Simple Lessons on Life

"A broken tool is of no use to its owner."

"A weapon doesn't need to think, just destroy."

"Stop pretending to be human and just do what you're told."

Chances are if you've watched your fair share of anime you've heard lines similar to these in one show or another.  They're typically spoken by villains or high ranking military officials to an individual with immense power that comes in a humanoid form of some sort.  Human weapon stories come in many shapes and forms such as the usual android tales or characters literally turning into weapons, to give a couple examples.  Often times these stories are used to explore the facets that make us human and posit concepts that make the viewer question those established concepts.  Along the way you have lines such as the ones above spoken and the protagonist clinging to the human weapon (who is normally in the form of a girl) as he desperately explains the importance of life with tears in his eyes.  If you want a example hot off the press look no further than this season's Alice and Zouroku.  While offering fresh new characters, such as an old man protagonist, Alice and Zouroku has still followed the tried and true formula of human weapon stories thus far.  Human weapon stories have stayed relevant over the years by focusing more on their mysteries of how the human weapons came to be in their respective universes, but the core formula for each has remained the same and it's hard not to say the genre has become stagnant and predictable as a result.  It is upon this stage that WorldEnd: What do you do at the end of the world? Are you busy? Will you save us? (sic) has come into play and it aims, from what it has shown so far, to redefine just how a human weapon story is told.


WorldEnd takes place in a fantastical world where the surface of the planet has been devastated by what are called "Beasts", causing the nearly complete extinction of the human race .  The new inhabitants of the planet are animal-folk and monster-kin of all kinds, such as wolf men or lizard men, that have made their living in towns on large floating islands, far above the planet's surface and away from the danger the Beasts present.  The protagonist, Willem Kmetsch, is the last remaining human alive for all he and the viewer knows.  He receives a job from the military through his goblin friend act as an overseer for a special weapons warehouse.  After reluctantly accepting the job and travelling to the specified location he finds not a warehouse but what seems to be a boarding house full of girls ranging from toddlers to young teens running about.  Fast-forwarding a bit, it's not hard to guess that these girls are indeed the weapons that Willem has been sent to oversee.

Turns out these girls are fairies and are the only beings in the world that can wield ancient weapons, called the "dug weapons", to fight back the hell spawn that the Beasts spew forth from the planet's surface to attack the floating islands.  As a last ditch effort the fairies are sometimes used as essentially kamikaze's, detonating the magical energy within their bodies to annihilate the enemy as well as themselves (dubbed "opening the fairy gate").  At this point it becomes easy to predict one of few ways this story can go, and it certainly didn't help when Willem started having flashbacks to his own family that perished during the apocalypse.  It was just a matter of guessing how much longer until the "importance of life" lecture would be given.  And yet, WorldEnd has defied those expectations at every turn.

One of the ways WorldEnd takes a novel approach to the human weapon story is how it handles the emotions of the fairies.  Most, or all, human weapon stories generally follow one of two patterns in regard to emotions.  The human weapons can be stripped of emotions entirely, from which the story is about teaching the joys of life to them.  Or the human weapons can have their emotions intact and the story comes down to the protagonist, and sometimes society in general, rectifying this contradiction within himself of how human they are.  WorldEnd takes the middle road, though, where the fairies still have all the emotions generally associated with a functioning human, except for one key emotion, or more like one instinct.  That is the innate fear of death.

This is a one of those concepts that is simple to grasp, but infinitely difficult to understand for the average person and this comes through in Willem's interactions with the fairies.  The scene in particular that drives this paradox home is when Willem watches one of the child fairies fall off a relatively tall ledge while playing a ball game with her fellow fairies.  After rushing to her aid Willem finds her forehead bleeding profusely but the fairy genuinely laughs it off as her friends made fun of her for delaying the game.  The whole exchange comes off as extremely unsettling to Willem and the viewer as this dissonance arises from seeing this child who is, for all intents and purposes, normal have absolutely zero regard to her own well being.

When Ctholly tells Willem that she is about to partake in a large-scale operation where she will utilize her magical detonation, it's easy to brace for the "importance of life" lecture.  But Willem gives no such lecture and instead skips straight to the issue of teaching Ctholly the skills he gained before the apocalypse that were necessary to hopefully complete the operation without pressing the self-destruct button.  It's because Willem understands that it is impossible for the fairies to comprehend the importance of living.  Even if it is a foreign concept to him and us as the viewer the combination of the ball game scene and Willem's own knowledge of the dug weapons is enough to prove that it would be a fruitless effort.  Lecturing Ctholly would have only come across as condescending and insensitive to her existence, which would have hindered the effectiveness of any advice Willem could give afterwards.  Willem's conscious decision to not lecture her is a show of respect to Ctholly and his teachings became all the more effective for it.  That small difference meant the world to the Ctholly and the jaded anime watcher.

But what makes WorldEnd  special is that it doesn't stop with just Willem.  As stated before, human weapon stories typically include some military or secret organization presence that sees the human weapons as nothing more than weapons to be used and discarded.  WorldEnd does indeed have a military organization and the introduction of General Limeskin (a lizardman) presented another opportunity for the show to take a turn for the generic.  Contrary to expectations, however, Limeskin respects the fairies as living beings just as much as all the others he is trying to protect.  When Ctholly approaches him with the possibility of her not sacrificing herself for the operation, Limeskin is completely open to the option.  He wasn't remotely satisfied with sending what are essentially 15 year old girls to die on the battlefield but he also understands that this was the best method they have for protecting the peace.  Just as Willem respects Ctholly as a being he won't understand, Limeskin respects her as a warrior.  As the one who is putting her life on the line, Ctholly has the right to seek out other possibilities that didn't end in remorse.

Another example of this respect is with the cyclops doctor that appeared in a recent episode.  After examining one of the younger children fairies he comes to talk to Willem about what it means to send these girls onto the battlefield.  During the conversation he says how it wouldn't benefit anyone to put swords in children's' hands and send them to die.  In another anime that would have been exactly what would be happen and the story would have turned into Willem going against these organizations forcing these fates upon the girls.

What WorldEnd exemplifies is universal respect.  Respect for its characters, respect for its universe, and maybe most importantly, respect for its viewer's intelligence.  It tells a story that has been told countless times while skillfully usurping the viewer's expectations in subtle, meaningful ways.  What's scary is that WorldEnd can easily slip into the region of generica at almost any given moment.  While scenes such as Ctholly's suicide mission confession and Limeskin's introduction were key moments  establishing this precedent, they could have just as easily taken the easy way out and  followed standard protocol.  The mere nature of a human nature story means that there will be many more turning points to come such as these in WorldEnd, and any one of them can potentially steer the story back onto the generic tried and true trail.  As of right now, however, WorldEnd has done a fantastic job of avoiding those pitfalls and I genuinely hope that it continues to do so and go on to become something great.