English Dub Review: Plunderer “Father”

Overview (Spoilers Below):

In the aftermath of Doan’s attack on Licht, the others arrive. Pele, Lynn, and Hina get there to find Licht unresponsive. They try to rouse him, but are captured by Doan. He is about to torture them, but Schmerman makes it to the scene and tries to turn them all into Aces. Doan objects to this, and forcibly frees them… until he discovers they have an original ballot.

Meanwhile, Jail is off visiting his father figure, Alex. Or should I say Captain Alan? When Jail confronts him, the two of them fight and try to settle things between them. Unfortunately, no matter how strong Jail’s convictions are, he isn’t powerful enough to overcome Alan — at least not physically.

Our Take:

There’s not much going on in this episode of Plunderer, at least when compared to previous weeks. We basically only get two scenes in the entire runtime: Jail’s meeting with his dad and Doan’s reunion with Pele, Lynn, and Hina. While there are some interesting happenings at stake, the tension never really lands and I was left feeling a little wishful that the show had committed to more lasting developments.

When Jail kicks the door in on his daddy’s office, I laughed. The commander’s meeting with his foster father is a study in dueling feelings. The two are at each other’s throats one minute and hugging it out the next. It’s a little hard to get a read on just what Alan feels for his foster kid — love or hatred, it’s extreme either way. He does relay his backstory to Jail, which is basically that his own children were murdered and instead of saving them with Nana’s gifts, he revels in the pain and turns it into his drive for the future. I guess that’s where Jail gets his strength of conviction from. And the end of this half of the episode shows us Jail walking through the hallway bare chested, so that’s cool.

As Jail gets his day with daddy, his friends are getting to enjoy an awkward class reunion with the best bully of them all: Doan. The weird goat-eyed guy is on the verge of making them extremely uncomfortable when Schmerman walks in. Hina yells at him to explain himself, which is a fair question. He does it, wouldn’t ya know it, telling the group that the army that doesn’t kill was merely a test to weed out the weaklings. But they won’t be weak much longer thanks to new advances in medication that allow anyone to become an Ace regardless of genes. But before they can take the pills, Doan frees them. It’s an intriguing move from the big dude, but unfortunately it doesn’t last long. Lynn has the worst luck, doesn’t she?

While the plot was average this week, the art is definitely taking a bit of a nosedive. From the freakish malnourished child to a bunch of off-model faces, the visuals in Father would not make anyone’s father proud. At least the dub is still serviceable, with solid performances from the main cast and not-terrible ones from the supporting characters.

This week’s episode of Plunderer sees Jail confronting his foster parent and learning the truth of his father’s convictions. Hina, Pele, and Lynn learned what Schmerman’s real purpose with the non-lethal army was, too. All in all, maybe this wasn’t such an uneventful episode after all. It just felt that way with all the whiplash: Jail’s gonna kill his dad, no he isn’t. Doan’s gonna free everyone, no he isn’t. Plunderer is gonna suddenly become the greatest show in the history of humankind — no it isn’t.