English Dub Review: Tune Into The Midnight Heart “RE:START”

You sound like somebody that I used to know

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Arisu Yamabuki enrolls at the recently co-ed Furin High School in order to find “Apollo”, a pseudonym for a girl whose radio show he loved as a kid and who he confessed his love to long ago. He’s narrowed down her true identity to the four girls of the school’s Broadcasting Club, all of which have aspirations in voice work.

OUR TAKE

It’s almost Single Awareness Day, better known as Valentine’s Day, and so that means it’s time for another show that makes me aware I am single! That’s right, we have another harem comedy on our hands, in this case a sort of Cinderella story but instead of a glass slipper, it’s a voice. It also reminds me a bit of Quintessential Quintuplets, which had the mystery for the viewer as to who the protagonist was marrying in the far future, but here, the mystery is for both us and the protagonist, Arisu, as he attempts to pin point the voice of his first love to one of these four girls. Possibilities abound as to how the true Apollo will be revealed, as with how things are presented to us in this first episode, I could see it going a number of ways, especially with the last minute reveal that she is deliberately hiding her identity from him. It’s unclear why she’s doing that, other than it being a way to give us a reason for this story to last more than a handful of episodes, but it’s anyone’s guess right now. Maybe she gave up the identity for a reason and now wants to fully introduce herself to Arisu AS herself when she’s ready. Maybe she enjoyed the anonymity and wants to test him to see if he can recognize her voice after some time with their club.

Or heck, maybe they were ALL Apollo and only one fell for him, so she’s teasing him to find HER. But given the nature of these kinds of shows, they’ll be head over heels for him before long. But I can’t say I’m all that enthused to see how this plays out, since I’m not really sold on this new male protagonist or any of his potential girlfriends. That could certainly change with time over the remaining eleven episodes, but I have my doubts that will happen. Though what doesn’t help those chances is that the English Dub, for whatever reason, has decided to keep in the honorifics for the dialogue like “-kun” or “-chan” for certain names, and even words like “baka”. I can understand translations wanting to have a bit more of a connection to the original language, but this is going to get increasingly distracting if they keep it up. But hey, at least it’s only for this season instead of stretching out to two like a different harem show that’s just about wrapped up. This series could go either way and I don’t expect it to break outside the usual mold, but I’m interested to see where it goes.