English Dub Review: Onmyo Kaiten Re:Birth Verse “You Can’t Build Trust with Words! This Delinquent Will Be an Onmyoji”

Overview (Spoilers Below):

Takeru wakes up in Denji Heian-kyo again, but nobody remembers him or believes his stories about fighting oni.

Our Take: 

Things have got a lot more strange for Takeru since he got isekai’d into Denji Heian-kyo.  In addition to demonic monsters and giant mechs, Takeru also happened to gain potent abilities, but one of them he didn’t expect to achieve was resetting himself whenever he died.  Of course, this also means that no one, including Tsukimiya, remembers him.  That alone indicated that we’re getting into some “Edge of Tomorrow” type of stuff amid the show’s conventional isekai tropes, which may or may not be enough to elevate its concept, narrative-wise.     

Through the show’s time loop concept, the episode showcases that Takeru wound up traveling back in time to before the black mist attack.  With this discovery, Takeru is determined to regain the trust of the onmyoji crew by training to harness their onmyo techniques, which brings me to Takeru’s personality.  Takeru may seem like a traditional delinquent by design, but he’s also an honorable and persevering young man who lives by his family’s wisdom, which was showcased in the episode titles.  The first episode has Takeru never admitting defeat, even if he’s dead, which would be defined by other people as “suicidal”.  For the second episode, Takeru is advised not to build trust solely on words.  He’s got to demonstrate his actions to win back the crew’s trust, including Atsunaga, who reluctantly agreed to take Takeru under his wing.

Regarding the onmyoji crew, I forgot to mention that one of the members, Kazura, was voiced by Ciaran Strange for the English dub.  The first time I heard his voice, I immediately recalled that Strange also voiced Kurt Rockhans in The Unaware Atelier Meister.  So, it was nice that he’s getting more roles like this, and so far, he’s been doing pretty well as Kazura.  As for the episode itself, the onmyo techniques can be a bit tough to follow initially regarding the elemental and spiritual abilities, but not to the point of being frustrating once the pieces are in place.  Additionally, it benefited from another suitably thrilling battle between the protagonists and the oni in terms of the animation, which would likely be the main aspect of the show’s enjoy-ability when all is said and done.  Hopefully, the characters and plot have enough merits to carry the style through the season.