English Dub Review: Chronos Ruler “Responsibility and Principle”
Victo! Stop hitting yourself!
Overview (Spoiler)
The crew chase after a giant horolog in the shape of a snake. It’s super fast, and it seems like it’s playing with them, leading them into a trap. After a long chase, the gang find themselves at the boundary of the time dilation field and decide to hunt for clues from there. Did I say the crew? Because we’re missing Victo. He’s back with his dead family. His mother started coughing up blood and passed out. He arrives with his father to find he already gave her first aid. No, not him. Kid Victo. Well, More-of-a-Kid Victo. Problem is, she still isn’t doing so hot. She needs a blood transfusion, and she’s AB Negative, an exceedingly rare blood type. She and Victo (both of them) are the only ones that have it in the town. After little Victo already gives all the blood in his body, it still isn’t enough, so Adult Victo pours her a pint or two. Afterwards, as she awakens, the two Victo’s have a chat. Little Victo bemoans the fact that the ‘rents just get in his way. After calling them stupid several times in rapid succession, Adult Victo slaps the kid with the force of a thousand suns. Understandably, his father bans him from the premises. Adult him, not kid him. As he tromps off to an abandoned shack to be depressed in peace, he has a vision of telling his kid self-everything that’s going to happen to him. Then he sees his new family come to his side and encourage him to come back to reality and stop torturing himself. Which he is doing, literally and figuratively, I guess. His old self-transforms into his mother, who says that she’s happy little Victo is this way. He wins at all costs. Message flashes in his mind: “Don’t be misled”.
This leads me to an interesting question: If Adult Victo hadn’t been there, would his mother have died? Obviously, Little Victo would have still missed out on his test, but if his mother died there instead of in the fire, that would have changed quite a bit of his remembered past. Walk with me here. In the past that Adult Victo remembers, he never meets his adult self, and both his parents died in the fire. He grows up, becomes a Chronos Ruler, gets married to Kiri’s mother, then returns to his hometown on an assignment. However, all of the town has been reverted to his childhood. Stuff happens, and he gets bitten by a horolog. Missing all of his time, he comes back to Kiri and the two begin their search for the horolog that got him. Now, the two of them come back, but something is different. Victo’s mother reaches a moment where she dies earlier, and only by his intervention does she survive. So the result is the same, she dies in a fire. But, that may not be the whole story. There is definitely a bad guy here, and it’s likely that grungy-haired guy. He may not have been here in the original timeline of the town. He attacks Victo’s mother, causing a new timestream that Victo doesn’t remember. Given the stinger we got at the end, I think grungy dude was a resident of the town. He’s turned back time so he can correct something in his past, unaware of the consequences of his actions.
Our Take
For once, I was really into this episode. It was well written in its dialogue, and it maintained its mystery well. I feel like, as bad as the last arc was, this one is miles better. Probably because it isn’t trying to double fake me every other action. It’s slowly giving us little hints by showing changes in the timeline relative to his memories. His visions also give us a bit more information, revealing things that he couldn’t know, but are complete gibberish to us until the next episode. I was not expecting the stinger to show up in this episode. As soon as the credits finish, we see the other boy in the rain on the other side of Adult Kiri. Then, we switch to the “next time on” and the cards drop. Almost as if this revelation actually changed things. I like it, and I wish they’d have more episodes that do that.
The action sequences in this episode were fun. Though it didn’t use the CG animation we’ve seen in the past, the traditional animation was good enough for the task. The place where it let me down was when the characters tried to talk while running. Using this cycled animation and trying to move the mouth differently only resulted in a mouth that didn’t move as the body bobbed up and down. Otherwise, the animation was just fine. The background art was gorgeous. One shot showed a perspective looking up to the sky through the buildings of the town, with a fish-eye lens effect bending things around. It was a great shot, and a dramatic way to bring in the rain.
Last episode, Jad Saxton’s performance as Mina left something to be desired. When she should have been angry and determined, she came off as bratty and selfish. She almost completely fixes that in this episode, as she gets another show of her explaining her feelings about the town. There is just a little bit of prissiness to her as she says her lines here, but most of it is gone. She actually sounds mad and resolved. Child Victo was rather good at his role. He was completely believable, especially at the transition to crying. Poor kid was in shock because he had never been slapped before! I don’t know who the voice actor is there, but good work.
I am thoroughly pleased that this story arc is far and away better than the one before. Less yo-yo, more mystery. The action was good, and the writing is better. The animation isn’t as good as the first couple episodes, but I’ve seen worse in this same anime!
SCORE
Summary
I give it eight pints of your first born's blood out of ten. Don't spend it all in one place.
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