English Dub Review: Plunderer “An Army That Does Not Kill”

Overview (Spoilers Below):

Jail is caught by an old acquaintance of his from the future. Captain Alan catches him in the restricted area, and is about to pull the trigger when Jail tells him that he and three other students have travelled from the future in order to change the past. Captain Alan decides to take them out on a little field trip, where they see just how bad the current state of the world is – starvation rules supreme and villagers will do anything for food.

Later on, the students take a trip to the beach and start a game of capture the flag. Each team is allowed to use water guns, but since Class A has decided not to ‘kill’ anyone they fight, they use Rihito’s brilliant plan of running away in order to somehow win the contest. After a confrontation with Doan, Rihito’s team comes out on top. Finally, Schmerman is talked into using Rihito as the first human lab rat.

Our Take:

An Army That Does Not Kill is an episode that changes the future by convincing our time traveling heroes not to change the past. Or at least, not in the ways they might have originally expected. Rather than try to alter the things they don’t know and mess around with challenges they don’t understand, Jail changes his focus to training himself so that he will be ready for the trials he knows he will face in his future. It’s kind of a unique viewpoint that makes this episode of Plunderer a bit more introspective than the usual – at least until Rihito gets to the beach.

Because once he’s unleashed on the sands, no girl is safe. Rihito’s perverted ways are one thing on their own, but they make what comes next even more unbelievable. The instructors begin a game of capture the flag to test the students in their battle skills and tactics. Everything starts out okay, but then Class A remember their pledge to become an army that doesn’t kill anyone. In support of this goal, they decide not to use their water guns, and instead trust Rihito to come up with a plan.

And his brilliant idea? To run away. Yup, that’s really it. That’s what the Class somehow ends up making him ‘commander’ for, with even the poor girls used in service of advancing his leadership. The entire team just runs until their opponents give up and fall over, at which point they turn around, walk back to them, and take their flag. It’s completely idiotic and the show loses pretty much all credibility for me when it works again and again, even when the other teams know its coming. Doan is able to overcome it by sheer physical strength, but his appearance just reminded me how much I hate him. He has to be one of the dumbest, ugliest character designs in the entirety of anime, from his out of place size to his weird slit eyes.

There’s kind of a lot going on in this episode internally, especially when you consider the field trip Captain Alan takes Jail and company on. This does a number on everyone’s heads, but even this scene I couldn’t take too seriously. They’re immediately surrounded by starving people with knives who want food, but the second Alan shoots his gun in the air, they run away? If they were desperate enough to surround a military vehicle, why would they suddenly clear away? There’s so many of them, they could take him! Maybe Alan (or Cigarette Crazyhair, as I dubbed him) just has a crazy powerful reputation?

Overall, this episode tried to do a lot of things, but most of them were undermined by poor execution or silly setups. Rihito was elected commander by the girls he harassed earlier just for running away. Jail was convinced not to meddle in the past by a single five-minute execursion. And Doan showed up in the episode, which is all it takes to leave a sour taste in my mouth. Hopefully the next dub release has better material to work with.