English Dub Review: Skeleton Knight in Another World – “A First Job, a Girl’s Wish, and an Approaching Shadow”

It’s a great feeling when a newer show that just started gets right in and introduces you to the plot devices will be driving the episode. And what are those two devices? Two sisters named Helena and Marka.

This may not have been mentioned in last week’s review, but the theme gets me hyped. It could be the falsetto, it could be the jazzy tune, but something is hitting right. I wish more anime had openings like the one for Skeleton Knight in Another World.

This is on the short list of newer anime I’ve been watching, let alone recommending, but Arc’s writing carries the show. The duality between Arc the “gamer nerd” and Arc “Skeleton Knight” is a great touch. Adding something delicate like Helena and Marka adds to the bigger duality of Skeleton Knight in Another World.

“A First Job…” got really cute really fast with the introduction of a green kitsune, who was named Ponta. And god damn, Ponta is cute! After getting healed by Arc, Ponta becomes part of team Arc.

All of this is a lead up to get to the end goal, the Kobumi tree. And in the words of the late, great Billy Mays, “But wait! There’s more!” That’s because we get out look at the big bad of this week, a giant basilisk. Ponta isn’t feeling it, because it faced the basilisk before.

There is a giant plot hook setting something up with the ring that was around the basilisk’s leg, because at the end of the episode, there was another basilisk fighting soldiers, and it had a ring on its leg as well. So there’s definitely something up, and I’m pretty excited to see where it could lead.

The animation stepped up from last week, for sure. Arc looked fantastic as well, and the scene with him using Judgement was beautiful. I was critical on the animation for episode one, for sure  “A First Job…” definitely stepped the animation game up. However…

There is one major flaw to come out of “A First Job, a Girl’s Wish, and an Approaching Shadow” though. The audio track is ahead of the video by a good second and a half. Watching the show be like the worst dubbing of Showa era Godzilla is not a fun watch. However, it gets worse as the episode progresses, because during the fight with the basilisk, it was hitting a two second offset. I’m sure this will be fixed at a later date, or for home release, but as of writing, and five devices later, this is rough.

It’s hard to score ““A First Job, a Girl’s Wish, and an Approaching Shadow” because the episode was great. However, the technical issues with the audio and video sync made watching too jarring.