English Dub Review: Doreiku the Animation “Discovery”

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Overview (Spoilers below)

This week started with Fujiko’s backstory and how she became Ryuuo’s slave.  As an introduction, it was interesting and was a nice way of showing the latter’s ruthlessness when needed. The episode then jumps into planning the infiltration back to school by Julia (showing her cuteness as a high school cosplayer) and Fujiko (showing her nursing and poison mistress skills) is looking for a new star-shaped SCM. It seemed to run smoothly at first, just to end up getting caught by Setagaya, the villain, and Minami, his bratty partner/sidekick almost immediately.

In parallel, Eia and Yuuga, with the lovely assist of Sachi, move their plan into action to take down Nerina, which they did, in one of the most hilarious ways possible. And one of the most predictable, too.  Eia showcased her hidden desired to be a singer idol, Sachi demonstrated her best girl vibes and looking good while doing it, and Yuuga corroborated our lingering suspicions that his career as a Hollywood actor was doomed from the start.

Now, laughs aside, I found that Minami’s backstory was kind of forced and out of the blue in the transition scenes. She was the link between Fujiko and Julia spy career debut and the singing/acting skips of Eia and Yuuga, respectively, and a lot of things could have been done to show bits and pieces of her past without overwhelming the flow of the narrative, but at least we now know that old man Nerina has some strange ways of showing his love and Minami was more of a brat that she is ought to be.

Also, despite her obsession with Ryuuo and unhealthy shyness, Julia’s showed some spine while facing Setagaya, which was something I didn’t expect to see from her.

Our take

“Discovery” was full of things happening at the same time and, while it was not boring, at some moments it felt predictable and too plain. The villain felt too cliché and the narrative of the episode was fragmented in favor of packing more action and scenes to move the plot forward. A change of pace, if not necessary for the better, in contrast of the last episode but it got it’s highlights in character development for Fujiko and Ryuuo, the latter soloing the last scene broadcasting him, living the life of a NEET.