English Dub Review: Chronos Ruler “Fantasy Future”

And thus, Chronos Ruler ends. Not with a roar, but with a fart loaded with diarrhea.

Overview (Spoilers)

Final form Aiks blasts Victo with a beam so powerful, it tears right through his shield. On impact it causes a massive explosion. Sure is good that everyone could jump out of the way of that in time! Wowee. As everyone runs to regroup, another shot blasts at Kiri. Mina jumps in the way, taking the shot on herself. She assaults Aiks herself, sure that he can’t consume her time, because she has Chronos’ blood. Once the boys regroup, they stage another attack. This time, Kiri and Victo combine their two specialties. They intercept Aiks’ beam with a mirrored surface, created by water over the dark-backed cards. The beam reflects back on him, reverting him to his original human form. Huzzah! Now they can lay into him with all they have and… Wait, in the time it took the camera to pop back to Kiri, Aiks has already returned to his full form and stands ready to attack, eating the damage done to his human form, while in his final… what? Anyways, he unleashes a super attack raining down beams from the sky. Everyone scatters, but Victo has a new plan. If he removes The Unique from his chest, it will no longer be using so much power to keep his time from leaking. For a brief time, he will be able to freeze Aiks in place. This will come at the cost of him regressing in age, but will give everyone the opportunity to attack Aiks’ hidden feeding organ. The plan works, utterly decimating Aiks’ body. His feeding organ falls to the ground and disintegrates. However, Victo is nowhere to be seen! He has lost all of his time, and has age regressed to nothingness. However, as his friend and family mourn his loss and call out to him, his spirit is able to say one last goodbye to his parents. They tell him it isn’t time for him to die and… for no reason whatsoever, his time returns to where his body was and he’s back to how he was before the fight. Good as new.

Oh, but as they leave the town, Kiri points out that Victo hasn’t returned to his full adult age yet. That must mean that Aiks is alive out there. He asks Victo if he regrets letting the horolog escape, but the only response he gets is a request to eat spaghetti through his nose. Way to hint at a season two, guys. Now, if only season one was good enough to warrant it.

Our Take

Right now, I am struggling to not unleash a torrent of profanity. Thank you. Thank you so much for another double fake. You tricked me into thinking the series was getting better, but then you pulled this steaming dung ball out and flung it like a monkey on speed. Where do I even start? There’s so much bad here I’m replete with examples.

Okay. Aiks’ beam. Let’s start there. Kiri and Victo state (in fact, they build a successful strategy around the fact) that this beam is actually these auxiliary eyes eating the time of everything in a direct line of their sight. However, if that were true, then why was Mina hurt by being hit by it? She sprays blood from the hit, despite having no visible wound from it in the very next shot. But, she’s immune to having her time eaten, so this time eating beam shouldn’t have had any effect. Even if it did, it should have purified Aiks shortly thereafter. How do we know? Because the very next thing that comes out of Mina’s mouth is the explanation of this fact. Okay, let’s just say he’s really advanced, and it’s going to take a long time to work on him. Fine. Then why was it these beams caused impacts wherever they hit? If the beams ate time in the same way as a horolog, they should be rapidly de-aging whatever they touch. But they don’t. Instead, they cause massive explosions… some of the time. Again, when Mina gets hit, no explosion. Just a cut that we never see spraying blood that has no effect. This is just the biggest example of how this episode has no clue of what it is doing. The bad guy has a special attack, but the writers can’t be consistent enough with what they wrote two seconds ago to have this attack make sense. Oh, and why was Victo’s spirit naked if his parents weren’t? Is it because he left his clothes behind? If the state of your clothes at death determines the state of your clothes in the afterlife, his parents should be wearing ashes. I’m just sayin’.

What really made me angry was the ending. Even though we watched, and confirmed, that Aiks was dead, they decided in the last seconds to say that he was alive. They then went on to say that they “let him go”. Really? I’m pretty certain there was no wiggle room there. Aiks be dead, you idiots are just trying to draw things out for the second season. And what the heck is up with this running gag of eating spaghetti through your nose? Right before the end, all four heroes devolve into kindergarten recess talk about how grown up it is to do, and how Blaze is going to eat it through his butt. Literally. What the heck? The joke wasn’t funny the first time you said it. Having a full minute devoted to the gag doesn’t make it funny now. Speaking of repeating something: You ended the last episode on a cliffhanger of Victo getting shot by the beam and immediately nullified it in this episode by having everyone use Uncanny Dodge to get away. The very next thing you do is try the same schtick again, only targeting Kiri, and using it as a pre-credits hook. What, you thought that we would react with surprise when Kiri is saved? You aren’t going to kill him off. Not at the beginning of an episode. You’re just out of inspiration for compelling action and are running to double fakes to fill the void where your IQ should have been. Again.

Oh, the animation. Hey, you remember the first episode, where the animation was so amazing I was floored? The direction had traditional methods blended with CG in ways it was hard to tell where the transitions were. It all wrapped together to make an exciting and dynamic fight scene that flew everywhere and did things I never thought an anime would have the cajones to try? Remember that? Hang on to that memory, kid, because that ship sailed face-first into an iceberg. This episode’s animation was so bad, it recycled a poorly animated shot, and tried to get away with it by mirroring the direction the beam was going. Note that was a poorly animated shot. It was missing half of its in-between frames, most of which were already black and white shapes of trees whipping out of existence. We then see the same trees whisp out again minutes later. There were times that I saw characters jump from one pose to the next with no in-between. Characters moved stiffly and awkwardly, with no concern for how their bodies were positioned in their surroundings. That screenshot I have above? That was the best art in the entire episode. Pretty pathetic.

Were you expecting the voice acting to save this episode from the fires of Gehenna? Nope. The voice acting and ADR staff gave up. They cared so little, I’m surprised this episode is in English. Emotive depth? Nil. Natural dialogue flow? Nada. Wistful and considerate choices in translating phrases? Niet. Every line comes off forced and two-dimensional, sometimes not even fitting what the character is saying or doing. The ADR crew realized how terrible this episode’s script was, and it looks like they just did a literal translation of every line, trying, in general, to get it somewhere in the ballpark of the right length, but mostly just suffering from a case of senioritis.