English Dub Review: Scarlet Nexus “Slumbering Desire”

Overview (Spoilers Below):

After breaking into the tomb of Yakumo Sumeragi, Yuito and the gang confront the recently arisen founder, who might also be Karen. Except then another version of Karin shows up and starts fighting Yakumo Karin! Apparently he’s failed time and time again to go back and save Alice, and now he’s fed up, unable to sustain the red strings and travel through time. He turns his attention on Yuito and Kasane and tries to steal their powers again. They face off against figments of their own guilt, but eventually start to overcome Karin by showing him memories of Alice—but it won’t work and Karin unleashes a new burst of power.

Our Take:

Karen has been working behind the scenes and orchestrating many of the events over the past season, and this week is his time to shine and step out from the shadows. Slumbering Desire is out on Funimation in dubbed form now, and it’s a doozy of an episode. We’ve got Karen going crazy, Yuito fighting with Nagi yet again, and potentially the end of the world on the line. Let’s get into it!

Things get muddled real quick when, after waking up the founder in his tomb, the current version of Karen shows up and reveals his plans. Apparently his brilliant plan was to go back 2,000 years and become the founder because Yakumo has red string powers. Oh, and he’s also connected himself to Arahabaki and turned into a giant biocomputer, syncing his brain with the heart of the system that runs the world. It’s typical Scarlet Nexus insanity, and it’s funny how freaked out everyone is by the revelation. Like, guys, this is a world where your friends can transform into Others and/or mind-controlled assassins. Becoming a biocomputer isn’t that big a deal.

Karen proceeds to turn into a hilarious caricature of a typical anime supervillain, complete with glowing appendages and spewing bursts of flames as he tries to fight Yakumo, then gives up and turns his attention on Yuito and Kasane to try and steal their red string powers—which I guess he didn’t do yet even though we watched an entire episode about that? Karin isn’t using the computer. He is the computer now, and that means he can send visual manifestations of their internal guilt right back at Yuito and Kasane in the form of Nagi and Naomi. The two kids have to do battle with their old friends, but they aren’t actually physically there, which means the fight consists of yelling things at them about how their deaths were sad, but it’s time to move on already.

Amidst all the craziness, that’s a surprisingly resonate core. Karen tries to draw a comparison between his own feelings that fuel his anger, and those of Yuito and Kasane. He lost Alice, they lost Nagi and Naomi. Why can’t they understand where he’s coming from? They do, of course, but since they’re the heroes here, they explain to him that he can’t face the future without letting go of the past. It’s not the greatest message or the most original conclusion ever, but frankly I’m impressed Scarlet Nexus actually managed to put together this fairly neatly drawn-up underlying theme to connect the villain with the protagonists.

In order to best Karen, Yuito and Kasane then give him a taste of his own medicine by showing him memories of Alice where she tells him not to worry about her all the time anymore. It looks like at first, that might have solved the entire screwed up situation, but unfortunately Karen goes full villain and screams about how he can’t do that. We’ve got two episodes left now, and at this point it seems like there’s not much hope for Karen. The ep ends with him locked in combat with Yuito yet again, and it’s anyone’s guess which super-powered computer boy will win.