Karen's Anime Blog

Two days after seeing the final episode, I’m unsure what to make of Takopi’s Original Sin. This is unusual for me, because as you may have noticed, I tend to be rather opinionated where anime is concerned.

First, the nuts and bolts. The animation, voice acting, and production in general were all fantastic. I have no complaints on that front. I don’t know if I’d call the writing good, in part because of my mixed feelings about the ending, but the subject matter was unusual for anime and it succeeded in covering very dark topics without feeling like it was just being dark for the sake of being edgy. All of these are considerable checks in the win column.

I have two problems: The ending takes the easy way out, and I’m not sure I agree with the message.

First, the ending. Azuma gives Takopi back the Happy Camera (with Marina’s blood conveniently cleaned off of it) and Takopi is able to use his Happy Power to use the broken Happy Camera one more time, at the cost of his life. Everything that happened since Shizuka met Takopi is undone, which means Marina and Chappy are still alive. Everything seems likely to go to hell for the same reasons they did in the previous timeline, but there’s a difference: now the characters have some kind of memory of Takopi, and that memory allows Shizuka and Marina to bond. In the after-credits scene, we see teenaged Shizuka and Marina hanging out together, and while everything is not sweetness and light– the scar on Marina’s face shows the abuse is still ongoing– it’s still a much better ending than any of the characters would have had otherwise.

Time travel was important in the show, but after accidentally killing Marina in episode two, Takopi says that was the end of his use of the Happy Camera, and that his “real” story had started. I interpreted that to mean that there would be no more time travel and everything that happened from then on would stick. For the show at the 11th hour to say “Oh, time travel is still on the table, let’s just undo everything!” seems like taking the easy way out. Also, Shizuka and Marina’s friendship relies on them having memories of things that haven’t actually happened, so you have to assume there’s some kind of timeline bleeding going on; if that was the case, it would have been better if people had been remembering things from previous timelines all along. Maybe it’s possible they did, and it was so subtle I missed it?

And yet, if Takopi hadn’t reversed time, what kind of ending would we have had? Marina would be dead, Azuma’s and his brother would have their whole lives potentially tarnished from their association with Marina’s murder, Shizuka would be entirely alone and barely surviving as an abandoned child, and so on. I don’t see how we could have gotten anything better than that, yet I still resent the time travel fix on some level.

And then there’s the issue of the show’s message. Given that the major change that allows for life to improve for everybody is the friendship between the two girls, the message seems to be “Life is full of a lot of horrible shit, but if you can make a friend to go through it with you, it gets better.” It’s not that I disagree with that on the face of it, but I just don’t quite believe Marina and Shizuka could ever be friends. I don’t think seeing a doodle of Takopi would be enough to change Marina’s whole outlook on life, even if she does have convenient memories from another timeline. I don’t believe telling people to make friends is that helpful, since most of us don’t have an alien octopus basically brainwashing potential friends for us. It makes me feel cold-hearted and small to admit that I don’t think I ever could have been friends with someone who bullied me, and I don’t like that about myself, but I don’t want to lie about it either.

And yet, so much about the show just feels so right. Shizuka’s breakdown, where she allows herself to finally feel everything that she’s been shutting out, was heartbreaking. The scene where Takopi sacrifices himself to create a better future for Shizuka, with her begging him not to go as he slowly fades away, was masterful. Going back to the previous episode, the way cute little Takopi violently slaps his mother with his tentacles, because humans have taught him how to cause pain, is a little moment that says everything about human weakness.

I have some less important concerns: How did Azuma get the Happy Camera back? Didn’t he give it to the police? Did Shizuka really kidnap her half-sisters and keep them prisoner for some undisclosed amount of time? Perhaps a longer final episode could have more effectively dealt with this material, but I do think the episode we did get had a kind of poetic restraint about it.

So, yeah, not sure if I can give a 10/10 to this anime; I may be too blinded by my own past trauma to be objective about it, with the full knowledge that “objective” isn’t the best word to use in regard to art, but it’s the best I can do right now. Ask me again in ten years.