English Dub Review: Battle Game in 5 Seconds: “Diamondhead”

Overview: Akira (Robbie Daymond) continues to chip away at the Red Team by taking on Kamui (Mike Pollock) while also assisting Yuri (Laura Stahl), Saito (Ryan Colt Levy) and his other fellow teammates. 

Our Take: “Diamondhead” has so many sides to it in how it tries to tackle so many aspects in its characters and plot points. Unfortunately, with how each is handled, not to mention with a 22 minute run time going against it, only so many of them are able to shine. 

Strong and honorable. That’s been Shin’s MO since he’s been introduced. The death of his brother makes for a solid enough catalyst, but it’s never delved upon to the extent in which you would truly care for him or his older brother. The effort was made to make him more relatable, and while it worked somewhat, the backstory needs more dedicated time to be fully developed in a way that isn’t so simplistic. Saito gets an even shorter end of stick in how next to nothing is shown of his delinquent life that could possibly make you care about his “misfortune,” let alone his saving from the Green Team. There is also even more emphasis on how no matter how dire the circumstances are, Akira is always the smartest person in the room with him having the foresight to plant information in the enemy team’s head before the battle starts and using that to defeat Kamui. 

The elderly lady, Sonomaru, being one of the double agents was a surprising turn of events in how much of a background presence she had. However, the twist of how she relates to Oogami and Kuroiwa in that she was their caretaker at an orphanage fell flat with how their backstory is reduced to nothing more than a few stagnant shots without any actual hardships that she discussed being present that would allow us to understand the brutality of what they went through. Ringo’s fight with Sonomaru was also a dud with animation as wooden as a board along with odd contrived twists that are there to pad out the fight but feel like a more lackluster attempt at Akira’s more cleverly constructed fights. At the very least, the battle developed Ringo’s power in an unexpected and interesting way by also reducing other factors of her copied abilities to 1/10 of their attributes making them feel unique to her. The battles finally seem to be gearing up to their climax with Shin teaming up Madoka and Yuri to take down Oogami while Akira gets the drop on Kuroiwa only for more Red Team reinforcements to show up, no doubt to be reduced to the cannon fodder jabronis they are.