English Dub Review: Gleipnir “What It Means to be Empty”

Overview (Spoilers Below):

Shuichi and Clair fight off the track team girl, Hikawa who gained her power from a gold star coin because of her desire to be the fastest on the team. Shuichi escapes with Clair to a shipping container area, and Clair gets the idea to look inside Shuichi because of the zipper of the suit. When she opens him up she finds out that he’s empty which causes Shuichi to be depressed. After a bit of convincing, he agrees to let Clair inside his body. Once Clair is inside they connect and learn about each other’s feelings. Hikawa finds them and they fight her as she demands to know where Clair is. After a few punches and kicks, Clair gets used to being inside Shuichi and brutally attacks Hikawa and kills her. A week goes by like nothing ever happened and Clair corners Shuichi who is horrified by the events and refuses to go along with Clair. However, Clair reveals the reason why she’s searching because of her sister, Elena who turned into a monster and killed their parents.

Our Take:

Gleipnir is a wild anime from the fighting to the character personalities in the mundane town the story is set in. Along with the action and insane personalities, there’s surprisingly a heartfelt moment in this episode with Clair being understanding of Shuichi’s stress and fear of turning into a monster. The animation was good for the fight along with the voice cast.

Shuichi feeling empty on the inside, and how it reflects on his transformation was a good scene with Clair willing to get inside him and quite literally fill up the empty space inside the dog suit. Furthermore, their connection while she’s inside of him was a good side effect to the process as we see glimpses of their feelings. There’s also his moral internal conflict over killing Hinkawa while Clair shrugs it off as self-defense. It’s understandable from his perspective as a newcomer to this monstrous side of the world, but after a bit of smooth-talking from Clair still agrees to work with her. Shuichi is the softer of the duo, but I’m curious to see if he’ll remain that way as their search for Clair’s sister begins.

We quickly get the reason why Clair is so fixated on the monsters since her sister, Elena turned into a monster and killed their parents. Her whole reason for searching monsters is to find her sister. It was quicker than expected to reveal her goal like that, but the anime was in a good place to reveal it. Furthermore, her innuendos on getting inside Shuichi’s dog suit was not lost as she’s the dominant out of the two. Her ruthless side during the fight was interesting because we get a brief glimpse of her past and how she’s using Shuichi and their opponent to get rid of that feeling of being weak.

Overall the episode answers a few questions only to bring up more with Elena and her motives for turning Shuichi into a monster while agreeing to help the guy that popped out of the vending machine to gather the coins. Both sisters appear to be similar when it comes to roping Shuichi into their goals.