English Dub Review: Scarlet Nexus “Scarlet Psionics”

Overview (Spoilers Below):

Mysterious invading mutants known as the Others are terrorizing the Earth and nobody knows why. There are a group of warriors called the Scarlet Guardians who fight against them, and Yuito and Nagi join up to help out with their own psionic powers.

They meet their squad and Yuito makes a strange connection with Kasane, but before they can go deeper, the Others attack and the team is deployed. Despite being told to stay back, Yuito and Nagi help rescue a little girl from the Others and start to feel like part of the group.

Our Take:

Scarlet Nexus is based on a video game, and it’s basically the most video game-y anime you can imagine. There’s a set of thinly drawn characters, a group of invading forces, and a mysterious element to tie it all together. There’s a healthy dose of action scenes along with plenty of exposition.

There’s always some exposition in opening episodes, but Scarlet Nexus definitely takes things to a whole ‘nother level. Just in the first few minutes, we get hit over the head with main character Yuito’s entire backstory thanks to his friend Nagi and a very detailed TV broadcast. Nagi literally tells Yuito (read: the audience) that “you’ve always dreamed of this since you were a kid” in regards to the two of them joining the Scarlet Guardians.  We also find out that he’s somewhat of a celebrity, since his older brother runs the force, but that he also has a very low psionic score. Poor guy gets all his business exposed on live TV!

While the main characters aren’t particularly compelling as of yet, the plot itself feels like a ripoff of many other shows, namely Attack on Titan. There are a group of strange creatures that humanity doesn’t know anything about despite spending years fighting them. There are squadrons of kids who fight against them—Yuito was even inspired to join the Guardians because of an event that occurred during his childhood. (Which seems to be linked to Kasane somehow.) There’s even a nostalgic scene of someone walking on a beach in the ED. It’s all very familiar and because of that, pretty boring. The designs of the Others are unique, though I can’t tell if I love them or hate them; they’re basically ugly mannequins with flowerpots instead of heads sometimes? It’s weird.

Scarlet Psionics does what a premiere episode needs to do, even if it didn’t do it in a fun, surprising, or really very entertaining way. We’ve got the cast of characters—even the girl who is literally introduced by saying “she’s my childhood friend.” There’s some attempts at camaraderie between Yuito and Nagi. And there’s the sisters who may or may not like Yuito and may or may not be involved in some shadowy schemes. For now, there’s not much to set Scarlet Nexus apart from the others, but hopefully that will change as the season progresses.