English Dub Season Review: The Girl from the Other Side Season One

Overview: A being inflicted with an infection named, Teacher (Gary Furlong), treks across lands to get the enthusiastic, lonesome little girl, Shiva (Sarah Wiedenheft), to safety. 

Our Take: With a lovely storybook design to a world such as this, one would think there would be an equally whimsical narrative to pair. The Girl from the Other Side is a much different tale in the joining of two companions in a plagued creature, known as an outsider, forming a bond with an adorable little girl, Shiva. 

What unites them is that of the paranoia and fear surrounding Teacher, as Shiva lovingly dubbed him, and those of his diseased kind. It is a sweet albeit simplistic story of how they persevere through their shared trauma in his self-loathing and alienating scorn from the world, while helping a young girl with her own isolation in her separation from her family with various citizens and kingdom guards wanting to kill her for their trepidation surrounding the spread of infection. With that said, as personal as their bond is, their friendship would have benefited from more time in the oven and tender moments between them, overall. Three episodes only allows for so much so, hopefully, future episodes, or OAD’s as they were originally formatted as, could rectify that and have them grow even further together. 

Shiva’s jovial innocence is heartwarming from start to finish with her being an easy character to fall in love with. Teacher’s motivation for looking after her is smartly established from his instincts as a father in his past life. Their chemistry is endearing in how they take comfort in having someone to rely on and who accepts them unconditionally. It is nothing groundbreaking as far as characterizations go, but it is well-executed making it a worthy aspect to their dynamic. 

There are interesting traits that are constructed about the plague in ignorance from many revolving around how the illness spreads, thus the constant anxiety surrounding it. Also, the various characteristics its patients take on turning into a tree or maintaining life as a blackened, animalistic being who, although cognitive, has only glimmers of memories to speak of. 

Gary Furlong and Sarah Wiedenheft lead the show, lending their amazing voice work as Teacher and Shiva, the emotional backbone of their journey. The story jumps off the page that it is inspired by with gorgeous folktale designs with dark colors and palette giving it a warm yet gothic presentation. It has an equally sentimental bookend for a kindhearted and nice finish until the next chapter of their travels.