English Dub Season Review: The Ones Within Season One

Overview (Spoilers Below):

What would you do if you woke up one day and had been kidnapped by a man in an alpaca suit who forced you to become a livestreamer? Well, if you’re anything like the kids in The Ones Within, you’d play right along! A group of gamers gets taken to a remote island owned by Mr. Paka and are made to compete in challenges in order to reach one hundred million livestream viewers.

When the show begins, all eight of the group members are basically strangers. But as they complete the challenges together and learn about one another, they grow to form an attachment as a kind of makeshift family. Even when times are tough, they look out for each other, like when Kaikoku gets banished to the white room and everyone else goes on strike to bring him back.

Our Take:

I liked The Ones Within a lot more than I originally thought I would. A show about gamers getting stuck in a weird fantasy-esque world run by an alpaca isn’t the kind of series I would normally be attracted to, but it’s really the eight main characters who make this show special. Sure, there’s plenty of weird games and mysterious questions going around, but at its heart, the show is about the relationships that form between the Let’s Players.

And the players are quite the bunch: weird, wild, and very wacky. Akatsuki is a very good protagonist if you don’t mind how naive and innocent he can come across as being. In reality, he seems to have some darker backstory that’s never explored (which is one of my main criticisms of the show in general), and I believe the manga goes more in-depth. The other characters all get their time to shine throughout the twelve episodes, but some of my favorites included Karin, Makino, Himiko, and Yuzu. Karin started off the first episode with Akatsuki, which made me think she would be the second most important character. She kind of gets relegated to a background role after that, though, and is never really used to her full potential I didn’t think. Makino just sleeps a lot, which is never not funny. Himiko is a tiny girl who hates conflict but somehow is always carrying explosives around with her? Just don’t question it. Yuzu is definitely a problematic fave. She starts off as a very intriguing character, but quickly becomes somewhat of an abuser and serial stalker. Toward the end, there’s some interesting info revealed that she’s working for Mr. Paka, but this is never expanded upon.

My major problem with this show is just how many questions it left unanswered. From not finding out any more about Yuzu’s connections to Paka or Akatsuki, to never getting closure on if Zakuro finds out about his sister, to not seeing an ending where all of them successfully beat Paka’s challenges, watching The Ones Within feels like somewhat of a letdown by the end of the final episode. They say it’s about the journey, not the destination, but watching The Ones Within is like traveling to Olive Garden and somehow arriving at Applebees – you end up depressed.

With such a letdown of an ending, The Ones Within is hard for me to recommend. Even if you like the start, is it worth a watch when you never receive any epic, satisfactory conclusion? If you go into the show aware of this, or are someone who is fine with just picking up the manga afterward for the real ending, I’d say to go ahead and watch. The show has fun characters, interesting plots, and can sometimes be really funny. The English dub is solid, with good casting and only the rare cringeworthy line. It was a fun ride. But I wish it had actually gone somewhere.