English Dub Review: The Fragrant Flower Blooms with Dignity “Blond Hair and Pierced Ears”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Still coming to terms with his new feelings for Kaoruko, Rintaro decides to have his guy friends over at his house for the first time…and Kaoruko and Subaru decide to drop in too!

OUR TAKE

Okay, I guess Rintaro isn’t quite ready to understand that he’s in love with Kaoruko, and probably even less so to take the hint that she’s as smitten with him as he is of her. I suppose that makes sense considering we still have a handful of episodes left to go before the end of the season, but it is a little disappointing that we’re probably going to have to wait until the very end of the season for these two love birds to actually get together. But in the meantime, I guess it’s good that we’re taking the remaining episodes to help understand Rintaro, and presumably Kaoruko, a little bit more. In this case, finally getting to the bottom of why Rintaro has his signature look of blond hair and pierced ears. That’s not exactly a unique style, especially in anime, but in the cultural context of Japanese people, it stands out quite a bit and is often seen as a sign of being a punk being part of a gang. I remember watching dubs of Dragon Ball Z where Chi Chi would think Goku and Gohan having Super Saiyan hair made them look that way and I didn’t quite get it at the time, but now I know about what it means within the culture.

Though for Rintaro specifically, it turns out this reason is for self expression, but not out of a sense of rebelling against society. Instead, he recounts to his friends that when he was a kid, his parents brought him to a local bakery and he saw some guy with that look and thought it was really cool, so on the walk back, he told his parents he wanted to look like that. Any typical Japanese parent would have probably quashed that dream then and there, but Rintaro’s parents apparently were pretty cool about it, so they let him do it. His mom even decided to join in, mainly as a sign of solidarity, so that explains why her hair is also blonde when we saw it was black in the flashbacks. And this was after Rintaro had apparently told her that he was giving up on making friends, but now look at where he’s gotten! Bringing people over to have lunch and potentially on his way to having a girlfriend! Lucky bastard…uh, anyway, four more episodes to go, so let’s see what more we can see out of this development.