WorldEnd: What do you do at the end of the world? Are you busy? Will you save us? (sukasuka)

in order to shorten the title and for the ease to read, this anime will be referred as sukasuka (one of the official shortened titles) in this blog post.

main information:

• genre: post-apocalyptic, fanatsy, sci-fi, romance
  
• season: spring 2017
• number of seasons & episodes: 1 season, 12 episodes
• myanimelist / anilist
  

an anime with a big worldview always gets me hooked, with sukasuka being one of them. the most common comment surrounding this anime i've seen has to be "gives stomach aches", which i already did sort of expect to feel this way when i first dived into it, but damn, it hurts even more than i expected.

 

in sukasuka, we have our main guy, willem (cv. arai ryouhei), meeting chtholly (cv. tadokoro azusa) in a town on a floating island, walking around for nearly the whole first episode. willem was then assigned to take care of a weapon storehouse, yet he found out that it's full of children, and then he met chtholly again, knowing that's where she lives, that he somehow became a father-like figure to the children in the weapon storehouse.

if i didn't know that it's adapted from a light novel, i would've thought it was an original anime that tries to put a lot of elements into a fantasy romance story. however, for a 12-episode anime, i feel like the execution of the main story while explaining the big worldview behind it is done pretty clear. the romance between willem and chtholly wasn't exactly very remarkable in terms of a romantic relationship, yet it hit way differently that i almost forgot the romance tag when typing up the genre tags above.

 

also damn, willem is handsome af.

 

i love the music in sukasuka as well, especially for the opening (dearest drop by tadokoro azusa) & the bgms inserted in episode 1 & 12. they give out the post-apocalyptic, sort of desperate and tense feeling as shown in the story.

SPOILERS BELOW

 

somehow i found the cosmic horror-ish bit in chtholly's corrupting mind very visually attractive??? apart from that, the colours in sukasuka are very beautiful and pleasing to watch as well.

as i mentioned in the beginning that sukasuka hit me harder than i expected before jumping into it, it is because although i do not necessarily see willem and chtholly being involved in a romantic relationship (the wedding proposal at the near end felt a bit awkward ngl), i could kind of feel that at least chtholly was holding her life on to willem, and how much chtholly wanted to be noticed and recognized in her battle with the beasts. her death was unavoidable, but at least she did something that she was proud of before she died.

so did the other children, they were all aware that they were born to die in a war, yet they saw this as their life mission, which it was sad to see innocent children dying. although willem tried to stop this from happening, there wasn't much that he could do about it. nephren jumping off the helicopter at the end was also something that hit me really hard as well, that i once again felt the hopelessness in this whole wordview and in willem's place.

SPOILERS ABOVE

overall speaking, sukasuka has been an emotional ride to me. i found it immersive that i could sympathize with the characters, while enjoying this big, detailed and beautiful yet hopeless fictional world.

the romance could've been done better and there are quite a lot of things that i can nitpick in this anime, but i still wish that they will adapt all the light novels (possibly the sequel light novel as well?).

i rated 7/10 on myanimelist, but the more accurate score would be 7.5/10 since it's a bit better than "good", but i feel like i won't remember this anime for long. the light novels seem pretty interesting to read as well, maybe i will pick them up sometime in the future.