The second season ofTo Your Eternitypremiered on October 23 and follows the dramatic events of the first season, adapting the next arc of Yoshitoki Oima’s original manga about an immortal being tasked with using its shapeshifting abilities to collect knowledge and experience. For a while, the immortal goes by no name; however, after meeting a young girl from Ninannah named March, the immortal starts to go by the name “Fushi”.
This name is part of the reason why March is especially significant to Fushi as one of his first friends, and perhaps the first character to have been some kind of parental figure to him. But why “Fushi”, of all the possible names that the immortal could have taken. What’s the significance of this cute-sounding pet-name? Why “Fushi”?
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March
March was a six-year-old girl from Ninannah, a small nation neighbouring the powerful Yanome, a state at war with Takunaha over Ninannah, which is abundant in resources. Ninannah is terrorized by the threat of violence, as well as a powerful giant bear known to them as Oniguma – The Spirit Bear. After being saved from being sacrificed to the bear as part of an annual ritual facilitated by Yanome, March meets the immortal in a time when he had not yet learned to speak, or how to behave. March taught Fushi all the basic human behaviors and attributes that he would need to be able to pass as a regular person, and over time, they became very close all the way up to her unfortunate death byan arrow shot by Hayase. March named the immortal “Fushi” because he is immortal, but how exactly does that play out?
Etymology
What March was drawing on when she named him Fushi was one of the various ways to refer to the concept of immortality in Japanese. Words like 「不死身」 –fujimi (“immortality”); 無限 –mugen(“infinite”; “without limit”) and of course, the word 「不滅」 –fumetsu (“immortal”); as seen in the titleFumetsu no Anata e,which translates to something along the lines of “To you, the immortal one”. The wordfumetsuuses two interesting kanji – 「不」 “fu”, which denotes a negation which is comparable to any of the various negation prefixes found in English, like “il-"; “im-” or “in-"; and 「滅」 “metsu”, which can translate to “extermination”; a total and complete elimination of the subject quality. “Fumetsu” is therefore “without elimination/destruction”, so the Japanese title ofTo Your Eternity,Fumetsu no Anata ecan be understood to mean something along the lines of “To you, the one who is without destruction”, which is one of various understandings of immortality.
The previously-mentioned “fujimi” is written with the kanjifu, for negation; the kanji for death, often pronounced “shi”;and the kanji “mi”, which refers to a physical body. The word can therefore be understood to be an understanding of the undying nature of the subject through a more physiological perspective, rather than the more metaphorical implications brought on by a word like “fumetsu”. Anyway, when March named the immortal one Fushi, she simply derived the name from a different word that, when translated, still turns out to be “immortality”; however, the perspective from which this quality is understood is vastly different on various levels based on these semantics. Fushi’s name comes from the Japanese word or phrase 「不老不死」 –furōfushi; commonly translated to “perpetual youth and longevity”.
Longevity
Interestingly, various villains throughout theDragon Ballfranchise: Demon King Piccolo from the original series; the evil Namekian Lord Slug from the original anime film; Frieza during his self-titled saga; and the titular villain from theMoro Arc inDragon Ball Superhad it in their agendas to use the series' macGuffins to wish for immortality, specifically using this understanding of the concept in their phrasing. March effectively took the “Longevity” part offurōfushiand turned that characteristic into a name that Fushi cherishes to this very day. Another fascinating happening concerning the name is the fact that some translations of theTo Your Eternitymanga have the character’s name as “Immo”; from “immortal”, rather than “Fushi”, which is an interesting attempt to localize the name.
