English Dub Review: Fena – Pirate Princess “The Curtain Rises on the Climax”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

The Goblin Knights finally make it to Eden, a strange land filled with odd scenery and endless treasures. Unlocked memories help Fena to unlock a pathway, while Abel and his forces close in.

OUR TAKE

I’ll be blunt, not a lot happened in this episode, which is sadly not a new problem for this show. I mean, stuff certainly happened, even a very important thing that the show had been building up to, namely finally landing on the mythical island of Eden. But it all ends up feeling so…flat and obligatory, like we’re checking things off a list in an outline and not bothering to make it feel as momentous as it should. Once again, the animation team brings their A Game to what they’re given, but the writing doesn’t give them very much to go on. We’re FINALLY at Eden and the weirdest most bizarre thing they can come up with for it are some stone faces in the walls, and a water ceiling. The story had not really given it any notable characteristics to Eden despite having nine previous episodes to do so, and now that we’re here…I think they just might not have had any idea what to do with it. They had a name that invoked some biblical imagery, but even that isn’t present here. We do still have two more episodes to try and learn something about that but I just don’t see it happening at this point.

Not to mention that this episode seems incredibly light on character development. Fena is still a bit flustered about Yukimaru vowing to fight for her until the end and kissing her hand, but what does that say about her and how she’s grown? Or how HE’S grown? What does any of this say about anyone? The Goblin Knights have at least gone through a little bit of growth in choosing to help Fena over possible punishment for not heading to Eden right away, but now they’re at Eden anyway so I guess that choice didn’t end up mattering all that much, made worse by the fact that none of them have really changed at all by the end. Abel finally got his backstory last episode, but all we learned about that was that he’s just Snape from Harry Potter with all the incel bits and none of the cool double agent bits. And Fena has it worst of all, mainly because her existence in this story is defined by a bunch of things happening TO her but not because of choices she made. She’s taken, rescued, kidnapped, rescued again, and now she’s just finishing the straightforward path to the end of the story. What do you wanna bet that’s where this is all headed?