English Dub Season Review: Kaiju Girl Caramelise Season One
Overview:
Sixteen-year-old Kuroe Akaishi has spent most of her life keeping to herself, knowing that intense emotions cause parts of her body to mutate into monstrous appendages. Though resigned to a life of solitude, her monochromatic days find color when Arata Minami, a popular classmate, reaches out to her with kindness she never expected from anyone.
Our Take(Spoilers):
You could argue the spoiler I’m about to talk about is the fact that I loved this show, so you can assume it’s going to get a good rating. This was one of my favorite shows to review this season because it had all the things I enjoy in a romance anime. It even included things I didn’t think would mesh well with a romance, but it worked out great. If you told me that an anime where a girl transforms into a kaiju when she gets romantic feelings would become one of the best romance anime I’ve seen, I’m not sure I’d believe you.
It takes great voice acting to bring a show to life, and Kaiju Girl Caramelise has that in spades. Nia Celeste as Kuroe was a great standout to me. She’s a new performer to me, and after this, I’m looking forward to hearing more from her. The co-lead, Minami, was played by Jacob Hopkins, and similarly to Nia, I haven’t heard him in anything that I’m aware of, but I think we will soon.
When it comes to anime voice talent, I am usually torn between wanting to hear my favorites and giving new talent a chance. This show manages to give us both by using the VAs I previously mentioned while also using veteran talent like Luci Christian, Megan Shipman, and Robert McCollum.
I’m a huge Godzilla fan, and this show had so many references to that series that it almost felt like a love letter for kaiju fans. They managed to avoid any copyright issues by making the music sound just different enough, but I grew up on Godzilla, and this show gave me a lot of good feelings.
The romance was well done, and I loved that the main couple was together after the first few episodes. It was slightly annoying that they didn’t kiss until the last episode, but the fact that we got one at all is a big deal in anime. It was also nice that any misunderstandings got cleared up pretty fast without the couple making things worse.
My only issue with the show is that it ended, and I don’t know if we will get a second season. It would be nice to see how Minami and Kuroe’s relationship changes now that he knows her secret in a second season. But if we don’t get a second season, at the very least, the ending to this felt conclusive enough that I’m not as upset as I normally would be. If you like romance and you like giant monsters with decent action, then this show is for you. I hope that you enjoy it as much as I did.
