English Dub Review: High School DxD HERO “School Trip, an Abrupt Attack”

While Issei attempts to wrangle his potential, a kidnapped kitsune bodes ill for the school trip.

Overview (Spoilers)

The gang heads to Kyoto for a school trip, and that train ride is a long one. Issei takes advantage of this time to meditate on the Boosted Gear. If he goes deep into the source of his power, he may be able to find an alternative to the Juggernaut Drive, which risks killing him. While inside, he sees a huge array of soulless people, all sitting about in robes and staring off into space. These are all previous owners of the Boosted Gear, users who became Red Dragon Emperors. Now, they resemble sausages with all the meat pulled out.

They aren’t the only ones here, though. The two strongest users of the past: Belzard and Elsha. Belzard hides away from the world, so Elsha meets up with Issei to deliver something important. A small box containing his latent potential. He opens it up and… awakens on the train? His potential is definitely out of the box, but where did it go?

Once in Kyoto, there are numerous cases of men with unbearable urges to grab boobs. Strange, but hardly sinister. What does seem sinister is a sudden attack while the gang is out and about the town. A young kitsune girl ambushes Issei at the Fushimi Inari Shrine alongside her tengu buddies. She seems to be of the impression that he knows where her mother is. The group is careful not to injure their enemies or damage the surroundings. After all, they’re guests in Kyoto. Still, they manage to drive their attackers off and return to the hotel. As it gets later in the night, Issei decides to try and peep on the girls of the class and is immediately stopped by Rossweisse. She unleashes attack magic, but he still manages to win out with the strategic use of his Dress Break spell.

Hilarity complete, the two are interrupted by Azazel to join the others for a meeting with Leviathan. They have information on the attackers from earlier. It seems the missing kitsune woman was kidnapped by the Khaos Brigade as one of their most recent terrorist acts. The students are to continue having their fun until told others, but that doesn’t keep them from worrying.

Our Take

This episode is like an NPC in a video game handing out quests: Not particularly interesting, but necessary to move the plot along. It was slow and relied far too heavily on boobs to make up for it. Any time things started to get a bit slow, BOOBS! Yeah, most of the viewership of the show will be placated by this, but not me. I see through your shallow attempts to manipulate me through hormones.

The voice acting was pretty good, as a whole. Mallorie Rodak (Rossweisse) was rather expressive, and Josh Grelle gave Issei life as always. I think I only had a minor issue with one line with Rossweisse crammed in awkwardly in far too small a frame of time. Visually, the episode was on par with the rest of the series EXCEPT for a few shots as the gang shops around town. The backdrop of the shops were very obviously vectorized photographs and stood out horribly against the art style of the rest of the show. It’s ugly and cheap. I guess this is how they saved money for the fight scenes… and boobs. Those fight scenes were great, though. Dynamic camera angles, lots of variety. Good fun.