English Dub Review: AfterLost “Fate”

Happy father’s day, I guess.

Overview:

We meet Yuki’s father, and gain some insight into the true nature of Lost.

Our Take:

This episode was surprisingly not abysmal, but there’s really a low standard to work with here.

Instead of progressing linearly with the story, we get a flashback to Yuki’s father and some insight into the evil corporation. It turns out there is the next level of completely bizarre concepts with parallel universes. Lost, as we discover, was an experiment attempting to bridge parallel worlds, with the intention of bringing multiple people in from the other side. The president of the company, his secretary, and Yuki’s father are all implied to be people who came from a parallel universe, killed their selves in the current world, and then assumed their lives. By constantly getting rid of the people in their way, they were able to move up in society and be in a position to make their dream a reality.

Lost is actually the machine to tear open space between worlds overloading, likely sabotaged by the two higher-ups of the company. A large reaction and consuming of energy (via the form of people) was a necessary sacrifice, but one that was only amplified by the explosion having no safety mechanics behind it.

Yuki and her brother also come into play with their significance: because their father is from another world and their mother is from the current one, they are essentially singularities. They can traverse, or at least have powers reaching beyond dimensions because they don’t belong to either one. What this has to do with superpowers is beyond me. They don’t do a good job of explaining that, at all. I guess maybe superpowers have something to do with exposure to multiple universes. Maybe. Who even knows.

The idea of parallel worlds is a very odd thing to bring up nine episodes into the series. We’re already used to superpowers, sure, but now we know that parallel universe is not only a thing, but the entire purpose of Lost. And this was foreshadowed absolutely nowhere. If I hadn’t known that this series originated from a visual novel, I’d say that the writers were making it up as they go, because this exposition is truly baffling and all over the place. Just throw in a new concept every week, I guess!

Even at its perceived strongest, this show is truly a mess.