English Dub Review: Disney Twisted-Wonderland the Animation “An Army of One”

Overview (Spoilers Below):
Ace seizes his chance to remove his collar, but even the best laid plans can go awry.

Our Take:
Birthday parties are usually fun ways to get together and even celebrate one’s birth, even the un-birthday ones.  For this un-birthday party, it’s an opportunity for Ace to finally remove his collar with a chestnut tart gift.  However, for some stupid reason, it wound up pissing Riddle off even more, as bringing a chestnut tart to a tea party is against his rules.  Seriously, there’s literally no way of pleasing the guy without making him blow a gasket.  I guess he might prefer a knuckle sandwich instead, since it’s exactly what Riddle deserves for the stuff he puts the students through.
At least, that’s what I believed at first, as the episode explores the reasoning behind Riddle’s strictness.  It’s revealed that Trey and a Cheshire Cat-inspired Chenya are childhood friends with Riddle, who’s raised by his even stricter mother to abide by the rules and achieve perfection.  It further emphasized the season’s depiction of the pros and cons of following rules and generational trauma.  While enforcing and adhering to specific guidelines can help a person grow into a better person, overdoing it can lead them into a rabbit hole from which they might never crawl out.  This is essentially the case for Riddle, whose obsession with rules could cost him his students’ trust and even his own life.
“An Army of One” continues to portray Riddle as a piece of shit who only cares about the Queen of Hearts’ guidelines rather than the mental health of his students.  Fortunately, Ace managed to tell him off, for better or worse.  But if there’s one thing I can commend the show for, it’s that they chose the right actor to voice Riddle in the English dub.  Paul Castro Jr. certainly knows how to channel Riddle’s rage through his vocal performance, conveying a House-warden who deserves to lose his own head.  However, after seeing Riddle’s childhood flashback, it begs the question of whether we should feel bad for the guy for what he’s been through himself.