English Dub Review: Metallic Rouge “The Ones Who Visited”

Overview

After barely surviving her fight against the Immortal Nine, Rouge and Naomi finally make-up. Naomi decides to finally Rouge on the truth about what’s really going on; and who she really is. 

After a straightforward episode last week, we go back to Metallic Rouge’s usual. I feel a little silly for thinking the show would be more direct now in its final stretch.  

This episode– while not as frustrating as the show’s worst– was plagued with the show’s usual problems with keeping things consistent. We’re assaulted with more new concepts, terminologies, and non-stop reveal after reveal. Combined with Metallic Rouge’s clinical tone, none of the reveals ever feel earth-shattering or like a major game changer. A good twist immediately gives me that satisfying “Ohhhhhh,” when things click into place, but here the majority of the twists just leave me saying “Huh.” 

The major twist I’m referring to this time around is Naomi being one of the first Neans. 

Naomi herself feels quite messy. It’s no secret that there was more than meets the eye with her, even in the opening of the show! So when it was revealed that she was the “Divine Facilitator,” I thought that would be the extent of it. The reveal didn’t leave much of an impression due to the lack of proper foreshadowing or build-up, just another result of the show’s overly clinical tone, but at least I knew my gut feeling was right. Then they reveal that she’s Nean as well! Which suffers from the same problem as the former reveal– there wasn’t enough proper build-up to it in the first place. Naomi just feels like a mish-mash of different concepts as a result, hardly the impression they wanted their viewers to have.

Naomi’s character continues to devolve into an ambiguous mess while Rouge’s characterization is finally starting to feel more solid. In the past she kept flip-flopping between emotionless-robot or hard-headed idiot. I’m real happy with the decision to keep her more like the latter, makes her much more entertaining to watch than before. It’s even more delightful to see her overly straightforward nature to point the obvious issues that’ll usually fly over others heads. We finally see the long-awaited and frequently mentioned “Visitors” as they verbally assault us with more background lore– thankfully Rouge is there to simplify things for the audience! Along with pointing out the major problem; Since the very beginning Neans were always being used as tools. That’s something Rouge isn’t going to stand for now, which reassures me that the show isn’t going to agree with Gene’s logic of upholding the status quo. 

It was a messier ride than I was expecting, but I assume it’s full steam ahead for the finale now. Hoping for the best.