English Dub Review: Scarlet Nexus “A Dubious Wonder Drug”

Overview (Spoilers Below):

When Yuito starts spouting nonsense after an Other encouncter, nobody knows for sure what’s going on. But when the squad tracks two trucks to a suspicious research facility, they know something’s up. They discover that Spring Pharmaceuticals is conducting experiments and manufacturing human brains. They think about putting a stop to it, but then Kasane and her crew come along and engage them in combat. Yuito and his group is able to escape, but one thing is for sure: there’s a lot of strange stuff going on in both New Himuka and Seiran, and nobody’s quite sure what to make of it.

Our Take:

The ninth episode of Scarlet Nexus feels kind of like deja vu in a way. We’ve seen Yuito and Kasane exploring more of their respective governments over the past few episodes, discovering a bevy of secrets along the way. A Dubious Wonder Drug offers up more of the same, except this time things are elevated to the point where it’s a little unbelievable and almost funny at times. When Kasane is cry-arguing with her Other older sister, who happens to look like a baby carriage with a weed infestation, I can’t help but laugh.

Opening up the episode with Major General Fubuki explaining to Yuito and his team about the true nature of things was good, however. It seems like there’s so many double agents and turncoats that it can be hard to keep track sometimes, but at least in this scene Fubuki tells him that despite being on two different sides, he and Major General Karen are both fighting for the same thing: mainly to be freed from the governmental corruption that was rife in New Himuka. Fubuki may be on the inside while Karen is on the outside, but that means they can work twice as effectively.

The real question is what exactly they’re trying to accomplish. The real meat of the episode happens when Yuito and co. track down two shipping trucks to a research facility. They find that human brains are being transported to this place, and when they smell blood in the air, they come to the realization that the fancy ampules that the New Himukan doctors are always prescribing seems to come from an, er, organic source thanks to this Spring Pharmaceutical plant.

It happens to be the same plant that Kasane and her crew were just infiltrating last week, so of course they run into each other and have a silly stand-off because nobody communicates clearly. I hate conflict just for the sake of conflict, and that is what this feels like. Kasane can’t allow Yuito to expose the facility, because the ampules are keeping Naomi healthy, but at the same time Yuito can’t allow Seiran to continue doing this research. They’re both really after the same end goal, but neither one really takes time to explain to the other; they just whip out their weapons and go at it.

Luckily, Arashi has the brains to let Yuito and the others escape, because as she says, they all just need time to process this new info. And that’s a good diagnosis of the show at this point, too. We’ve gotten a lot of things thrown at us each episode, but there’s not really time to slow down and take it in, or examine what it means to the characters. We’re always on to the next big reveal. And with each one, it gets a little sillier. Like I said in the intro, it’s tough to keep a straight face when a giant baby carriage (Naomi in Other form) is crying about not wanting to drink human brain/blood medicine. It’s all just a little too much now. Maybe the show can find a way to keep things more grounded next week… or at least let Kasane and Yuito sit down and talk all this shit out.