English Dub Review: Kemono Jihen “Home”

Overview:

Shiki has decided he wants to find out about his parents. Everyone heads to where he grew up with his uncle Akio, and he tells Shiki that both his parents are dead. Something isn’t quite right however as we learn of a dark secret involving Shiki’s mother.

Our Take:

I had a feeling this show would potentially handle some dark topics. I was interested to see how they would tackle them and I think they handled it tastefully. You can tell bad things are happening but it isn’t in your face with it. I will touch on it a bit more later.

I feel bad for Shiki though. I wanted to like his uncle but something just seemed off, and boy was it. Not only the things he did to Shiki’s mother but it’s heavily implied he also killed Shiki’s dad. There is a myth mentioned at the beginning of the episode that is basically the reason for all of the events.

A long time ago there was a man who found a spider in his house and that spider spun silk made of gold. After discovering Kumi, and realizing she was a spider kemono, Akio and his brother thought they found the answer to the legend. While Akio’s brother was okay with simply knowing and eventually marrying Kumi, Akio needed more. As I said it’s implied that he killed his own brother and then took advantage of Kumi.

After remembering his traumatic past Shiki is resolved to kill his uncle. In a moment of true friendship, Kabane says he will help however he can. Shiki can’t understand how Kabane can be so relaxed about killing but he thanks him nonetheless. Seeing moments of true friendship is always awesome to me. Sure, killing people is wrong but if I found out what Shiki did I would be out for blood too.

I also want to give props to Madeline Morris and AJ Beckles for their work in these last two episodes. Madeline’s performance of just being calm about things as Kabane is just super interesting to me. I know I should have a better way to describe it but I just love how she delivers his lines and reactions. As for AJ I know he is a relative newcomer but getting some big roles and I really like how he portrays Shiki. Especially in this episode and potentially the next one. Like dealing with the trauma and just how he acts about the betrayal from his uncle is really well done for a newcomer.

Seeing that Kemono Jihen can tackle some serious subject matter was really nice to see. They handled it appropriately and I think they can do better later as well. If anything comes up that is. This was a good setup episode and I can’t wait to see how it pans out.