There was just a moment there when Fumetsu no Anata e flashed a bit of the emotional punching power it had in the best moments of the first season.  I’ve missed it – those best moments were pretty damn good, and while I’ve enjoyed this season for its sheer peculiarity there hasn’t been anything approaching that level.  When a series has high points as high as Fumetsu and they’re so few and far between, they almost seem illusory.  A show that operates at the level this one does most of the time logically shouldn’t be able to kick as hard it does.

It was that exchange between Fushi and the Princess’ father (which would make him the king) that really got to me.  He’s on his last legs, which makes him easy for Fushi to track down.  He’s so far gone he doesn’t even move his limbs, and expresses disinterest in this odd boy doing anything for him.  But Fushi is incapable of looking at suffering and not being moved by it.  Both Fushi’s lines of dialogue here are really heartbreaking.  First, “What should the rest of us who are staying behind do for someone like you?”  And then, simply, “I want to do something for you”.

This is the really powerful thing about Fushi as a character.  He doesn’t die, he’s not human and not capable of truly understanding the fear of death.  Or even pain, in the same way humans feel it.  It’s literally impossible for him to feel empathy in that sense – but he does.  But he never stops longing to understand, and he never stops trying to change the world with kindness.  The Princess Really has him down pat – this “hobby” of being kind is really the only hobby he has.  Is he forever informed by the person the boy on the ice was, or is this somehow hard-wired into him?

Fushi’s kindness is never enough to stop suffering, of course, a weight he bears with him at all times.  Bon tricks him into knocking himself out (he is an easy mark that way), in order to directly address the three “immortals” about what decision they’re making about their future.  Bon’s sister Pocoa  arrives with  Iris and Chabo in tow and is generally annoying and unnecessarily distracting.  And we get our first appearance from MIB for a good while, called onto the carpet by Bon to answer some overdue questions.

That was an interesting scene, no question.  Man in Black admits he could stop the nokker wars (probably) if he wanted.  But he declines, once again playing the “just an observer” card, and says that the deaths of humans in these conflicts “feed Fushi’s growth”.  And he confirms what’s seemed obvious for a while – the plan is for Fushi to eventually replace him as… whatever he is.  I would have been interested to hear his answer to that question about whether Fushi was created because the Man in Black wants to die, but Messar’s pointless sword attack signals to the MIB that chat time is over.

That’s a pretty big boot, but another shoe drops when the nokkers finally come a’ nokkin.  March – one of the dummy bodies Fushi stashes around town for quick movement during the attack – seems to revive.  Spontaneously, that is, without any direct or even conscious intervention from Fushi.  That would be new as far as I know, and potentially pretty important.  Whether it signals some sort of fundamental reset of our understanding of Fushi’s powers – or even his own understanding – it’s too son to say.  But this has all the earmarks of a watershed moment.