English Dub Review: Kakuriyo -Bed and Breakfast for Spirits- “The Twin Chefs and a Rain Woman from a Rich Family.”

Unfortunately, “Rain Woman” is nothing like “Rain Man.”

Overview (Spoilers Below)

While Aoi’s been working for Orio-Ya, the spirits of Tenjin-Ya have been cleaning Moonflower to assuage their sadness over losing their friend. Back at Orio-Ya, meanwhile, Aoi is trying to get more supplies for her second bed and breakfast, when she runs into her old master in disguise, sneaking her some fish for her restaurant and a new outfit.

Later, Aoi runs into two crane spirit twins who need Aoi to make some delicious apparent realm food for a rain goddess who threatens to ruin the fireworks festival coming up if she isn’t pleased with the inn’s cuisine. Aoi uses the twins’ help to make a dish that the rain goddess will like. With the help of her friends, she prepares a potent dish and gets ready to serve the picky goddess.

Our Take:

Another week, another episode of Kakuriyo, the generic wasteland of an anime serving as a grim reminder of a creative medium in desperate need of creative integrity.

This week had the possibility of making an episode that could hold some kind of emotional tension in the form of the Tenjin-Ya crew. Their sadness at the loss of Aoi could actually be interesting to watch if it was such a minor point in the episode’s plot. In fact, they should have had an entire episode to flesh out their feelings and desire to see Aoi returned to them. Instead, they are relegated to less than five minutes of the episode, while Aoi goes on to engage with another silly plot about cooking food for powerful spirit people.

There’s a chronic inability to animate these characters well that has been following Kakuriyo since it first premiered 16 weeks ago. They just can’t seem to get the eyes right. It’s almost imperceptible at first, but Aoi’s, and some of the other main cast’s eyes are always fluctuating in size and angle. While this gives me something to look at to escape the dullness of the endless fish-lipped dialogue which pollutes this episode at every turn, it’s still not acceptable for a professionally produced anime to be so inconsistent in its art.

Bringing in the master from Tenjin-Ya was a great way to remove any tension that might have come from Aoi being a fish out of water in a hostile inn. Because he’s there, we know as an audience that Aoi will find herself doing just fine no matter what happens, and that kills most of the drama of the show. It doesn’t help that the master has a nearly flawless personality; his character is nothing more than portraiture; wish fulfillment for the show’s target demographic.

Our new characters this time around have very little going for them other than being twins. Their “talking at the same time” bit is less than amusing, verging on annoying, and is the same tired twins routine I’ve seen a hundred times before. This is nothing new, of course. Basically, every accessory character I’ve seen in this show has been defined by an easily recognizable character quirk or archetype.

This episode has left a bitter taste in my mouth, especially a couple weeks after an actually involving plot turn that I was hoping would bring something a little more interesting to the table. Two weeks after, though, its just business as usual with Kakuriyo. Expect to see more of the same for eight more weeks, until this show sputters to an end and is quickly forgotten by the world.