English Dub Review: Let’s Play “Bard”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Marshall completes his second playthrough of Ruminate, while Sam and Link have a talk about their relationship moving forward.

OUR TAKE

After a break for the holidays, we can finally talk about the last two episodes of…wait, there’s only one? Huh, usually they drop at least two at once when there’s been a delay. I even watched ahead in the sub thinking I would have to talk about them both at once. Ah well, I guess I’ll save my thoughts on the finale next week when that hopefully drops. For now, this episode is mainly about showing Sam and Marshall that the way they’ve been seeing or handling things up until now really hasn’t been working until now. For Sam, it’s with Link realizing fully that the odd discomfort he felt about them possibly dating turns out to be that he DOES love her and care about her…but more as a sibling than a potential lover like he originally thought. That’s always tough to swallow for the one on the opposite end, especially if they have a lot of insecurities around not being attractive (speaking from experience here…), but it’s also not exactly a bad thing. It just means that while a romantic relationship isn’t likely to be possible, there is still a strong bond between two people who care about the other a lot, which should not go without appreciation! Plus now that opens Link up for getting with Angela, which looks like it’ll be better for everyone involved.

Speaking of Angela, she appears in Marshall’s imaginings of his playthrough of Ruminate, although considering he has an increasingly bad fever over this and several episodes, I suppose a more accurate word for this is hallucinations, which will become more accurate in the finale. So this subplot started out wholesome and has actually ended up being a tad dark, especially with the ending. Marshall does manage to win the game nonviolently as per Sam’s advice, and even connects with the ghost he is imagining as Sam, but then he sees the credits, and the game’s dedication to him, which only sends him into a guilt spiral. He runs to see Sam and praise her for the game, but then passes out from his fever. The episode makes it look more serious than it is, but really he’s gonna be fine. And with that, we only have one more episode of the season, and possibly the series overall, which we will hopefully get to cover next week, assuming there are no other delays.