English Dub Review: Hatena Illusion “Episode 4”

 

 

Overview (Spoilers Below)

Mamoru—magician, patriarch, home owner, and family man—returns from abroad to see his precious daughters and to give a quick lesson to Makoto. To the boy, he reveals his most secret illusion—magic is fake! His magician persona is merely a cover so Maeve can create and test artifacts without drawing too much attention to the family. And after that trick, he leaves again to an undisclosed location, somewhere overseas.

The girls, barely having a moment each with father, aren’t seeing eye to eye with each other. Hatena becomes worried after learning Yumemi hasn’t been to school in over a week. Little sis won’t talk to her—she’ll only speak to Makoto who’s too embarrassed to inquire—so Hatena devises a new strategy.

Roping in Makoto and Kokomi, she visits her sister’s classroom. The kids there are out of control. They don’t wear school uniforms, they run around screaming, and if there’s a skirt to peak under, they’re gonna upskirt it. One of the boys is particularly nasty, and she knows this is the one who’s making her sister’s life a living hell.

She confronts Yumemi back at the manor, who denies being bullied and instead blames her absences on the lessons being too easy. Hatena doesn’t believe her, and the sisters get into a very intense artifact battle. Muffy the scarf takes on Yumemi’s teddy bear, Gaugau, who magically transforms to a twenty-foot monster that wreaks havoc around the house. The domestics assure Makoto that the house has a magic barrier that’ll repairs itself. However, nothing is in place to protect the boy who gets knocked out by some falling debris.

Yumemi, burdened with regret over her toy harming her new brother, maturely apologizes. She also opens up to him and reveals the real reason why she’s been avoiding school. Turns out, some of the boys were making fun of her unusual blonde hair. The boys alone didn’t hurt her feelings—Yumemi doesn’t give a damn about how others perceive her. What truly stung was having a reminder of how different she is from her sister.

Since they both idolize their mother, there’s always been contention about who’ll take after Maeve the most. Yumemi, however, doesn’t like being too different from her sister and any reminder of such distinctions often set her off. However, when the boys from her class come to the manor to apologize, Yumemi accepts their efforts, and even shows them a few magic tricks that Makoto taught her. And so, everything wrong is right again—for now.

The show ends with a woman who calls herself Tomi-Tomi trying to gain entrance into the family manor. Jeeves sends her away, admitting that neither Maeve nor Mamoru are at home. This deters the odd, bubbly woman, but she will most definitely return.

 

Our Take

For those of you waiting for it, we finally got a Yumemi episode. At four episodes in, finally might be a bit hyperbolic, but since we already had an Aunt Mariah episode, it’s a fair observation. Besides, this young girl’s dour, devil-may-care attitude automatically makes her more intriguing than ninety percent of the other characters. My apologies, Jeeves.

So far, we haven’t got much tension, kinship, or anything regarding the relationship between the Hoshisato sisters, so it was thrilling to see them at odds in this outing. Even though Hatena has proven to be slightly immature in the past, I thought it quite grown-up of her to investigate what was causing Yumemi’s bad moods. Some people might call what she did, “Helicopter Sibling-ing.” But I think, any aviary forms of over-protectiveness ought to be limited to parents or very involved nannies.

Tonight, we also got to see some artifacts in action. Yes, we’ve seen Muffy do its thing a time or two, and it was limited to some light flying and face-smacking. But then there’s Gaugau. What the hell is this bear? I don’t like him, even when he’s small, or doing the world’s strangest post-credit scenes. He’s the most unlikable bear on television. Therefore, when he gets big, with those ridiculously sharp claws, I can’t help but wonder why Yumemi gets two artifacts (the bear and her bat-computer) while Hatena only gets one. Also, why weren’t the girls both exhausted after their fight? Don’t break the rules you just established, Hatena Illusion!

Overall, this was a good episode to transition from the introductory portion of the series into the actual meat. Last week, Mariah opened the door for us, and now Yumemi has kicked the portal wide open. And let’s not forget that annoying Tomi-Tomi woman sneaking around.

Aside from that, I enjoy the strong relationship that is developing between Makoto and Yumemi. It’s beyond sweet how she treats him like an older brother. All it took was some attention and a little kindness—which she isn’t used to with her family being perpetually busy—and the young magician was able to get through to her. I look forward to seeing these two partnering up in future adventures.