English Dub Review: Kemono Michi: Rise Up “Princess X Panties”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Princess Altena finally tracks Genzo down to his house in order to convince him to take part in a grand quest: Facing a newly unleashed Demon King. This takes…a LOT of convincing, as Genzo initially believes that he is a Demon Beast himself and so won’t fight him. That all changes when one of the orcs from the first couple episodes confirms that it’s actually MAO.

Meanwhile, said Demon King, MAO, along with Joanna and Rose, are conquering territories left and right, gathering an army to take over the rest of the land. They even pick up a purple puppie that MAO is…less than happy with.

OUR TAKE

Looks like we’re kicking off the final third of the season by ramping up to a giant showdown between the armies of good and evil. But while the forces of evil are pulling their forces together, the good guys are…pretty much just hanging around with their thumbs up their butts. Yeah, I would say this was not one of the more entertaining episodes of the ones we’ve seen. The main interesting thing was the approaching threat from the demons and how that’s likely to be the big thing to cap off the season, except no one except Altena can really find much reason to care about it. And it wouldn’t be as much of a problem if the Genzo half of the story wasn’t the majority.

I know we’ve had a couple episodes now to get to know Joanna and MAO’s characters, but this felt like a good opportunity to see how they work off each other similarly to (or differently from) Genzo’s group. The most we got of that is probably MAO meeting a Hayato-like dog and being sort of scared of it, which is a stark contrast between him and Genzo’s relationship with dogs, but that’s it. Joanna and Rose’s big difference from Hanako and Carmilla is that Joanna actually acts super smart and evil while Carmilla is competent as a lackey, but what other mix ups could you do? Maybe Rose and MAO actually get along incredibly well, unlike Genzo and Carmilla. Or maybe MAO is the one who’s a massive black hole stomach and that grosses Joanna out. We have a lot of options and we’re not doing a ton with them! Or at least give Genzo something fun to do that’s not SUPLEXING A GIRL OVER AND OVER.

I guess it’s good that we’re getting close to the end of the series because these episodes are becoming harder and harder to figure out what to say about them. The premise is a fun one, to be sure, but we seem to be slowly but surely running out of steam. By the time we get to the big final battle, which I’m getting a feeling will be going against what makes this show special in the first place, I’m very worried my interest will have run dry. Though I guess, at the very least, I won’t have to wait very long to find out, so no skin off my nose there.