English Dub Review: Tune Into The Midnight Heart “I Can’t Tell Whose Voice It Was; Yamabuki Arisu-kun; Flyby Anamoly”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Shinobu convinces their advisor to let the Broadcast Club do their anonymous confession service, though Arisu gets a surprise message through it.

OUR TAKE

And thus concludes our brief mini arc focusing on Shinobu and her insecurities about being an announcer, though that’s not the only function of these two episodes. This is also sort of a first check in with the main cast as to what everyone’s feeling about Arisu. He himself hasn’t really changed at all, with his single minded goal of finding out who amongst the Broadcast Club is his enigmatic first love Apollo still intact, so the main development is only really occurring is that the four girls are all legitimately smitten with him by this point. Which is kind of the point of this whole show in the end anyway, barring the assumed possibility that one of them or more is Apollo hiding from Arisu and therefore already in love with him. We get some hints at all of their feelings towards Arisu throughout the episode, with them all vaguely referencing their own focus stories and how his involvement impacted them. Shinobu, being the main focus of this arc doesn’t get one because this is supposed to be where SHE gains feelings for him, though she seems to be denying that at the moment. We also get a sign that she may be ruled out as possibly being Apollo when it looks like Apollo gives her a message of love to give to Arisu, though considering how these stories like to through fake outs and curveballs, she could just be Apollo anyway, and I doubt we’re going to find out for sure by the end of these twelve or so episodes.

So yeah, a pretty standard end of the first checkpoint of a typical harem anime, and I have to admit I am pretty unenthused about what’s to come, mainly because I can’t imagine we’re going to make many more significant strides towards the end goal and whatever progression we do make is probably not going to be incredibly novel or interesting. But at the very least this particular episode handled what it was trying to do, so perhaps I can expect the following episodes to be okay, even if they won’t be notably bad or good. Whether that’s a good or bad thing in and of itself, well, we’ll just have to watch and find out. In the meantime, I’m gonna see if anyone left any anonymous love confessions for me! Nope, still nothing. Sigh. What a shame.