English Dub Review: Scarlet Nexus “Scarlet Guardians”
Overview (Spoilers Below):
Yuito still can’t seem to shake the memory of his childhood savior out of his head. Nagi takes him for a fun fortune reading at a tourist trap dedicated to one of his distant ancestors and the two of them happen to run into Naomi and Kasane there. Only Naomi gets a good fortune, which is ironic considering what happens later on.
Something suspicious is going on, and it may be connected with Karen and his plans. While training, the Seto and Kyoka platoons are sent to take on a group of Others in some underground tunnels and things don’t go as planned. There are too many Others and the groups get separated. When they’re eventually reunited, all seems well, but then Naomi gets shot with a mysterious gun and starts transforming.
Our Take:
Scarlet Nexus’s second episode is much more laidback than the premiere last week. That episode was chock full of exposition, but Scarlet Guardians is content to let things unfold at a more leisurely and unexplained pace. Not too much happens in the first half, but the second half of the episode ends on a surprising note that definitely seems like it will be the focal point going forward.
But before we get to that, we’ve got to talk about Nagi and Naomi having tea together! No, but really—having the first part of this episode be devoted to some low stakes social drama was kind of nice in a way. Scarlet Nexus is such an action packed video game inspired show that it might start to feel a little too video game-y without some slice of life antics. None of the main four characters are very interesting or have great dynamics with each other, but at least they’re trying! In some cases, way too hard. It’s sad how much Nagi simps for Naomi when it’s clear she’s only got eyes for Yuito.
The latter half of the episode gets things back to more familiar territory in some ways. The squadrons are back in the business of fighting against the unknown Others, except this time it’s underground inside some spooky pitch black tunnels. The battle itself isn’t really anything special—the animation is meh and the character’s powers are all pretty run of the mill stuff like moving objects with your mind or punching things with fire. The most original part of the show continues to be the Others themselves, and I think I’m leaning more on the ugly side of original after this episode. The Others designs are very piecemeal, but not in a cool way.
There’s a few things that do intrigue amidst all the mediocrity. Kasane and Yuito’s connection keeps being teased. At the fortune telling, Yuito asks if she has an older sister (nope) and seems about to mention his childhood experience to her when Nagi drags him away. While this memory is still being shown as a mystery, it could have an obvious answer since Yuito mentions growth suppression being a thing in this world. It’s unclear why exactly Kasane would’ve done that, but at this point it seems like the simplest explanation.
The other new thing comes at the end of the episode when Naomi winds up taking a bullet for her sister. But this isn’t any old ordinary bullet. No, instead of just killing her, it seems to be transforming her or encasing her in a block of ice or something? I’m sure this makes more sense to people who’ve played the video game, but it was a pretty bizarre thing to end an episode on. Is she dead? Different? I have no idea, but now we’ll have to wait a whole week to find out.
