English Dub Review: Mission: Yozakura Family “Sun Earrings”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Taiyo learns his opponent Shirai was close to his parents, and is connected to their death.

OUR TAKE

That takes care of the Shirai fight, which frankly could’ve been completed with a pair of scissors, though it was definitely an important one for character development. As mentioned last time (wow, a lot of follow up episodes this week I guess), we have our first Hazakura boosted enemy with total compatibility, but even then their life span is limited. Well, we can add some tear jerking pathos to that because it turns out Shirai actually knew Taiyo’s dead parents personally. Not only THAT, but she was practically a foster daughter who they looked after while she was in the hospital. Wow, so tragic! Very unfortunate! Just keep piling on the sadness and perhaps I’ll feel something while I sit on my couch feeling crushing anxiety over election day being TODAY. Go vote if you haven’t already! Unless it’s for the candidate I don’t like, in which case don’t! Anyway, yeah this is a pretty terrible circumstance for Taiyo to be in, not just because it’s one of his toughest fights yet but also to fight and possibly kill one of the last people who knew his parents as well as he did, which pretty much serves to show how terrible a person Makoto is if he’ll go this far just to torment not only the Yozakuras but Taiyo as well.

Meanwhile, we also have Momo, the Dad-zakura, observing this fight with Makoto and giving some color commentary about some compound that Taiyo has been dealing with since he was given his new abilities from Mutsumi, which turn out to be also bad for him if he doesn’t manage them properly. I supposed this will be something he’ll need to manage over the course of the series, or at least for the remainder of this season which only has seven episodes left if you can believe it. But with that, and this episode’s serious tone, it seems very likely that the remainder of the season will be focusing on stopping Tanpopo and Makoto at any cost. We’ve given just about every sibling a proper focus episode by now and established the enemy as a major threat with imminent plans, so it would make sense to just zero in on that. Though I guess with seven episodes there may be time for ONE OR TWO more light hearted episodes. Either way, we’ve been on a pretty good streak of good episodes, so hopefully they keep it up!