English Dub Review: City the Animation Episode 5

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Nagumo is taken to the Hospitality Towers to be rewarded, but is not told this, and so tries to escape!

OUR TAKE

After four episodes of just having the characters introduce themselves by futzing around in miscellaneous gags, this week brings us an episode with probably the closest thing to a plot we’ve had so far. This is mainly helped by making use of a bunch of established elements we already had to Macguyver into a conflict that involves characters we kinda sorta know now so we understand why they would want to escape. In this case, we know that Sumire Sakurakomi Tanabe is a rich lady who likes to reward people she see do good deeds around the city, but for some reason she thinks the best way to do this is to put up a wanted poster, making people think those she wants to reward are actually wanted criminals. Last episode, she decided to reward Nagumo, one of the main characters, for some nice act she did previously (that I just kind of forgot, there’s a lot of stuff to keep track of in this show so it’s hard to tell when any of it is going to be important later) and instead of the poster this time, she just had her butler Hotaka simply kidnap Nagumo in a limo.

And despite the episodic nature the series has had so far, this was apparently so important that it warranted a “previously on” segment to catch us up! Nagumo is joined in this escape from the towers by Ii Hito, another guy we saw being pursued for reward, so it makes sense that he’s here. But to also surprise, Wako, another one of the main three and the more eccentric and air-headed of the bunch, joins by climbing up the tower to help them face all the challenges on the way down. As for Niikura, the last and more scheming of the main three, she is carrying on another plot from last time about finding a missing pendant, which is revealed to have an old photo of Nagumo in it. Not sure what to make of that exactly but if it’s important, I’m sure it will come up again. And yeah, all of this is pretty dang funny, but it’s hard to really get into why it’s funny without feeling like I’m explaining the joke, which is not nearly as fun as you just watching the dang show. But I think it’s safe to say this has been a pretty solid and consistent set of episodes so far, which will hopefully carry on into the other eight remaining.