English Dub Review: The Drops of God “A Large Hand Met in a Nostalgic Place”

Overview (Spoilers Below):
The battle for the Third Apostle continues.

Our Take:
The search for the Third Apostle should’ve been a quick endeavor with Shizuku and Tomine’s selections.  However, that doesn’t appear to be the case in this week’s episode.  With their wines not matching the nostalgic vibe Yutaka experienced, they’re right back to where they started, prompting them to continue their search.  Unfortunately, it looked like their failures may have haunted them a bit, with Shizuku losing confidence in himself, but Tomine seems to be suffering the most.  His new approach involving avoiding drinking wine should’ve been his key to victory, but instead, it robbed him of his expertise in consuming nothing but wine.  With Tomine having an existential crisis, we see Shizuku hunting for the Third Apostle, with a famous artist’s sketch as a possible connection.
“A Large Hand Met in a Nostalgic Place” continues the usual structure seen in previous episodes, with Shizuku meeting people with connections to wine, leading to his discovery of an Apostle.  Notably, he visits Mao, the granddaughter of the artist Fuse, and discovers that Fuse apparently used wine as paint to draw sketches of his late son.  I suppose that wine is good for something other than consumption.  More importantly, this is one episode that handles its emotional beats best, especially regarding its nostalgic theme.  Additionally, the episode briefly showed Tomine’s origin, in which Yutaka rescued him from solitude after he was separated from his mother, leading to his realization of the true answer.  Will those trips down memory lane be enough to help the two perform their comebacks?  Only time will tell as we get close to the end of the season’s first half.