English Dub Review: High School Prodigies Have It Easy Even In Another World, “It Seems Ringo’s Worked Up the Courage to Become a Hunter!”

 

 

 

Overview (Spoilers Below)

After pondering the position of the Azure Brigade in this grand conflict, Keine orders Tsukasa and Ringo to take some time off. They decide to spend this time together, on what some would consider an impromptu date.

Our Take

The prodigies’ questioning of the Azure Brigade’s intentions continues. At first, the Azure Brigade seemed like a natural ally for them against the empire. However, Tsukasa finds possible fragmentation in the leadership of the Brigade in the form of the corruption they’re sworn to stop. With this information in hand, Tsukasa plans to let them do as they please for now and will expose them when it is most opportune for him. 

This deconstruction of the Azure Brigade is all well and good, the revelation of it’s darker parts adding a little bit of depth to the picture of the empire. But while they were discussing all of this, they made no mention of Jeanne. Jeanne seemed like the person who would be the most willing to ally with the prodigies. She was not mentioned among the corrupt people within the Brigade, so I’m guessing she’s either not part of that faction or doesn’t know. Regardless, she has served as the liaison for them up until now so it’s odd to see her left out. 

As intriguing as all of that is, it isn’t the feature of this episode. 

Through some convenient circumstances that force them to take a break from work, Tsukasa and Ringo decide to spend some time together. As expected, Ringo takes this opportunity to try to impress Tsukasa and interprets this time together as a date. She goes to the other girls for dating advice but instead learns how to defeat men in combat and abduct them. Shinobu ends up being the only one to deliver somewhat decent advice. 

The date is cute and cliche, following all of the tropes of pallid anime romance. When we reach the part where an indirect kiss occurs, Ringo passes out and the date is revealed to simply be a vehicle for a flashback. 

We learn that Ringo, much like Tsukasa, is the victim of terrible parenting. Her mother genetically designed her in a test tube to be incredibly intelligent. Then when she went on to win multiple Nobel Prizes, her mother got unbelievably jealous of her and disowned her. I’m not sure what her mother was expecting. The lack of detail in this flashback makes her mother seem less like an abject monster and more like a complete idiot who didn’t think things through.

Regardless, Ringo is still left in a bad way. Then in middle school (why is a multiple Nobel Prize winner still in middle school?), Tsukasa finds her and starts asking her to fix all of his electronics. She finds joy in tinkering and repairing things, which evolves into a love of inventing new things. When she tells this to Tsukasa, she finds out that instead of being a horribly clumsy Luddite, he was taking broken items from a used electronics store and giving them to her to fix. It is through this that she starts developing an affection for him. 

While this serves to establish Ringo’s character, it also further establishes Tsukasa’s character. We see that he’s a kind and incredibly observant person who wants to do good by people. He doesn’t have his trademark white hair in the flashback, which places his encounters with Ringo before the big fiasco with his father. Appropriately, this Tsukasa is perhaps a bit more wholesome. He’s doing the right thing purely for that sake of it, instead of for some additional ulterior motive.  

When Ringo awakes from this dream, she reflects on her relationship with Tsukasa. She realizes that perhaps what was once affection has turned into appreciation over time. Maybe now she won’t be obsessively pining for his heart, but rather try to understand him better to embolden their friendship. 

This entire flashback sequence is unoriginal and melodramatic, but it does work in certain respects. Apart from protagonist Tsukasa, this is the first time a character’s backstory has been told. Perhaps this was to make up for Ringo’s stark lack of screen time, but it’s still more exposition than we’ve received for any other character, which is appreciated.

Additionally, instead of having it end with Ringo stubbornly redoubling her efforts to make Tsukasa love her, she uses this as a moment of reflection. Her deciding to instead focus on being a better friend is a very mature move on her part and speaks well for her character. This considerably declutters the “Tsukasa’s love interest” space, which is great because that isn’t an interesting space in the first place. 

The means in this episode were heavy-handed, but the ends were certainly worth it, adding much-needed depth to one of the anime’s pivotal characters.