English Dub Review: Tying the Knot with an Amagami Sister “The Scales That Hold Wishes ~Loop~”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Uryu and Asahi find themselves in a timeloop of two weeks leading up to the Tanbata festival and have to find out how to escape.

OUR TAKE

We once again have a three part story on our hands, this time focusing on Asahi, the youngest sister, which is actually quite fitting as she is the only one left who hasn’t had her non-shrine outside life fleshed out. We already know she likes to run track and field, so naturally this is where the initial conflict comes in. A sudden rainstorm ends up postponing a track meet to the day of Tanbata, a holiday where shrines usually do festivals, including the Amagami Shrine. Thankfully, everyone else is fine with Asahi missing it so she can run and even send Uryu with a video message to show her AS SHE IS RUNNING, so she wins the race and everything seems good. But then both she and Uryu wake up to find that they’ve been thrown back two weeks in a groundhog day situation. Doing everything the same doesn’t seem to stop the loop, so the next option is for Asahi to forgo the race and be with her sisters at the festival instead. And since this is a three episode arc, you can probably guess how well that idea will go in the second part. But we’ll have to see next week to be sure.

Oddly enough, this isn’t the first time I’ve seen a time loop story in an anime based around a summer festival. Some older anime fans may remember The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, which had a surprise hit first season that played with episodes being aired out of order, and then a second season that had an arc titled “Endless Eight”, which took out EIGHT of its FOURTEEN episodes to repeat the same scenes over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over until one of the characters broke the loop. Incidentally, the episode prior to that arc involved Tanbata. Anywho, in this case, this arc in THIS show is a bit of a similar deal where something needs to change in order for time to move forward, and it’s likely something to do with Asahi herself. The last few episodes ended up being about Uryu understanding more about Yae while Yae herself wasn’t very present in the supernatural aspect, so it’s nice to see that Asahi is going to be an active part of this plot. But then why is Uryu here? Well, we’ll have to tune in next time to find out!