English Dub Review: Tsugumomo “Training”

Is our training complete?

Kirha seems overly cheery about Kazuya’s malison cleanser training since she was originally against the whole thing. She’s definitely not enthusiastic about still being small and not having much power. Kazuya is not very good at training – either jogging or wielding an obi. He’s pretty useless without his spirit mom’s help.

The goddess Kukuri-hime is also still tiny, and her shrine has fallen down in the heavy rain. She moves into the local playground.

Kazuya’s on a mission to save the world but he still shows up at school anyway. Student council president Tadata Tadataka calls him in. Tadata was actually the host for the evil wig in episode one. He explains that the tabletop RPG club has found a monster in the social studies room. When they go to investigate, the club room is totally gone.

Kiriha suggests they leave since they don’t have the power to fight anything. But all the walls suddenly have them trapped, and the president of the RPG club reveals himself to be the instigator. He’s got a magical notebook that can make anything come to life – it’s this episode’s amasogi. He draws a huge minotaur so we get to see an RPG battle come to life!

Because neither Kazuya or Kiriha have any power, they have to think. Kazuya realizes that the notebook is the amasogi, he can just erase the minotaur. He uses the one Obi trick he’s learned to lasso a fire extinguisher and foam out the monster.

It;s fun to see supernatural beings doing things like playing Jenga and going to school. Tsugumomo balances these situations very well with its creative, high energy battles. Not every episode can be a two-part battle with a god during a thunderstorm, but it looks like every episode can be pretty good.