English Dub Review: Dies Irae “The Claws and Fangs of a Beast”

A killer is you!

Overview (Spoilers)

Ever since he saw that guillotine, Ren has been having nightmares. Nightmares of that vision he had. Every time, when he wakes up, the news reports that someone else in the city has been beheaded. As he muses over this from his rooftop hideaway, Kasumi and Rea find him and accidentally give him a clear view up their skirts. Kasumi berates him for his perversion the entire trip home, and along the way, they run into a man getting the snot beaten out of him by a frightened woman. He’s weird, but harmless, and merely looking for directions to the nearby church where Rea lives. In fact, this crazy priest (Father Veleria by name), helped raise Rea. The group share dinner, and on his way out, each person stops Ren to talk to him. The nun that runs the church tells him that Rea’s birthday is on the coming 25th, Christmas. Valeria tries to convince him to leave the city to get away from the murders. This does not deter Ren, however, and he and Kasumi return home.

That night, his nightmare grows even worse. He even witnesses the murder… and he is the one that committed it! As he tries to recover from the grisly scene, two mysterious figures approach: a tiny, redhead named Rusalka with the power to bind people with her shadow, and a tall man named Wilhelm with monstrous strength. Wilhelm beats the crap out of him, trying to inspire him to reveal a hidden strength. Another woman arrives, preventing Wilhelm from killing Ren outright. A simple poke from Rusalka sends Ren back to the normal world, sans injuries. The next morning, Kasumi dotes over him, thinking he may be sick. He still manages to come to school, but there, he is greeted by a couple of girls he wishes he had never met: Rusalka and the other girl from that night, Kei Sakurai. Both have inserted themselves as his classmates. There are no escaping things now…

Our Take

We are walking closer to the gaping maw of mystery and mayhem, and the sense of impending doom grows stronger. Here we are in episode three, and I’m still loaded with a feeling of “I have no idea what’s going on”. Now, I count it as a positive, since it puts us more in Ren’s shoes. In general, I enjoyed this episode’s writing, with its mix of fanservice-y humor and action. Though the direction of the animation bent more towards straightforward shots, the use of lighting and shifts in the artwork lent more drama to important scenes. Stress lines on the edges of the eyes showed evil or frightened intent, characters in harsh illumination to highlight their conversation, stuff like that. The one shot I did like was the one near the end, looking up the stairs at the new girls. It was well composed, coy and intimidating at the same time.

When we got to the action, that’s when things kicked into gear. We haven’t seen combat unleashed yet, but watching Ren get stomped was still pretty impressive. The animation was smooth and surprisingly free of errors, the camera took on some more dynamic angles, and the actual action was Fun. There was an interesting effect used whenever Ren struck Wilhelm in the fight, where the boy’s clothes over the point of impact would spray off, and red shatter lines would appear all over the body art. At first, I thought that this was his bones breaking, but after it happened to his leg, and we saw him bouncing around on it after, I think it may be related to the blade that we keep seeing in the opening credits. His arm looks like it can morph into blades. In either event, it highlights how incredibly tough Wilhelm is.

I’m digging the voice work in this episode. Everyone was full of variance and emotion, so I never got bored of the dialogue. Brandon McInnis caught me early on with his voice over of the dream as Ren. Later, as Ren talks to Rea about giving her a birthday present, the way Trina Nishimura delivered Rea’s lines asking for marriage was just perfect. It was cute and solemn, with just a hint of creepy. My only issue with the VA is the German accents. They aren’t bad accents, mind you. They are well performed, and a number of German words are thrown in to complete the feeling. It just gets on my nerves slightly. Still, it sounds authentic enough.