English Dub Review: Miss Kobayashi’s Dragon Maid S “There Are Various Reasons Behind It (It’s Full of Elma)”

Overview

It all started with a single statement from Elma–“I demand improved worker conditions!” The company Miss Kobayashi and the others work at is very close to being exploitative, and Elma finally realizes their situation is wrong and rises up against it. Miss Kobayashi assumes it’s impossible to improve their working conditions, but the dragon’s energy and spirit were far greater than she imagined…





Our Take

This time around, it’s a very Elma-focused episode with a string of major turning points for her character. Starting with Elma trying to improve working conditions within her place of employment. The presentation of Elma’s campaign for better labor standards was kind of strange in its use of monologue over most of it, and It feels like that segment had the potential to be a full episode on its own. While the second story was about Shouta, Kanna, and Saikawa going on a picnic with Elma, and though it wasn’t very story-driven like most of the episodes in this season, but it’s always nice seeing some wholesome slice of life moments within the anime’s proceedings.

And as icing on the cake, the last story’s focus was on Fafnir and Kobayashi being invited to see a battle between the two dragons Tohru and Elma, and not only did we get such an epic dragon fight between the two, showing off KyoAni animation team’s talents, we also got a very emotional moment in the end, between the two which revealed some unresolved issues the two had towards each other.

Overall, I was impressed by the directing in the first part of the episode, with the whole Elma’s workers movement and Kobayashi narrating it. But the later proceedings just found ways to top itself to some degree. Also, that fight between Elma and Tohru was both intense yet really sweet, it wasn’t perfect. There were a few moments & camera angles where I couldn’t instantly tell what was going on which is always a bad thing for a fight. Once that happens the immersion is almost broken and could easily affect your enjoyment as a result. The fight also came out of nowhere too. All of a sudden Elma decided to end their misplaced issues when I didn’t even know they had issues, to begin with. But at the very least, the animation and production values more than made up for it.