English Dub Review: City the Animation Episode 13

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Our time in the City comes to an end.

OUR TAKE

Here we are, at the final episode of City (for the moment at least, Nichijou was twice as long so maybe one day we’ll get more episodes of this), and for whatever reason, this last installment consists of only two segments. The first is the tearful conclusion of the storyline involving Ecchan and her family leaving for England. Last episode had her give her best friend Matsuri a very sudden and playful goodbye without telling her that she was leaving that day. I was hoping we would get some sort of follow up to that and thankfully we did, with a bunch of their peers coming together to get Matsuri to the airport in time to say goodbye herself, even flooding the airport and standing in front of the plane! While they may now be on a government watch list, at least these two best friends were able to part ways on good terms, with strong hopes that they’ll be able to reunite at some point in the future. It’s quite moving and funny, as anyone who has had a friend move away can attest to. Sometimes people come into your life and change it forever for the better, and then the time comes when you have to let that person go on their own path. It will hurt, but it’s also a sign that you made a genuine connection, which usually makes all the pain worth it. Usually.

The second and final segment is a musical, focusing on how the Makabe restaurant suddenly got a gold star in the mail, which they assume is a Michelin Star. I say assume because well…it turns out it isn’t. But the point is that this is a big multi-part musical number that brings back a ton of characters from the past dozen episodes to have a big bombastic end to the season. And then…something weird happens that you would only notice if you were watching the English Dub. Specifically it’s that the dub just…stops? Like right as the first song starts, the audio track just goes back to Japanese and stays there for the rest of the episode, even for parts that are spoken word. Despite all of these anime reviews being titled “English Dub Review”, I usually end up talking more about the content itself than any of the dub performances, but in this case I couldn’t if I tried because they suddenly disappear! I don’t know if they just didn’t want to bother translating the songs or simply gave up, but it’s a weird choice. Not that it impacts the quality of the episode itself, thankfully, but it’s very noticeable and pretty distracting. Still, a great ending to this hilarious show, production issues or not. And now to try and find the words to review the entirety of a season where I have had a recurring issue of critically analyzing just about any episode of said show in the Season Review!