English Dub Review: Alice & Zoroku “A Home to Return To”

When magical girls take off the proverbial gloves, head for the hills. It isn’t safe anymore.

Spoilers Below

Sana and Zoroku are under the thumb of Minnie-C, and Sana is seriously doubting if she should be in the outside world. Zoroku’s kind words reassure her, and just in time for Ichijo to spring into their rescue. What exactly is her card? Minnie-C can’t even figure that out, and she’s trained to fight her fellow Dreams of Alice. The government agent just keeps on pulling out all sorts of weapons, from swords and axes to AK’s and Kalishnakoffs. In the meantime, Noriko (The tech expert with an obsession for Ichijo) is hard at work trying to use her system to pinpoint Minnie-C and give the Hammerspace Honey a leg up in the fight. Hey, you try and find a synonym for a woman that’s alliterative with her powerset! Writing is hard.

The longer this battle goes on, the more obvious it becomes that Minnie-C is unhinged. This is only made worse because it seems that Sana and Ichijo have an unlimited number of cards to call upon, where she only has the one. As she spews out carbon copies of her dead husband’s arms as projectile weapons, Sana and Zoroku are trapped under a collapsed deck. Ichijo takes this opportunity. After all, trapped also means safe. As soon as Noriko gets a bead on Minnie-C, she goes for it. The Multi-Armed Maven (see, that one wasn’t bad) goes on a surprising offensive, pinning Ichijo to a cargo container, and shooting at her with a gun in one of her many hands. Ichijo reveals the true nature of her powers, pulling out container #1… Her Magical Girl outfit. Well, technically, a maid. All of her powers are based off a children’s show that she fell asleep to as a kid. A magical maid had access to a vault with innumerable weapons, with which she fought evil monsters. When Ichijo awoke from her transformation into a Dream of Alice, her card became that magical vault of weapons and tools. With access to her full magical abilities, she mops the floor with Minnie-C. In the aftermath, the research facility was disbanded, and its staff imprisoned. Minnie-C was extradited back to the United States. And Sana? She’s living with Zoroku and Sanae, and they are very happy. Then again, we’re only halfway through the season…

Wow, this episode has me on the edge of my seat. So much so, that… wait… I forgot to take pictures for you. I was so completely hypnotized by the action, I didn’t even think about pushing “PrtScn” once! That should tell you how good this episode is. It not only scratches the action itch I’ve been wanting to get at since episode one, it also wraps up Sana’s plot arc of “is she or is she not human”. She has a very illuminated game plan, to simply grow up and experience new things, which will make her a real person. In a way, each child has to go through this: experiencing more of the world until their own internal view of themselves becomes refined enough that they can, themselves, feel that they are a real person. The relationship between Ichijo and Noriko reminds me of the one of Sakura and Tomoyo from Cardcaptor Sakura, only a bit older and more professional… on Ichijo’s part.

So, on to the technical aspects. This episode has some great animation. Not just the traditional, but the CG animation choices they made were really solid, and a far cry better than episode one. They only used CG on the cargo containers as they moved, to allow for more realistic physics and smooth motion. They also used it on Minnie-C’s arm barrage, but only when you had high-speed motion shots. That way, they didn’t have to have high details, maintaining the illusion that they were animated in a traditional style without wasting the man-hours to animate all that nonsense. Voice acting was fine. I could really feel the crazy in Colleen Clinkenbeard’s performance as Minnie-C. Anastasia Muñoz brought the professional warrior woman to the party and gave Ichijo a great sense of self-confidence. This show is one of my three most favorites that I’m reviewing right now, and I’m glad I still have more episodes to go. I give it nine magical vault doors out of ten.