English Dub Review: Mieruko-chan “Things She’s Seen Before”

Overview (Spoilers Below):

Miko’s new homeroom teacher—and his host of ghosts—forces Miko’s hand. A trip to a haunted house turns out to be good for Miko’s psyche.

Our Take: 

It’s bad enough that Miko still sees ghosts everywhere she goes, but now she has to deal with having a man with evil cat spirits as her substitute teacher. What a way to make her life even more unbearable. In case you missed it, the previous episode ends with Miko’s class getting a new teacher while their old one is on maternity leave. Unfortunately, it turns out to be the same guy from episode two who’s haunted by malicious cat spirits.

While the episode focuses on Miko avoiding her creepy substitute teacher, it’s not the primary plot of “Things She’s Seen Before”. Instead, it centers on Miko, Hana, and Yulia attending a House of Horrors event to win a free box of doughnuts. This should’ve been written off as a filler episode due to it spending the entire second half showcasing the characters going through a cheesy haunted house. However, it happened to be a bit more than that, making it one of the better episodes of Mieruko-chan.

Aside from Hana constantly screaming her ass off at almost everything, I’d consider this to be a therapeutic episode centering on Miko. We’ve seen Miko trying to avoid the ghosts and even hide her fear of them throughout the series. This episode sees her actually attempting to open her fear after learning that the attraction is perfect for her to express her true feelings without attracting the real ghosts.  

This moment continues the turning point of Miko combating her psychosis upon encountering the spirits. Would it be enough to help her deal with the substitute teacher and the large female ghost threatening her? Who knows, but for what it’s worth, the episode did a solid job portraying Miko’s internal conflict. Plus, the scenes with Hana freaking out over every creepy thing in existence were actually pretty funny.

Overall, “Things She’s Seen Before” is about as fun as a cheesy haunted house attraction, even though it wasn’t that scary in the first place. Aside from the humor involving Hana’s fear of creepy stuff, the episode is a solid continuation of Miko’s internal struggle of facing her fear against the ghosts. With only three episodes left in this spooky series, I’m already excited to see what Miko will do next to save her friends and even her own sanity.