English Dub Review: 18if “The Witch of Gluttony”

Doughnut worry, lady. You’re still beautiful.

Spoilers Below

Lately, Dr. Kats has been on a Curry Rice Bender. There’s one restaurant he’s been going to every day and having at least three plates. And no, he didn’t get it from that one restaurant. The recipe is made every day by Airi Kojima, an amateur model who works at her uncle’s restaurant. You know what else she is? The fourth Witch. You see, she has a bit of a problem. Her body puts on weight with extreme ease. The last time she ate her fill, her boyfriend dumped her for a skinnier girl. The jerk. That’s put her into a horrible cycle. The only thing she wants is great flavor to make her happy. So she eats tons of junk food. The entire time, she’s barely even conscious of her actions. In truth, when she binges on KFC and McDonald’s, her mind flees off to the Dream World. There, she warps reality to create a land of cake and donuts and cotton candy. Where you can eat all you want and never get fat. There, she is a cherubic child. But, then she realizes what she’ll look like, and vomits it all up. She’s disgusted with herself, and this is her life now.

That’s when Haruto enters the scene. She chases him around, summoning tsunamis of confectioneries to pulverize him. At one point, she even turns him into a doughnut. Unfortunately, Lily decided to join that time around, and decided to taste what a Haruto Doughnut was like… Terrifying. Worse yet, none of these pastries have any flavor! After a while, this gets old, even for Lily, and she abandons him to his saccharine fate. Airi restrains him, giving the two a chance to talk. She admits what this world is, and the fact that she doesn’t think she should eat all these candies. Maybe if she ate him instead? As the situation begins to look darker and darker, Airi’s real world binge reaches a crescendo, and the self-hatred kicks in. Her Candyland crumbles, and she and Haruto tumble to a new place. This is her grandmother’s house, the same grandmother that made the curry recipe Dr. Kats loves so much. Making this recipe with her grandmother always made her so happy. Haruto puts two and two together, and convinces Witch Airi to nom some of her grandmama’s cooking. Immediately, the joy of her childhood comes back. When she awakens, she has a new resolve. To enjoy her food, and to find a man worthy of her love. Maybe this Haruto guy could do?

This episode has a massive schism drawn right down the middle of it. The real world may have Dr. Kats acting overly cartoony, but overall, it’s more sombre. Especially when Airi sits there, eating her troubles away. On the other hand, the dream world is childish and oversaturated. It looks like an adorable chibi anime, and I feel like I was being glared at by Wilford Brimley the whole time. This deep divide not only does a good job of telling you what world you’re looking at, but it also expresses Airi’s state of mind at the moment. When she is in the dream world, she is running away from reality and into something that is obviously fake, meaningless, and childish. Something that doesn’t build her up, but holds her back.

This episode doesn’t go as deep with how it feels to suffer from anorexia or bulimia, but it scratches the surface as much as the show’s format will allow. The worst part of the whole thing is that the trigger, her ex-boyfriend, was such a self-centered objectifying douche (can I say that here? Can I say douche? Because he’s a real douchebagel sandwich). He didn’t talk much, but from what he said, and how he said it, it’s a wonder that she was dating him in the first place! Then again, she is what the Japanese call a Dokumo, a reader model, who becomes a model in a magazine after being a long time reader. There’s a culture built up around them, but it’s still just a side job. This could have been one of her “fans”, who climbed the social ladder. Still, he didn’t deserve her. Or her curry rice. Adding to the problem, the poor girl chose a really cute bathroom scale… that puts your weight in terms of cartoon animals. How are you going to feel good about yourself when you keep seeing a pig look back at you?

When we start talking about the technical side of things, this episode kinda fell flatter than others of the series, but it had some nice aspects. There was a ton of shortcuts and poorly-cycled clips. Some whole scenes were repeated, and rather blatantly. One shot was of the camera spinning around Witch Airi, but the animation is so choppy, it’s jarring. On the other hand, those giant donuts were strangely well animated, probably because they were CG. Well enough made that it was hard for me to tell. Then, when we get to the voice acting, we have an interesting reversal. Caitlin Glass as Airi was great. She was warm, and girl-next-doorsy. Caitlin Glass as Witch Airi, however, is high and pitchy, and hurt my ears. One other little qualm I have about the acting, is one scene where Dr. Kats is singing about curry rice, and begins eating while singing. J. Michael Tatum just kept singing as if there wasn’t food in his mouth. I know, I’m nitpicking, but that’s something either he or the director should have caught. Because of these errors, I can’t rate the episode as high as I would like. I enjoyed the writing and subject matter, but they needed more effort on other areas of the show. I give it six plates of curry rice out of ten. Better start now before Dr. Kats eats them all.