English Dub Review: Chaos;Child Episode 0 & 1: Digital Native

Let’s dig in to a brand-new series.

Spoilers Below

The premiere episode begins after a 21 min long recap that opens up six years later in 2015 after the events of “Chaos;Head” with the introduction of our fellow protagonist Takuru Miyashiro. Takuru’s a member of his school’s local newspaper club and gets himself involved in a string of bizarre and grotesque crime scenes eerily similar to the ones in 2009 while the school intercom narrates a restoration festival in memoriam to the incident is in the works.

As Takuru investigates the crime scenes incognito, against frequent protests from sister Nono. He discovers a strong connection to the specific dates of these mysterious deaths that occurred in “Chaos;Head”

Following this clue, Takuru and a classmate/club member Serika, sneak into a hotel to investigate further and get thrown into the gruesome aftermath of two men who have been murdered in a Saw-style death trap via suspended in ropes around a person’s neck and in the process they randomly encounter a pigtailed blonde girl named Hinae who suspiciously is in the same room as these two murders.

Takuru passes out from the gruesome display and later wakes up to being admonished from his sister for “breaking into a crime scene” but remarks that she shouldn’t acknowledge him as a brother since they aren’t related to begin with due to Nono being adopted.

Later, Takuru reconnects with Serika who collected footage from his smartphone which helps them find a legit connection to what all of these murders all have in common. Whoever is responsible is leaving behind bizarre looking sumo head stickers that for some reason look like 3 faces fused together with one eye in the center.

Takuru then finds out that Hinae out of happenstance goes to the same school so now both he and Serika go to track her down. They find her casually talking to Nono, acting as if nothing had happened. As she leaves, Takuru asks to talk to her and the episode ends with Hinae giving Takuru the forebodingly cryptic warning “you don’t have long to live, you’re gonna be killed soon!.”

Overview.

The English dub cast nails most of the voices appropriately and consistently with the only two recognizable voices that got my attention the most in the cast such as Vic Mignogna (Qrow from RWBY and Saint Germaine from Drifters) as General and Todd Haberkorn (Yun from Ultra Street fighter 4).

The show’s opening theme: “Uncontrollable” is by Kanako Itou which captures the sense of danger with the opening hook gives me chills while the credits theme “Chaos Syndrome” by Konomi Suzuki does its job being catchy with a different level of energy than the show’s opening.

What’s easily the biggest plot-hole is why did they even go into the crime scene then regret it afterward? Did they not expect to see dead people or something?

There was one moment where I kinda chuckled at the fake product placement with Takuru’s fridge being full of a Mountain Dew knock-off called “Mountain View”.

The scary moments aren’t just cheap jump scares as many of them are well structured with good pacing, suspense, and atmosphere. Sometimes the best horror is what’s left in the viewers’ imagination which is what I think works within the favor of this show’s budget (with some of the highlights of these murders shockingly include everything from a male corpse with a dead fetus surgically put in the stomach to a woman being forced into eating her own hand, to even a woman’s severed hand with a cellphone mailed to a protagonist from the recap in a box Se7en style).

Chaos;Child begins with a confusing start but after the first 21 minutes it found a way to keep me hooked until the end. The cliffhanger was predictably expected and while most tend to complain about shows leaving people hooked for the sake of trolling people, (something The Walking Dead was even guilty of) It would be a much shorter series if we get all the answers immediately which defeats the purpose of a mystery.