English Dub Review: 18if “Eve’s Sigh”

You mean the whole world would have been saved if Eve just watched Ouran High School Host Club? I give up.

Overview (Spoilers)

Haruto, Lily, and Dr. Kats head into Eve’s domain, and find the first room empty, save for an endless field of lilies. That’s because this is Lily’s domain, for she is an aspect of Eve. She is the Eve of the garden of Eden before she ate the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil. She again begs Haruto to kill the Fallen Eve, even though it would kill her too. It’s the only way to save everyone, right? The next room of the domain looks very much like Haruto’s room. Within it, is Fallen Eve, and she looks nothing like Lily. She’s angry about the perceived inequity of the world, and how God’s rule banished her, leaving her under submissive to men. She prepares to launch an attack at Haruto, but all twelve witches arrive to stop her. After what Haruto did for them, they pay it forward to Eve. They listen to her, commiserate with her, and moreover, reveal the poison of being locked up in a dream of your own thoughts. They help her to realize that even though she thought that men had been given dominion over women, the modern world has things a bit flipped. If a girl knows how she can make men into willing servants. During the demonstration, Haruto, and Dr. Kats spend most of the episode dressed as waiters and serving the ladies tea and snacks. In the end, Fallen Eve realizes that the world is not at all the way she thought it was, and is willing to be purified of her hatred so she can experience it. She fuses with Lily and asks that Haruto “kill” her purity as a goddess by kissing her. Instead, he chooses to go with her to the great beyond, forever abandoning the mortal coil. There is some discussion after his body dies. Could he have, in fact, been Adam?

T First, let me talk about a whole crap ton of illogical stuff going on here. Let me point out that everyone was saying that Haruto had to remove her purity by kissing her in order to make her normal. Let me remind you of who this is. This is Eve. The first woman. Your parents, grandparents, great grandparents… so on? Yeah, they all came into existence because this woman bumped uglies with Adam. She did so on multiple occasions since she gave birth to at least three sons and at least two daughters. How is a kiss supposed to make her impure if she’s the first woman to have to figure out kama sutra before the Kama Sutra? Let me also point out that Eve herself stated she knew everything Lily was doing. That means that she’s seen this entire series as we’ve been seeing it. Every lesson the witches bring up here are from those stories, so… What, it suddenly means something because it is presented with tea and crumpets?

My biggest issue with this episode is where it takes its female empowerment. Preface: I am a dude, and I am a feminist in the true sense of the word. I believe in equality of the genders, the abolition of the glass ceiling, and the empowerment of women and minorities. From that perspective, as I watched this episode, I was sickened. Time and again, the witches went on about how they got guys to do whatever they wanted, simply because they were beautiful. This is not empowering women. Let me ask you: what about those girls who do not possess the beauty and sensuality that the modern mass media pushes on us all? What power do they have? By the way, this show thinks, they don’t. This is poisonous thinking, and it’s so easily accepted in our world because it is already the norm. When girls have to use their sexuality to get ahead and get what they want, they aren’t taking power. They are selling themselves. They are accepting the lie that they are only as good as they look. This show thought it was making an episode about female empowerment, but it was really a show about how great it is to be pretty. This only furthers the goals of those profiting off the poor self-image women have been force-fed since forever. Let me also point something else out. How many minorities are present among the Witches? How many with deformities? How many are above 130 lbs soaking wet? How many are not beautiful in the real world? Mirei still doesn’t count, since she was beautiful when she was young. Literally, all of these witches are images of beauty. Two pop stars, a magazine model, and an athlete that became a pop star. That’s nearly half of the cast of witches that made their fame and money, at least in part, from looking good. From forming their bodies to match what they are told men want to look at. And this is supposed to empower women? Great job, guys.

Oh, and let me tell you. I could go on for a while about the Garden of Eden story. About all the little nuggets of truth about gender relations that are hidden in there. But, this show can’t logic, and it can’t female empowerment, so why should I expect it to world religion? I’ll spare you that diatribe.

Our Take

Which brings us back to the issue of the writing. This episode felt like a quickly tacked-on ending to a show that wanted to go in a completely different direction. Remember that golden-eyed guy in the real world? He warned Dr. Kats away from the Cult of the Wacko Hats, then turned out to be the doctor who cared for at least one of the witches, as well as caring for Haruto’s body. Raise your hand if you thought he was going to have a bigger part in the plot. Anyone? Both my hands are up, here. The way this series went in the last few episodes, it felt like it was going to lead into a conflict with the Thorned Cross, which would give the witches a larger role to play. Then, we got to the last episode, and somebody at the network said: “I’m done with this show, wrap it up.” And they did. In fact, there was no point to introducing the Thorned Cross into the story at all with this ending. They showed up, spouted insane nonsense, and got killed off when their goals almost became real. Their worship of Eve meant nothing to how the plot advanced, since any information they gave us, Lily gave us in the same sequence. And no, I’m not just mad because my theory of Lily being Haruto’s Anima got carpet bombed. This was an episode that turned 90 degrees from the tone and direction the series was taking and danced the watusi as it traveled its new path.

Let me also bring up that absolutely nothing about Haruto was explained. He isn’t a sleeping beauty. He’s a coma patient that has been asleep for years. For some reason this made him able to jump from dream to dream, putting right where once went wrong, and hoping the next leap would be the leap home. But… There are currently coma patients who have been in it that long. Some have been in it for 12 to 20 years! Why didn’t they show up in the series at all? What made him unique and able to dream hop? Why did Lily keep calling him “brother”? He spent the entire series trying to figure out why he was the one, and if he was alive or dead. Then, in the last few minutes, he goes… “Meh, I guess I’d rather be dead. See you later, suckahs!” There was no process of reaching that. There was no internal monologue or series of transformative events. Nope. He flicks a switch and says he’d rather die than kiss Eve. Well, I guess I might feel that way too if everyone kept telling me my kiss was the source of impurity that could strip goddesses of their divinity. That’s kinda mean. What I’m getting at is that the series spent the entire time with Haruto as a flat, inconsistent character with few goals. He never grew beyond that, and ended up abandoning what goals he had for no real reason. His few defining characteristics are shrouded in mystery that was never removed, so what makes him worth watching as a character?

It certainly wasn’t his face, let me tell you that. Seriously, animators, you had one job. Draw these people a whole bunch of times in slightly different positions. Why can you not draw a face? It’s not like that face is terribly complicated. The character designer you were working with took every ounce of style and flair out of the characters, leaving them as husks of the exciting art present in the mobile game. Haruto and the lady from the Succubus Bar both had their faces squashed up so bad, they looked like Zandozans from The Last Starfighter. The witches have next to no expression throughout the entire episode. They smile somewhat. Just enough to look pretty. And yes, those problems are with the keyframes of animation, so absolutely nobody caught this or cared before sending it to the in-betweeners. What was cool is that the witches came over using the same art style as they had in their episode’s dream world. That means Nene still appears as an evil puppet and has that amazing set of filters over the CG animation that made her episode so beautiful to watch.

So, the other problem that comes from a bunch of characters that visually show no emotion: What are the voice actors supposed to do with all this? This episode was shallow and disingenuous in its sound. Even with all the witches coming up with their own nickname for Eve for… no explained reason whatsoever,  the voice actors couldn’t even bring out enough feeling to make those nicknames sound like something those characters would say. They felt out of place, forced, and ultimately meaningless. It was a gimmick that never resolved into anything of substance. Much like this show.