English Dub Review: Snowball Earth “Encounters”

Overview:

The world outside the escape pod is covered in snow and ice and devoid of life. Tetsuo sets off to find human survivors, his promise to Yukio on his mind. Riding an excavator that he finds in the ruins, he battles an intergalactic kaiju that attacks him, and it is then that he encounters the members of humankind who’ve survived! Can Tetsuo finally make the “friends” that he’s always longed for?

Our Take:

A mech vs kaiju show that focuses more on the pilot’s ability to make friends than fighting monsters is a fascinating idea. It might get to be a little annoying if Tetsuo is this bad at being a person. I fully admit that social anxiety is a thing, and I struggle in public settings as well, but it seems like a character like this is borderline unrealistic. I’m sure that people like this exist, but they’re few and far between, and someone who was “humanity’s savior” would have had a little more experience dealing with people, I imagine.

We’ll see how annoying Tetsuo’s behavior ends up being, but for now, it’s tolerable at least. His ability to kill kaiju is unmatched, and I do like the idea that he’s an idiot savant of sorts. Terrible at everything else but killing monsters. It just seems to me that even the most socially inept of people could muster up the courage to say “hello” at the very least.