English Dub Review: Time of Eve: The Movie

Bots are running around and have infiltrated every level of the social structure. Are they good? Are they bad? Do organizations use them to inflate statistics and make rash decisions as a result? Now, you may be thinking that I’m talking about modern-day social media and its impact on everyday people, less so than it was just a few years ago, but the problem is still very paramount. But, actually I’m referring to the plot of a 15-year-old compilation anime film that is making its English dub home release debut courtesy of AnimEigo.

Enter Time of Eve: The Movie. Time of Eve is set during a time when humanoid robots are everywhere, and every home has one as a servant. Some people treat them with contempt, while others become obsessed. One day, two high school boys stumble across a mysterious café that offers a third option: talk to them, free of prejudice, or even full knowledge of who’s a robot and who’s human. Shocked and rattled by the experience, the boys find themselves learning more about the world and themselves than they ever could have imagined.

The films adapts the six-episode series from Yasuhiro Yoshiura that was probably too far ahead of its time and is produced by Studio Rikka and DIRECTIONS, Inc with a brand-spanking new English dub from NYAV Post. With NYAV Post involved you know you’re going to get the best-of-the-best in English dub anime voice actors from the likes of Stephanie Sheh, Patrick Seitz, Yuri Lowenthal, Mike Sinterniklaas, Casey Mongillo, and more all giving stellar performances in a film that still very much holds up from both a visual and story production level.

Time of Eve: The Movie is a prescient tale that stirs important conversations about bot tolerance though still instills a warning of what happens when you loosen the reigns. One could say that a whole premise largely revolving around a cafe playing host to a back-and-forth between the human and machine worlds could be seen as monotonous, but the heart of the premise was so far ahead of its time with ideas that you would hope could lead to further expansion. A real rose among Yasuhiro Yoshiura’s catalog that already is star-studded.

Time of Eve is available now on Blu-Ray.