English Dub Review: Kageki Shojo!!”The Hanamichi and the Silver Bridge”

Overview

Sarasa and Ai head back to Tokyo for summer vacation. Kabuki actor and Sarasa’s boyfriend, Akiya Shirakawa, reflects on his childhood with Sarasa and their memories of her early years within the Kabuki world…


Our Take

Finally, we have established a backstory for Sarasa and Akiya’s Kabuki background, and why Sarasa’s very into copying the master thing because her knowledge stems is from her time in the Kabuki world. The proceedings really sell the drama within this particular flashback, as we learn about the circumstances that pretty much ruined Sarasa’s life in the beginning but you can’t really blame Akiya since he was a kid and the real guilty parties should be blamed instead for making little Sarasa cry. And to add insult to injury, losing her dear grandmother not long after that.

Understandably, while Andou’s words were well-intentioned, saying the wrong things, or specific “Trigger-Words” can really have a traumatic effect on the early development of a child to a teen. It’s probably why Sarasa tries so hard when she’s in the zone as if she’s trying to prove herself so that she doesn’t have to hear the word “never” again used towards her as belittling criticism. It’s clear that before she can develop any sort of personal growth or a syle of her own, she first needs to defeat that particular word from her mind.

Overall, this was quite a well-written episode. I liked how the relationship between Sarasa, Ai, and Akiya was developed and how Sarasa and Akiya’s past was laid out. I’d assumed the teacher meant that Sarasa shouldn’t copy other performances and find her own style, but it’s easy to see why she’d be so good at copying considering her past in kabuki. However, it was not entirely her own fault, it came from the difference in principles due to the traditional lifestyle she was raised and indoctrinated around, compared to a brutally honest school that does its own thing with mixed results…