Common Name: Shuumatsu Nani Shitemasu ka? Isogashii desu ka? Sukutte Moratte Ii desu ka?
Alternative Names: What do you do at the end of the world? Are you busy? Will you save us?, WorldEnd, SukaSuka
Score: 7/10, 3/5
Length: 12 Episodes
Genre: Romance, Drama, Action
Summary: 500 Years ago, the ancient beings known only as the Emnetwiht went extinct, destroyed by the very monsters they created. Now, the world and the demi-human beings that have inherited it are in a slow state of decline. While the floating sky islands these beings call home might be relatively safer than the surface world, the monstrous legacy of the Emnetwiht, the Timere, still threatens their survival. Perhaps there is still some glimmer of hope though, thanks to the sacrifices of the fairy soldiers who sacrifice to slay these inhumanly powerful monsters. Just maybe, however, there's a way to save everyone and take back the surface from Timere. If there is, surely Willem Kmetsch, the last of the wretched Emnetwiht, will be able to find it. If he can't, though, it'll mean losing everyone he holds dear all over again.
Review: While it's certainly nothing new for me to have little to nothing to say about a title, I find myself in a particularly unique kind of lacking with SukaSuka. Unlike my usual lacking that is typically associated with comedies, in that there just really isn't much to say other than "it was funny," I'm finding it difficult to talk about this show with even a modicum of authority because I'm still in awe of how WRONG I was about this show. From start to finish, I went into this show thinking it was going to be a fantastical end of the world action story. What I got, though, was a solidly compelling romance story that only uses the "end of the world" scenario as a kind of tense backdrop.
An empowered female military romance at that! This show just likes defying
expectation in any way it can and I can't say I mind that.
In my defense though, the shounen action genre has trained me pretty well to automatically believe that black-haired, nihilistic swordsmen are always the key to beating impossible odds. The show even goes out of its way to highlight the fact that Willem used to be something of a badass. He was known as the Black Agate Swordsman for god's sake! That's the thing though: he used to be something of a badass. While the show doesn't necessarily do a great job highlighting this fact, it's just the honest truth that Willem's time in the sun has come and gone. He got to be the hero 500+ years ago when the fate of his people rested on his shoulders, but now all that is gone. Put simply, he failed. His people are dead. His home is gone. He can't even fight like he used to thanks to the wounds he sustained during the war. So, rather than being arrogant standoffish with his nihilistic personality, Willem starts off this show with a pretty solid reason to not care about anyone or anything in this world and its people.
Yeah...the survivor's guilt has to be pretty strong when you're the last of your race.
Yet it is the fact that Willem's story can go nowhere but up from here that reinforced my belief that there was going to be some kind of "and then he saved the world" action hero nonsense in the end. Yet that is simply not the case here. Even if that was going to be the case though, it should have been clear from the start that Willem wouldn't have been the person doing the world-saving this time around. If anyone, it would have been the person who is tasked with saving him, the fairy warrior Chtholly. Now that I've mentioned her though, I can't help wondering if the main reason I failed to grasp the intentions of this show is because I was focusing on the wrong protagonist. I mean, when you really think about it, Chtholly is the show's actual hero character. She's the one doing any actual fighting. She's the one who has the most to lose if/when things go south. It's her actions and emotions that move the plot forward. But it's her youthful, clumsy, and romantic personality that made me look elsewhere for a hero character. While saying so might just prove how little I thought of her, I just couldn't reconcile the idea that such a passive character, always waiting for Willem to finally accept her feelings toward him, could also be this show's hero. Looking back on it though, I don't see how she couldn't be considered the show's main character.
Particularly when you consider how gung-ho she gets over time.
As fun and interesting as it might be to watch an elderly swordmaster (Willem) fight his hardest to train the young hero (Chtholly) for the trials to come, it just wouldn't make sense for a show to focus so heavily on a support character. Instead, we're given a different kind of hero story through the growth of Chtholly. While it may be true that she starts out as an unassuming character due to her youthful, clumsy, and romantic personality, those traits are what make her stand out. She is, because of these "flaws," something that doesn't mesh with the tone of this world. Her youthful enthusiasm and desire for a future, preferably one where she can find love, set her up to be something of a beacon of hope in what is otherwise a hopeless world. That hope is what saves Willem from his past, forcing him to consider this world and his place in it. That hope is what keeps her moving forward when she hits roadblocks that would have destroyed anyone else. That hope is ultimately what is at stake in the end since it wouldn't be hard for the world to snuff it out. When all that is considered, it makes sense that the show's movement and tone would be set by the whims and romantic desires of this fragile, but determined hero.
Unfortunately, I'm not entirely convinced that the show made that idea particularly clear, let alone if that really was the show's true intention. There are, unfortunately, way too many loose ends and incomplete ideas in this show for me to make any really solid claims. The best I've done over the course of this review is grasp at straws that drew out more meaning for me, but even those deeper meanings don't feel like they truly fit what this show actually did. For example, if Chtholly is meant to be this show's hero main character, why does it dedicate so much time to Willem's past and little scenes that only serve to advance his perspective, rather than elaborating on Chtholly's motivations or growth? Perhaps all of these loose threads form a better, unified whole in the original light novels, but they only make for a confusing and confounding story as far as the anime is concerned. So, I guess I have to say I'm hesitant to call this a good show. I enjoyed it and the emotional roller coaster it took me on. I liked that it turned out to be something different than what I expected but I can't tell if that something is worth other people's time and attention. That said, I'll give this one a tentative recommendation. It's probably worth more to a female audience, but it's a pretty decent romance story that seems to have a lot to say. With luck, you might even be able to figure out what all it's trying to get across.