English Dub Review: Girls’ Frontline “SILENCE 01”

Overview (Spoilers Below):

M4 awakens at the Griffin medical bay in a panic. Some of her associates are still missing, and she’s eager to help them as soon as possible. She goes and asks the captain for permission to go save her, but Gentiane already has a plan in the works and M4 has to learn to fight alongside her new T-Doll teammates and take commands. They’re able to save SOP2, but then Sangvis attacks their base and they have to hurry back to defend it.

Our Take:

It’s everyone’s least favorite time of the week! You know what that means: yup, a new dubbed episode of Girls’ Frontline. This week’s fourth episode, entitled SILENCE 01, is definitely a terrible episode objectively. Almost nothing happens, there’s no sense of drama or danger, and the character are nothing but cardboard cutouts who also happen to be replaceable robots. But then again, that’s every episode of this show so far, so is this episode really that bad?

We get to follow M4 throughout the episode as she struggles with wanting to do things her way and go save her friends, while also trying to obey the commander’s orders and do things by the Griffin book. That dynamic is about as deep as the storyline goes, and everything else is just a torrent of bullets and dumb banter that sounds like it was written by robots.

The biggest problem this week is just how much of a disconnect there is between what the character’s exposition tells us, and what is actually the case. For example, Gentiane sends out the Griffen gang on a mission to clear the area of Sangvis and rescue SOP2 like it’s supposed to be dangerous. M4 wants to rush in right away, but Gentiane says her dolls couldn’t handle it. And yet, despite firing thousands of rounds of ammo nearly every secnod they’re on screen, none of the Sangvis soldiers manage to hit a single T-doll. Amazing!

And once they get back to the base it’s even funnier. Attacking the base is a bold move by Sangvis, and the dolls are acting like they won’t even last 20 minutes. But again, they all arrive in the midst of the battle and are all jokes and toothless banter. None of them have any sense of peril and no bullet so much as grazes them. It’s like the show wants to be all about guns and warfare and fighting, but doesn’t want to commit to the actual cost of that, which is having characters in danger.

The episode ends with a shot of AR15 (lol) having been captured by a Sangvis hunter, so I guess that’s what part 2 will be about. One thing I guarantee you, though: AR15 will end up just fine and live to shoot her heart out another day. If only the show wasn’t so lucky.