English Dub Review: Hina Logic “Our Tears Are Not For Our Own Benefit”

The part where Rosa kills you.

Overview (Spoilers)

Winter break is coming, but first: semester finals! This time, they have to fight each other in a tournament in addition to the exams. Nina comes to the headmaster, asking that if she places first in all her exams, could she go back to active duty. The response from the headmaster isn’t heard, but given Nina’s mood afterward, it wasn’t positive. On her way back to the dorms for the night, she hears Liones training with Miss Kagura to keep her trances in balance. The next day, they are all studying, and Nina asks about the training sessions. Liones tells her they were a form of detention since she there is a lot about her that “isn’t right”. The day of the tournament arrives, and Nina and Liones are paired up in the first tier. Liones begins to get the upper hand, and Nina gets angry. She accuses Liones of hiding her power all this time, going easier on her, and lying. This absolutely breaks Liones, and Rosa hijacks the trance. She wrecks Nina AND the training arena, then runs off into the night to become a giant tower of vines. Nina gives chase, supported by Liones’ little animal friend Bella. Together, the reach the berserk logicalist, and draw her back to reality. Unfortunately, this incident has to be reported to the ACLA, and they may never let Nina in again.

Well, we got a payoff for the issue with Liones. Like I predicted, and likely you did too, she finally lost herself to a trance. I just wish it hadn’t resolved so quickly. An entire season teasing this scenario, and they wrap up the crisis it creates in a single episode. In the last series, someone getting trancejacked resulted in them turning into some sort of monstrosity. I would have liked to see this situation build further out of control, with Liones turning into a massive plant monster and the final enemy.

Another theory hits me, and one that may be rather out there. What if Liones has this issue with her trances because she is a part foreigner? We still know little to nothing about the foreigners she has contracted with. Strangely, Bella has the power to balance Liones out. The staff seems to have already known that oddly specific fact, but how? Bella is never shown speaking until she takes her true form. I may be out of left field with this, but what if Bella is really Liones’ mother, and the woman we believe to be her mother is hiding this fact? It would explain her condition, and why she has such a high affinity for Minolium foreigners.

Our Take

As I mentioned, I felt like this episode wrapped the crisis up a little too quickly and neatly. This was the problem they had built the entire plot of the show around, and it’s over before the penultimate episode even starts. Even if they made this a two-parter, it would have been worth it. Further, this show has been so plot-light for so long, seeing its only source of plot poof out makes watching more a bit of an unattractive proposition. What do we have left? A Christmas episode? A New Years episode? So, what was the point? What was the story? You have all these magical girls, but you do nothing with them except normal-ish school drama. The fights could be swapped out for dodgeball, and the series would only be missing transformations. So, why did you make this show, other than to sell another expansion of this card game? Wasting my time? We also get to see Bella’s true form, and her trance form with Liones. She had apparently been waiting for the girl to reach a certain level of awareness or power or development before she would trance with her. To me, it just looked like a cheap Deus Ex Machina played to resolve a situation that had gotten out of the writer’s ability to resolve normally. If we didn’t use that card, then we could have entered the next episode in a dire situation, and possibly one where Liones is left with nothing but the company of her foreigners to rely upon as she tries to get Nina rescued. After all of the truth is dragged out of them, Liones shows enough strength of heart to accept hard truths, and Bella would trance with her. That is a much better use of that plot point.

Cheap as it was, the entire situation was pretty dramatic, and the episode had a cathartic force in the battle. Liones has really gotten the hang of cross-trancing and uses it to great effect here by switching back and forth to give her optimal defense. Waffle is fast and best against Amor’s archery. Rosa has tons of vines and flowers for physical defense against Michael’s high-powered melee attacks. However, Waffle’s speed is also a good foil for Michael’s armor, and Rosa’s physical power can mop the floor with Amor. The fight between them is quick and heavy-hitting, but never so frenetic that I can’t follow what is going on. The animation here, and in the rescue scene later, is smooth, full of activity, and yet, error-free. I wish this show had more action because it does it rather well.

The other thing that this show has going for it is the voice acting for some of its characters, which is not only expressive but adapts to match the depth of their trance. I’ve commented in a previous episode how Brittany Lauda changed how she voiced Liones drastically to show that she was trancing with either Rosa or Waffle. Here, we also see a form where she is trancing with Rosa, but in complete control of the union. She returns to her baseline voicing. Also, we get a scene where Miss Kaguya is theoretically contracted with Waffle and adopts the funny mannerisms and voice. It is a complete 180 from how Kristy Sims normally voices the character and is adorable. Nina shows a greater depth of emotion in this episode, stemming from her conflicting desires about the school. Leah Clark showed all these feelings through her performance. As Nina grew increasingly upset, Leah followed suit but didn’t let it get out of control. She never gets high pitched or shrieky.

So, beyond the quick resolution of the series conflict, this episode’s action and writing were thoroughly entertaining. Coupled with great animation, and expressive, thoughtful voice acting, we have an episode that is well worth watching.