English Dub Review: Scarlet Nexus “Karen’s Revolt”

Overview (Spoilers Below):

Yuito and the remaining members of the Seto squad are shocked to see the city in a state of chaos. Psynet is down and packs of Others roam the streets, going after civilians and soldiers alike. Yuito and his squad encounter Fubuki and fill him in on the story of what they know so far.

The dots are connected when general Karen broadcasts a message to the entire population, informing them that he is staging a coup against the government, which he sees as being a corrupt surveillance state. Fubuki sends Yuito to check on his father, but he arrives too late—and finds Kasane standing over him with a knife.

Our Take:

New Himuka is undergoing some serious internal strife in episode five. I keep thinking that things can’t get any crazier, but then something unexpected happens again. (Like that ending scene with Kasane’s reappearance!) Basically, Karen’s Revolt is a continuation of the insanity that began last week in earnest. This episode does slow things down a bit in favor of adding some explanation, but it didn’t exactly make sense.

Staging a coup and revolting against the government is never a simple thing it seems, but Karen’s broadcast does a fairly decent job of breaking down his reasoning to the general populace. What it boils down to is that Karen is sick of living in a surveillance state that, according to him, only benefits the minority of the upper class. He complains specifically about how everyone in the area is connected via a super computer that uses their psionic powers, which does sound kind of weird. The only problem is that I have no real idea if he’s right or not. We haven’t seen anything about how normal people live in New Himuka, or anything about the background of the government or how it has treated its citizens.

This makes it pretty much impossible to judge the situation on our own as viewers, so we have to look at it through the lens the series gives us. And that lens is with Yuito as the main character. He’s not exactly close to his father, but it’s clear we’re meant to look at Karen as the villain at this point. His father apparently had a big secret to tell Yuito about the family business, but he also tried to prevent Yuito from joining the Scarlet squadron in the past. Karen was a childhood hero of sorts to Yuito, so it’ll be interesting to see how he reconciles his feelings for the two of them and where he chooses to stand.

Although that decision is made more complicated by the last second appearance of Kasane—we don’t know what happened after she was sucked in by the weird red strings into the sky, but Yuito finds her hovering over his father’s slumped form holding a sharp-looking blade. The episode ends as she sprints toward him, making it the most exhilarating cliffhanger so far. She’s seemed like Yuito’s one ally up until this point, being one of the only ones who really knows about what happened to Naomi, so this turn is going to be something that could potentially make or break the show. Is she just being mind controlled, or is she actually fighting alongside Karen in favor of his dubious cause? We’ll have to wait until next week to find out, and until then, those crazy flower bouquet Others are going to live in my mind rent free.