English Dub Season Review: Gal & Dino Season One

Overview (Spoilers Below):

Kaede is just your average young adult going about her daily activities when she wakes up one morning with a dinosaur in her apartment! Apparently brought home in a drunked stupor, Kaede is a go-with-the-flow type person and decides to let Dino stay. Together, the two of them embark on a variety of low-key daily adventures while enjoying each other’s company.

Our Take:

Originally aired back in earlier 2020, Gal & Dino suffered from long production delays due to COVID-19 that pushed episodes back by months. Most people forgot about it, and apparently so did Funimation, since it’s just getting a dub now, roughly two years later. After watching this season though, I completely understand why it took so long to dub the show. It’s just not a series that’s going to brink in a lot of new viewers for Funimation.

When most people think of anime, they probably think of big names like Attack on Titan or My Hero Academia—epic actions shows where everything is loud and lightning fast. Gal & Dino is sort of the antithesis to those types of shows. It’s quiet and subdued and has a very chill vibe. For that reason alone, it’s a nice change of pace from your ‘typical’ anime. But that doesn’t mean it’s something I’d recommend.

The laidback nature isn’t the only unusual thing the series has going for it. It’s structured in a kind of piecemeal way that has a traditionally animated look for the first half of an episode, and a live-action scene for the second half, with bits of stop-motion styled animation in between. It’s definitely interesting, and a good way to add a bit more interest in a series where the most exciting thing you’ll see is a dinosaur drinking coffee.

The animated bits are obviously my favorite parts. The visuals are colorful and the designs coordinate well—it’s just a pretty solid looking show. Unfortunately there’s not too much beyond that. The characters are sparse and thinly developed. Dino doesn’t really talk, so it’s mostly just scenes of Kaede talking to herself, although there are a few more human adult characters who drop in from time to time.

The live-action bits are definitely more on the cringe-y side of things, though, featuring an older man hanging out with Dino as airhorns and other unexpected sound effects blare randomly. This is one of those things that just might be lost on viewers not used to live-action in Japan, and it doesn’t help that the dub is a lot easier to pick on when it’s done over actual real world footage.

Speaking of the dub, it’s actually very good. Macy Anne Johnson stars as Kaede, and her vocal delivery is pretty much perfect for the character. Since she’s the only on talking for a lot of the show, it was key to cast this role well, and I don’t think the show could’ve done better here if it tried.

Overall, Gal & Dino is a unique little series that I wouldn’t recommend to most people. It’s gentle, slow-paced slice of life just isn’t something that many viewers will be interested in, and there are so many better slice of life shows out there. But for those who don’t mind following a girl and her mute dinosaur through everyday events with little moments of absurdity sprinkled throughout, I’d say give it a shot. You can definitely turn it off halfway through, though, before you get to the live-action part.