English Dub Review: Tune Into The Midnight Heart “It’s All Your Fault; I’ll Show You Someday; A Bolt from the Blue; We’ll Make Direct Contact; Kiss or Hug; Black Cats and White Dogs”

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OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Yamabuki helps Iko branch out to other Vtubers to grow her viewer base. Later, Shinobu sees how much the other girls are moving forward in their career paths and their closeness to Yamabuki and feels left behind.

OUR TAKE

We’re inching ever closer to the end of the season, and we’re covering two episodes today! One on Iko that follows up her development from the third episode, and the other mostly on Shinobu and follows up on HER development from the fourth and fifth episodes. I say mostly because there is a bit at the beginning that is kind of about a small argument between Rikka and Nene that is basically pure harem fuel of them arguing who has gotten closer to Yamabuki, but nothing of real consequence or substance there. As mentioned, Iko is continuing to expand her audience as a streamer, but when it seems like her momentum is hitting a wall, she starts doing a bunch of stuff at once to try and get an uptick in views. Attempting to cook, speedrunning a super hard test, playing scary games, and so on and so forth. So, Yamabuki pushes her to contact a streamer who’s slightly more famous to get some exposure, leading to some misunderstandings on whether Iko is being bullied or not, but it all turns out fine in the end, and Iko’s love points for Yamabuki get a boost just like with the other girls. If there were more episodes coming, we would probably get another solo episode for her, but it doesn’t look in the cards for this season.

Then we have the next episode centering on more of Shinobu’s hang ups, namely feeling behind which I actually relate to all too well, though for different reasons of course. The main thing that triggers it this time is that all the other girls want Yamabuki to call them by their first names, a sign of extra familiarity in Japanese culture and a not so subtle way to flirt with someone, though obviously Yamabuki is way too dense to understand this. Shinobu wants this too, but decides to only have Yamabuki call her first name, Uzuki, once she’s closer to realizing her own dreams like the others. And with that, only two episodes remain in this season. Looking at the manga, it appears this first season will stop somewhere around either the end of the fourth volume or the top of the fifth, which is a pretty typical pacing for a twelve episode first season of a manga adaptation. I just hope they chose this ending with some intention so it feels like a satisfying enough conclusion, even if we don’t end up getting that second season.