English Dub Review: RErided: Derrida, Who Leaps Through Time “Strong Bonds”

Covalent or ionic?

Overview (Spoilers!)

Derrida wonders if the war has gotten worse due to his meddling in the past. He and Videaux… have been arrested after a car chase?

The group has been driving through the night, searching for the “quiet place” that Mage was headed to. Derrida believes it might be his alma mater, Yetz Engineering College. Four cars chase behind Graham on the highway, shooting them down. Despite his injury, Videaux gets on the roof to shoot back. To evade their pursuers, Graham throws himself off a cliff and dives into a forest.

Videaux starts bleeding again; Yuri tends to his wound. Derrida wonders if Mayuka might be safer somewhere else. Mayuka tells Yuri that it’s okay when Videaux leaves her alone for a long time, because she likes to read and think about stories—in fact, she wants to be a writer. Yuri takes photos of Mayuka playing with fireflies.

Videaux remembers his life as a police officer. He was highly successful at capturing criminals, but his coworkers disliked him. When his wife was killed in a hit-and-run, Videaux was forbidden from working on a case involving a family member. He was driven to drink and became disillusioned by the law. After locating the perp, Videaux shot him in his own home… and then realized that the man had a baby.

A horde of DZs chase Graham. On the roof, Videaux and Derrida shoot back at them. Suddenly, a DZ grabs Videaux and drags him off the car. Videaux faces down twenty DZs, but Graham returns to plow into them, and Derrida manages to land perfect shots on all twenty.

The next morning, the gang refreshes themselves in a stream. Mayuka opens her hands to show her father a handful of fireflies. Videaux tells her to set them free, because they can’t stay with her forever. Yuri and Derrida smile as they watch the father and daughter play.

And then overhead, government planes fly by to drop bombs. Derrida theorizes that his time rides might cause memory loss. At the university, Mage asks a professor about Trout Theory and declares her intention to time ride.

Our Take

Am I missing something? What’s up with Videux and Derrida getting mug shots? I thought it would turn out to be a flash forward to a later scene, but we never get any hint as to what their arrest is about. What was the point of including the scene? To create suspense for something that doesn’t even happen in this episode? (Also, how did Derrida immediately know that Mage was at Yetz? How could he possibly have predicted that?)

At least this show is still good at car chases. The music and effects are loud, creating a heart-thumping atmosphere. I like that the show follows up about Videaux’s injury—his exertion during the chase causes his condition to worsen, which seems realistic. But I also have trouble believing Graham—and all of the people in him—would escape without a scratch after diving off a literal cliff.

I appreciate that we get some quiet scenes in this episode, too. ReRIDEd is chock-full of harrowing chases and shoot ’em ups, so it’s a pleasant change of pace to see the gang just enjoying a forest’s calm. The nighttime ambiance is well-done, with calming sounds and emotional music. And I really like Mayuka’s passion for stories. I wish it would show up in the plot a little more, but when Mayuka gets a chance to shine, she’s really charming and kind.

Videaux is such a tough guy, but the relationship between him and Mayuka is genuinely tender. He loves playing with her and desperately wants to keep her safe, and she wants to give back to him as soon as she’s making money as a writer. That’s what I love about Videaux—he’s a masculine badass, but he’s able to have affectionate moments like these, subverting our expectations about the type of guy he is. It really makes him a much more likeable and well-rounded character. Videaux’s backstory, though? It’s a little dramatic to be believable. We don’t learn anything about his wife—what she was like as a person, what their relationship is like. And it’s touching that he decided to take Mayuka in after all that, but I feel like this backstory was shoved in at the last moment and doesn’t really come through in Videaux’s current personality. Like yeah, he thinks revenge is awful now, but he never seems beat up about what happened or anything. The writers gave him a tragic backstory that he’s already overcome and healed from, which is an unusual and not altogether successful choice.

The battles in this episode are even more unbelievable. Why does the gang plan for Graham to plow through the DZs when the DZs are behind them? How do Videaux and Derrida avoid getting shot when hundreds of bullets are flying past them? Why did Graham hesitate before saving Videaux? And how does Derrida suddenly out of nowhere become a miraculous shot? Videaux’s capture was essentially meaningless because it lasted all of two seconds. Despite the DZs’ creepy design, they haven’t posed a threat at all so far on RErideD. It’s hard to be afraid of them when we’ve seen Derrida and Videaux outshoot and outsmart them time and time again without much effort.

The firefly thing, too, while it’s set up to be a powerful metaphor, doesn’t seem appropriate to me. First of all, I don’t get how Mayuka avoided opening her fist for literally an entire night, most of which was consumed by a life-or-death car chase. And I don’t understand why Videaux is musing on how it’s necessary to set things free. The show seems to be drawing a direct parallel between Mayuka letting the fireflies go and Videaux letting Mayuka go (i.e. sending her somewhere safer instead of traveling with him), but like… those things aren’t equivalent. The fireflies don’t need Mayuka to survive, but Mayuka is like six. She needs Videaux to take care of her. Plus, despite all the dangerous situations we’ve seen the gang in so far, no one inside Graham has ever even received a scratch, and Videaux seems to do a great job at protecting her. In this war-torn world, it honestly seems like Videaux’s side is one of the safest places to be—isn’t he a bodyguard, after all?

I’m intrigued, though, by the idea that Derrida may be experiencing memory loss—that time riding to a specific moment doesn’t just prevent him from going back to it, but removes the instance from his memory altogether. Are there crucial elements of that day ten years ago that Derrida has forgotten? I must admit I’m excited to find out.