Overview:
A double feature of films in the Rascal series, and it finally gets an English Dub!
Our Take:
To give this series a proper review I have to give a little bit of my history with it. I would only watch an anime if it had an English dub before this series, Rascal Does Not Dream of Bunny Girl Senpai and Kaguya-sama: Love is War were the first anime I watched subbed because they interested me that much. Five years later they are still some of my favorite anime I’ve ever watched, I cried so hard watching the movie Rascal Does Not Dream of a Dreaming Girl that I still haven’t been able to watch it again even though I loved it.
Unlike Kaguya-sama though, we have never got a dub of any of the Rascal series until now. This makes recommending this series a bit tough. Is it worth watching? Hell yes! But the problem is that only these two movies have gotten an English dub. If you’re someone who only watches English dubbed anime then I can’t recommend watching these movies because you will be lost. There’s a whole season and another movie of content that you would be missing and it’s all important. If you can watch Subbed for a little while then I think you should go for it, whether you watch these movies subbed or dubbed I hope you watch them because they were great.
I have had an idea of who I would like to voice certain characters in my head if this series ever got dubbed. Erica Mendez is not who I would have chosen to voice the main heroine Mai Sakurajima, which shows that it’s a good thing I’m not in charge of such decisions because she did fantastic. It’s not the type of character she usually voices but I was all for it after the first five minutes. The dub cast was good to me, Stephen Fu as Sakuta worked well because he managed to nail Sakuta’s sardonic nature. Kayli Mills as Kaede, and Cristina Vee as Toyohama were great as well, though Toyohama didn’t have all that much screen time.
As for the movies themselves, I would say the second one was the better one. Rascal Does Not Dream of a Sister Venturing Out was good but it didn’t have the same supernatural feel the rest of the series has. There are parts where Kaede’s puberty syndrome rears its ugly head but for the most part, it was a straightforward slice-of-life anime movie.
Rascal Does Not Dream of a Knapsack Kid had me in tears for almost all of its runtime. Sakuta and Kaede’s mother is finally feeling well enough to go home which leads to Sakuta having a bout of puberty syndrome where he has to resolve some of his feelings with his mother. If you’ve read a lot of my reviews you know that I lost my mother at a young age so this film resonated with me pretty hard. But thanks to the support of Mai he manages to make it through, I think that Mai and Sakuta might be one of the top five best anime couples out there.
This is one of my favorite anime series but I understand that the dubbing issue is problematic. It’s not a perfect solution but at the very least if you don’t want to watch it subbed, the light novels are available in English up to where these movies start so that might be an option. I recommend you do something to catch up though because these movies are another fantastic addition to this wonderful series. I would like to end this by saying that “Fukashigi no Carte” is one of the best-ending songs in anime and you should listen to it because a different character sings for each arc.