English Dub Review: Demon Lord, Retry! R “ReCycle”

Overview (Spoilers Below):

Kunai heads to the town of Rookie to farm for magical items in the Prison Labyrinth there.  He’s accompanied by Mikan and Yukikaze, and sparks are sure to fly.

Our Take:  

After two episodes of pointless yet also helpful recapping, we’ve finally come to the point of Demon Lord, Retry! R we’ve been waiting for, plot progression.  I mentioned earlier that season one concluded with Kunai heading to Rookie with Mikan and hopeless romantic Yukikaze to improve his magic resistance.  Thanks to “ReCycle”, the series gets back on track by continuing where the ending of season one left off.  If you’re wondering why it didn’t do that in the first episode, your guess is as good as mine.  Regardless, we finally see what happens next for our favorite demon lord, along with some interesting elements that could play a role in the season.

In addition to seeing Rookie’s Holy Braves, Kunai travels inside the Prison Labyrinth, hoping to find a helpful item to increase his resistance magic.  There, he gets a full taste of his ring’s power, which helps him deal with some rogue thieves running around the labyrinth, though not in a friendly way.  Kunai also encounters the mysterious ruler of the game he’s trapped in, along with a recycling plant that revives the labyrinth’s robots.  We don’t have much of a clue as to who this “ruler” is, but if I were to take a guess, it might have served a role in Akira being trapped in “Infinity Game”.  Of course, we also see more of Yu Kirino and Isami Tahara defending the village of Rabbi from Milligan, a brute sent by Lord Dona to “investigate” the village.

My only issue so far regarding the show’s voice cast is Mikan, who is voiced by Beth Lipton.  Mikan’s rebellious yet timid personality would’ve served as a suitable bit of comedy amid her chemistry with Kunai and her sexually perverted partner.  Unfortunately, Beth Lipton lacked enough bite in her vocal performance to embrace that personality fully like other anime characters with similar traits.  This will likely serve as another case of the English dub being slightly inferior to the Japanese version regarding the direction for the performances.  Besides that, “ReCycle” corrected the mistakes of the previous two episodes by progressing its plot and introducing a few hints that could play a role in future episodes.