English Dub Review: AfterLost “Choice”

Plan expose evil corporation is a go.

Overview:

With information under their belts, the group works to expose some information.

Our Take:

The plan to expose the evil corporation goes… better than I expected, admittedly. The magician uses his free performance to get people to start watching, and then starts telling his story while on live television. Because he’s so popular, this whips up a social media storm, and starts to get people interested. The producers don’t cut the feed because doing that would hurt what’s currently the big story. This causes people to take interest in the corporation, and a public outcry starts to build.

While this is happening, Takuya, Geek, and Yuki have infiltrated the corporation, and are live-streaming their journey. Inside is all physical evidence of human experimentation, which is then broadcast to the world. This does succeed in cementing the public outcry, and major scrutiny turns to the company that even the police are forced to get involved.

Of course, as we know, the police are in the company’s pocket. Even though the CEO and his assistant are arrested, they’re released shortly afterward. It’s a step in the right direction, I suppose?

The issue with Yuki’s brother exploding and her having to mercy kill him is that we still don’t care about her brother at all. This entire time he’s been an antagonist, and the only reason that we are putting up with his presence is because Yuki is still very attached to him. If she was a little colder to her brother, then we, the audience, wouldn’t care for him at all— because there has been no reason to. He’s been framed as an antagonist, and has remained only vaguely sympathetic because Yuki is soft. He doesn’t hold up on his own, so there’s no real reason to feel bad when he dies.

This is a problem the series has as a whole; it expects the audience to feel sympathy for characters that we hardly spend any time with, and even more so if they’re not framed as sympathetic. Acting off tropes isn’t the same thing as emotional investment: the female detective is a good character we were endeared to because even though she only existed in one episode, it was all about her. Investing in a former antagonist is even harder, because there has to be more work in wanting to care about a former enemy. This show is absolutely not putting in any of that legwork.