, just about everything else is stumbling — and pretty hard at that. We’ve established that there’s some cool world-building going on in the background, but what about in the foreground? This is just Akira searching for his adopted sister Towasha, even if it means her grave. He is mainly accompanied by a robot who looks a lot like her and wants to marry him – who also looks like Towasa. If you don’t think the romance between them is believable, it’s hard to find the will to care about it. Even if you look past the vague incest of it all, I can’t see any chemistry between the two of them. All I saw was another white bread protagonist, and his genius adopted sister, who didn’t seem to talk to anyone else, not even her own age. These are not good romantic leads. I just don’t know how much easier I can make this.

But as promised, let’s switch gears a bit and talk about the sister-loving elephant in the room: the incest of it all. This is the moment you’ve all been waiting for. There are quite a few anime with themes or elements of sibling romance (fun fact, as suggested by the recent video About ANN’s social activities: long before he became Doma demon slayer or jamie in street fighterone of voice actor Fu ShifenThe first character is in such an animation). They all inevitably end up messy in their own way. But even so, based on what we’ve seen so far, I have a feeling dusk will appear along with titles such as vampire knight Being one of the most confusing. I say this mostly because in just three episodes (four if you count Episode 0), we’ve already been introduced to two pairs of siblings who could become lovers, Akira and Towasa, and Fides and Kalcrom. It’s worth noting that while Akira and Towasa are adopted siblings (a very common trope in bromance anime), the latter are biological siblings, and both are running for leadership of the mafia at the same age. However, it’s also worth noting that we don’t yet know if the sister’s feelings are one-sided.

In the world that Akira wakes up in, what we call “marriage” is now called “ehlsea-ing.” From what we’ve seen, homosexuality, heterosexuality, and multiracialism are all fairly normalized culturally. Marriage or matrimony has become quite a central theme dusk. Shortly before he’s shot, Akira and Towasa talk about getting married, Yugure – a robot who’s clearly at least physically based on Towasa – says from the beginning that she wants to marry Akira, and then ehlsea-ing is the dominant culture we see in this world. dusk So far.

What I’m saying is that romance, especially marriage, and especially love, are obviously going to be at the heart of this series. But honestly, I’m not that interested in incest, although I’m interested in the queerness that’s going on in the context of it all. I very much hope people will talk about this more as the series progresses. In other words, I want it to be something like this dusk To actually do something—anything—as opposed to just treating it as window dressing or a cool nugget of world-building.

This series has potential and there’s a lot of it. But lacking the appeal to make me want to see more – and worse, it’s hard to ignore the current shortcomings – for now, I myself can’t find a higher rating than a solid “meh.” But hopefully as the series continues I’ll modify it to be meh-gnificent rather than meh-siberable or meh-diocore.

grade:

Dusk at the end of the world Currently live broadcast
Amazon Prime.