English Dub Review: Scarlet Nexus “The Hospital’s Secrets”

Overview (Spoilers Below):

After sneaking into a secret hospital building, Yuito and his squad encounter Nagi. He’s acting more like himself, but tells them he could turn on them any minute and stays to fight off a group of Others while they escape. Once in safer quarters, the Major General contacts them and tells them more of the whole story — including the fact that the New Himukan government performs personality transplants and psionic research on its citizens.

Our Take:

Eight episodes into Scarlet Nexus and Yuito finally learns the truth about what his family was up to in the New Himukan regime. Mind control, personality rehab, and bodily transformations, oh my! The Hospital’s Secrets is an aptly named episode, but despite the revelations contained in this week’s adventures, the episode is more meh than mysterious.

Yuito and his friends might be blindsided by the Major General revealing that their own government has been experimenting with things like personality rehab and transforming people into Others, but we as audience members have known or been highly hinted to that this was the case for weeks now. The show might have to spend time revealing the information to the main characters, but it still feels like rehashing old information to viewers, and that makes for a pretty dull episode because we’re already aware of most of the so-called secrets the hospital holds.

For Yuito however, the revelations could have more far reaching consequences than it might for audience members and the rest of the squadron. As the son of the former leader, Yuito’s feelings toward the research and governmental overreach are compounded by his feelings for his family, his father and brother. I’m far more interested in his reaction to the news than I am with the news itself. Sadly, we don’t really get much of this before the end.

Kasane also makes some brief appearances in the episode. As Yuito’s group retreats from the hospital, Kasane and her crew are just sneaking into the facility in Seiran where Naomi is being held. Her storyline is a bit more engaging because we haven’t checked in on Naomi for so long that her current nature is a real mystery. I wasn’t really expecting her to be fully coherent, but now we’ve got a new question mark in the form of those capsules she so fervently craves.

Scarlet Nexus is a serviceable sci-fi show so far if you’re into this kind of thing, but the pacing is really making it hard to recommend at this point for me. We’ve known and/or highly suspected Naomi was purposefully transformed into an Other  and Nagi is being mind controlled for what seems like three or four episodes now, and for the series to make out like it’s some big reveal is very underwhelming eight episodes into things. Maybe things will get more interesting next week as everyone processes the fallout of these uncovered facts, but I’m not holding my breath.