English Dub Season Review: Drifters Season One

We look at the whole season and tell you what we think.

Some Spoilers Below

For the first English dub season of Drifters, director Kenichi Suzuki (Golgo 13 and Jojo Part 3: Stardust Crusaders) properly captured the essence & stylized look of the manga series and even does a good job with its pacing. Sometimes there’s an episode or two where things slow down and while most people hate this in anime due to lack of action, they at least do serve a purpose in setting up the next action-oriented episodes after. Aside from some of the random disturbing moments like in episode 5 where they discovered a small kingdom of Elf Abusers were revealed to be unrepentant sex-offenders, There’s thankfully balance with random comedic moments but of course, when the action scenes happen, the ingenious moments from the manga are replicated with such fluidity.

At first, I was left with questions on how certain plot & character elements would be handled but thanks to Funimation’s efforts they didn’t disappoint and when it came to the English dub it fantastically captured the essence with improvised alterations to the dialogue just to keep up with the flaps.

Much of the voice acting choices were spot-on often adding accents to some of the key players of the story when it came to voicing characters are from different parts of the world, but who stole the show for me the most were the performances of Josh Grelle as the main protagonist Toyohisa Shimazu (AKA Toyo) while often times Robert McCollum did slightly more with his performance as the Japanese Warlord Oda Nobunaga which was often fun and had a debaucherous Jack Sparrow-like vibe combined with a casual yet gleeful sadism towards his enemies.

The anime’s music was mainly handled by two composers who both previously worked with Hirano (Yasushi Ishii and Hayato Matsuo) . The intro was one of the most heart-pounding and ridiculously awesome & catchy theme songs you will ever hear. A remixed version of “Gospel of the Throttle” by the band Minutes Til Midnight while the credits song “Vermillion” was by J-Pop star, Maon Kurosaki. Both the intro and credits equally have different yet beautifully drawn art styles that equally capture the intensity of this anime the manga is based on and I found myself even listening to it on my PSP’s MP3 Player.

If I had any minor complaints, The show itself was often littered with homophobic jokes that were randomly inserted in the form of Saint Germain and his subordinates as aristocratic effeminate stereotypes.

As a longtime fan of the manga, I still had fun with what this adaptation accomplished, And that’s taking the ridiculous concept of throwing random historical figures together in a Medieval/Middle Earth-style fantasy setting and creatively turning it into an Intense, action-heavy thrill ride. 🙂