English Dub Review: AfterLost “Regrets”

Visiting the places of your past.

Overview:

After inspecting one of the orphanages, Takuya and the others find themselves pulled into a flashback.

Our Take:

This episode was surprisingly not terrible, but then again, the bar was already on the ground.

The cast enters another memory bubble, but this time the Tama-shi are people that Takuya knows- the children and the young manager of the orphanage that he used to work at. in his younger days, he was picked up by a private investigator, and one of their many jobs was to look into possible allegations of child abuse at this orphanage. Takuya nearly came close to uncovering something but was pulled out– right before the Lost Incident happened. The manager, Hinako, and the children that he cared for were all caught up and were presumed dead or missing. However, their Tama-shi manifested in the site of the orphanage itself, which replayed the days before the incident. It was fueled by Hinako’s regrets, namely her inability to connect with Takuya at the very end. While what’s in the orphanage wasn’t child abuse, the children were well cared for, they would eventually be feeders into the company that’s masterminding the whole thing.

Hinako’s regrets were so strong when she was alive that she resolved to reveal the truth to the children so that they could find some meaning in life. She left behind hard evidence in the birdhouse, some that they can use in the present day to link the company to the orphanage. There’s still not enough information to lead them to the fact that they might have possibly engineered Lost for their own gain, especially since the detective is since dead. There’s a lot of hurdles in going public- being smothered by the press that’s aligned with the company, possibly being discredited, and of course, becoming a public figure makes one more susceptible to danger. It’s highly doubtful that this is all that they need before they bring the hammer down, but it is a good first step at least. Now that they know the orphanage director is still alive, he might be another clue that they can exploit.

While I’m still not attached to any of these characters, this was a more cohesive story at the very least. It didn’t make me particularly invested in Takuya, but it’s inching towards solving the mystery. With the kind of writing this show has, I’ll take what I can get.