English Dub Review: Chronos Ruler “Twilight of the Idols”

Yeah, we all kinda figured Chronos Ruler HQ was going to be a bunch of jerks.

Spoilers Below

Mina leads our two Putin boys through a forest, and up to the hidden entrance of headquarters. She claims that all of Victo’s records are stored there, at the top. Once they arrive, they are greeted by a scientist by the name of Snake. Yeah, I don’t trust this dude either. After initially giving them a warm welcome, and revealing his fetish for school girl uniforms (not with girls in them, just the uniforms), he proceeds to attack the two of them, holding them in place with those uniforms. He plans to remove Victo’s Oath of Time, which happens to be the original one. With it, Chronos Rulers could finally end the conflict with the Horologs. But that would be at the cost of Victo’s life. Mina protests. This is not what she had in mind when she brought the two of them back. Fortunately, Kiri and Victo had their guard up and faked being frozen. They bolt for the exit, but Victo doubles back for answers. Kiri comes under attack by a fire user with the ever-so-creative name of Blaze. Thankfully, Kiri is a water user with a brain, but we won’t see the end of that fight until next week.

In the meantime, Victo’s search for his past leads him to the top of the tower, inside of which is a traditional Japanese home, complete with garden. He manages to find the library, and in there, a log of all his past missions. But… He can’t read any of them! Are they in code? Are they gibberish? Inside is a picture of Mina (in her current form) and himself (as he was), and she was hugging him. This picture is dated just before he lost his memories. Then, he is greeted by a mysterious woman, who seems to know him. She explains the mythical origins of the organization, that it was created by Chronos, god of time. Victo doesn’t believe in gods, but the woman makes a shocking revelation… She IS one!

Well, we’re getting some of this intrigue started, and I half like where it’s going. The Chronos Rulers are controlled by some unseen master (similar to the horologs as we saw in the last episode), and this dude doesn’t care if taking Victo’s life to gain power. My big issue here is that the organization is really terrible at names. Hey, this guy will talk our heroes into letting their guard down, then stab them in the back and take the Unique. What should we call him? Snake. Because he’s a snake in the grass. Okay, dude uses fire all over the place. What should we call him? Blaze. I’m surprised Victo isn’t called Joker or Flush or something like that. The revelation of the woman at the top of the tower was unexpected, but the episode as a whole felt all over the place. If there is anything that looks like it might be interesting, they immediately switch you to something else. It doesn’t build suspense the way they think it does. It just gets annoying, since we’re going to have to wait until the next episode for any answers to questions we got here. And, it will be the next episode for most of it. It feels like this was two episodes, blended together, then split in half again. I like where the plot is headed here, but how they are getting it is a bit frustrating.

Art and animation aren’t bad here. I enjoyed the shot where we see Blaze for the first time. It was dramatic and ominous, with his glowing eyes and fire all around. I didn’t notice much in the way of errors, but I did notice this episode didn’t use any of its CG animation. That was sort of the shining part of the series: how they blended CG and traditional. Did they run low on budget for this episode? The voice acting feels like it finally is getting its feet under it. The main characters sounded believable, and their actors are settling into these roles. You aren’t going to hear anything stellar here, but at least it wasn’t obnoxious. I give this episode seven hidden underground bases out of ten.