English Dub Review: City the Animation Episode 8

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Lots of people misinterpret things.

OUR TAKE

The previous half of this series has, so far, just sort of been a lot of stuff happening with little to no connection outside of how certain characters may know others, which itself seemed liked kind of the point; that a lot of things happen in a city that have little to nothing to do with each other because lots of people have independent lives in such a big and bustling place. This time though, perhaps unintentionally, we have an episode that actually feels like it has a bit of a theme: people misinterpreting things as love or romantic interest. We have Tanabe, the rich retired police officer who went to high school with this one deliveryman but keeps expecting him to ask her out despite them barely knowing each other. We then have an officer who is…a bit TOO charmed by Riko, the drowsy high school girl who stumbles around town a lot and into deadly situations. And lastly there’s Tatewaku Makabe, whose long bubbling crush on Riko has led him to think that she’s definitely into him as well, and leads him to go on a quest to look like some big shot for their “first date” when really he just looks like a bum.

There’s other skits going on, like a weird take on the famous Japanese myth of Momotaro, but let’s focus on these thematically connected ones this time. As much as I like just living in this strange city just seeing people do random stuff, I also like when things feel connected by some sort of similar emotion or pattern, mainly because then I actually have something substantive to talk about in these reviews. As mentioned, I am very much liking the show, it’s just that it gets hard to discuss it for this job when everything feels so random and disconnected. This week though brought me something to talk about, so that was nice of it! We all get crushes from time to time (unless you’re asexual or aromantic or something in that range) and it becomes easy to interpret what someone you like is doing as a way of connecting to you when really, they may not be thinking of you at all. And that misunderstanding makes for really good comedy! Usually. In this case it does. And maybe the remaining episodes will give us another theme to focus on as we get closer to the end of the season.