English Dub Review: Assault Lily Bouquet “Anemone: Believe in You and Wait”

Overview (Spoilers Below):

After the events of last week’s episode left Yurigaoka safe thanks to Yuri’s sacrificial death, Riri herself has landed in solitary confinement. Despite acting in the best interests of the academy and her friend, the girl is kept locked up to make a point about disobedience.

Meanwhile, her legion teammates search the beach to find Riri’s four leaf clover hair tie, which was lost during the struggle against the monster Huge. Kaede winds up finding it on the first day, but resolves to fake it until she can fix up a new one that looks better. In the end, Riri easily uncovers the deception once she’s released… but she’s grateful anyway.

Our Take:

Last week’s episode of Assault Lily Bouquet was filled with epic highs coming from big scenes of battling and tension filled moments of searching for the runaway girls. Anemone: Believe in You and Wait isn’t quite so intense, but despite being a fairly mellow episode, it still manages to wreak some emotional havoc due to a last minute scene where Riri unleashes her feelings about Yuri’s death.

A good 90% of the episode is very low key, though. Starting off with Riri in solitary is somewhat odd, as the whole point of last week’s episode was to prove that since Yuri is actually human, Riri didn’t do wrong by aiding and abetting her escape. Especially since the academy is supposed to be a place of freedom for the Lilies, it’s strange that Riri still ends up behind bars for a good portion of today’s episode.

It does allow other members of the show to shine. Kaede takes the main spotlight this time around, which I appreciated. She’s always been one of the more outrageously bombastic characters in the show, and her upbeat personality combined with her outspoken love for Riri makes her really fun to root for. Coming after her confrontation with her father last episode, it really seems like the show is positioning Kaede as somewhat more of a main character now that Yuri is out of the picture.

But is she really gone for good? A small subplot this week reveals that the monster Huge she defeated had within it a charm from the Lily who supposedly died by Miss Yuyu’s own hands. Was it controlling the Huge, and if so, under whose orders? It’s possible that some evil opposition has an academy for Huge, isn’t it? That would make sense, since the outside forces are growing suspiciously concerned about the Lilies and the power granted to them by Yurigaoka.

Regardless of this broader implication, the episode ends on an emotional high note as Yuri, who has remained sullen and silent throughout her time in the lockup, comes clean to her crew as she bawls her eyes out in memory of Yuri. It’s a touching moment, and the dub handled it pretty nicely considering how many tears her VA had to put out. While this week may not have been the most exciting in terms of plot (since most of it is just spent searching for a hair tie), it came through in little ways that add up to a solid episode.