English Dub Review: Sakura Quest “The Lone Alchemist”

Traditional wood carving and mechanical exosuits? Count me in! Where is this Manoyama anyways?

Spoilers Below

Sanae is moving! After signing up with the tourism board, she decides to move out of the her house (where her only roommates were of the arthropoidal persuasion), to move into the lodge with the other girls. Just in time, too! Ushimatsu comes by and tells them that they need to come up with their own “trials” from now on. That’s his in theme way of saying he’s out of marketing ideas, and it’s on them now. Their first thought is actually based on Sanae’s old home. It was a very traditional place and had intricate wood carvings (called Ranma) over the paper doors. That carving is a protected art form recognized by the Japanese government and is one of their sources of industry. So, for their first “self-trial” the girls try to play up the bush wood carvers. On the way, though, they have some car trouble. The local mechanic is a bit eccentric… scratch that, he’s a bit AWESOME! Outside his garage is a strange metal box, which transforms into a jukebox-cum-vending machine! He also has some amazing exosuits that will make moving Sanae a breeze!

If only their efforts to revitalize the Ranma industry met with as much success. Their first attempt was to put Ranma embellishments on the mechanic’s exosuits, making it feel like costumey armor worn in the tokusatsu shows. This made them a little more bearable to the older farmers, who would get the most use out of the exosuit. It wasn’t very practical, though. Their second shot was fun and interesting. They hid one of the mechanic’s transforming vending machines in a giant wooden Buddha statue. It worked great and was a kitschy surprise. Problem was, most of the artists and older folk felt it was denigrating to the art form, cheapening it to a vending machine. One of the artists confronts Sanae about it, saying that she doesn’t have the right to try and advertise things about the town. She only came to Manoyama to run away from her old life. She can’t argue with him and resigns from the team. No! Don’t go Sanae! Who’s going to teach this tourism board about SEO and social media marketing techniques? Awwwww.

Gonna be honest, I kinda geeked out at this episode. Art and tech? Yes, please. I’ll take seconds. What I do find interesting about the plot here is the struggle for a blogger/vlogger. The balance between entertainment and authenticity. Being a co-host on a YouTube channel myself, I’ve had a problem with this. You want to be as real as possible so that your audience can connect with you, but only present those parts of your life that they’ll get value out of it, so they’ll keep coming. It means you start building up a persona, but sometimes, that persona gets in the way. Sanae knows her stuff when it comes to IT and internet branding, but she isn’t very real, going as far as to say that the bugs she fears so much are her friends. Honestly, though, I think they need to jump behind Yoshino’s concept of thinner sculptures to put on new TV’s. It respects the art form, and makes for great decorations, no matter where you put it!

I found the art and animation in this episode amazing. After a couple episodes with a slight dip in the animation, this one pulled it out again. Early on, we see Sanae freak out over a millipede. The attention to detail and insane in-between work on this scene just blew me away, even though it was just a bug crawling and a girl jumping back. Also, I noticed the first example of CG, and it was so small, you could easily miss it. In a scene where they are getting groceries, the mechanic shows up with a gizmo attached to his cart. It reaches out and grabs stuff for him. Such a small place to put it, but because it was made of simple shapes, they could use CG here to make the animation smooth and the art error-free. Surprisingly, they didn’t use it (technically) during the scenes where the vending machines transformed, using sliding layers of traditional art instead. Interesting choices here.

The voice work was pretty standard for this crew, which is already on the good side of the fence. Elizabeth Maxwell got some time to develop Sanae’s personality on this episode, and I think she did a good job. She’s professional, but she still gets excited with a bit of nerdiness to her. In keeping with the persona theme, however, we get to see her be vulnerable, and we can really hear her heart hurting over how… inconsequential she feels herself to be. I give this episode eight carved Buddhas out of ten.