English Dub Review: APPARE-RANMAN! “I am GIL!”

Overview:

Hototo decides to sneak up on Gil.

Our Take:

Hototo ends up putting himself in a lot of danger. While he is a lot less stealthy than I was expecting, he also is still (although he’d be unhappy to admit it), a kid. He is extremely committed to his cause and really does try his best, especially since Appare and Kosame don’t really help him out in terms of information gathering. Ever since finding out that Gil was part of the race, he’s done his best to find out more information– but here we see Hototo’s shortcoming: his lack of patience.

Ever since he discovered the truth, that Gil is part of the race, he’s been wanting to confront him right away. While he’s been advised to wait for the right moment, he doesn’t have the patience for it, now that he’s finally up close with the murderer. I don’t want to say that he should be less obsessed with someone who murdered his tribe and family, but his impulsiveness gets him into trouble. It’s understandable, but tricky.

I really do like the additional human side we see of Appare. Compared to Kosame, he is a lot less conventional and more concerned with machines than humans. This may be great when showing his prowess and talent, especially in the face of some pretty unsubtle racism, and with connecting with the other racers. However, it means that he connects a lot less with normal people, since he utterly lacks communication skills. He is so focused on his goal that he forgoes manners and even striking up conversations sometime. His goal is the race and winning the race, and all other things are secondary.

When Hototo doesn’t come back, Kosame is the worried one, and Appare doesn’t seem to care as much. He’s even willing to propose continuing on the race, even knowing that Hototo left to put himself in danger. Kosame goes out to look for Hototo, but Appare is convinced to move on– or so we think. The thing is, Appare actually does decide to stay behind. It’s really nice because all we have seen of Appare so far is less him being kind and more him being logical, and sometimes that logic ends up doing nice things for other people. However, this time staying behind offers Appare no benefit, except for making sure that Hototo is okay. I really like this a lot, because it shows more depth to Appare, and I hope they do more of that going forward.