English Dub Review: Mission: Yozakura Family “Cherry Blossom Viewing Party”
OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)
The Yozakuras and Tanpopo party down before the day they come to blows, and Kyoichiro gives Taiyo a special mission that is kept secret from Mutsumi.
OUR TAKE
I guess I should clarify that the Yozakuras and Tanpopo do not party WITH EACH OTHER, although I feel like that would probably solve at least a couple problems if they did like a blunt rotation or something. But no, this is just the ACTUAL calm before the storm bit and NOW the remaining episodes will all be serious business until maybe the final episode. I think I said last time that we were going to be doing serious stuff for the rest but I don’t wanna go back and check, because that would confirm that I was wrong! So yeah, this is a fun little cool down period for both factions as the Yozakuras do some hype up stuff, play some covers of what may be real magical girl songs for all I know, and focus on having some fun before things get real and they have to keep their minds on the mission. We even see Tanpopo have a little celebration with Makoto, Momo, and all of their minions who haven’t really established themselves super well as characters quite yet. Like yeah, they all have distinct enough designs so they stand out from one another, but you would be hard pressed to get me to remember which one was which even if you put a gun to my head.
But maybe that’s something that will be rectified in the remaining five episodes. Like the end of this episode has Futaba facing off against Akai, the one who can breath fire, so that’s already one I kind of remember! And either way, this episode isn’t entirely fun and games before that point, as Kyoichiro gives Taiyo the special task of helping him find the body of the previous Yozakura matriarch, which has apparently been taken by Tanpopo and would explain how their experiments have proceeded this far. Kyoichiro says he’s doing this because Taiyo is an outsider, but we know that’s not really true and hasn’t been for awhile, so it’s probably that he actually trusts Taiyo to help him with this mission. Things have definitely come a long way from Taiyo being a scrawny and defenseless kid that Kyoichiro hated with every fiber of his being. And with that, we enter the final stage of this season and possibly this series if we don’t end up getting another season, though who knows given this is apparently a pretty successful series in Shonen Jump. The final five episodes begin next week!
