English Dub Review: Cop Craft “Smells Like Toon Spirits”

 

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Kei and Tilarna retrieve a box of artifacts from a thief, only to find the box is full of junk. Tilarna still senses some magic amongst it, so they take the box back to their house before the transfer. However, some shenanigans with Kuroi lead to one of the items, a crossbow, accidentally firing and hitting her. She wakes up the next day finding she’s switched bodies with Kuroi, but can’t explain things to Kei. Instead, she calls in Cecil to help out.

OUR TAKE

Oh, okay, I guess last week WASN’T the start of a new arc about taking down corrupt politicians and was actually just a reminder that people will die in the pursuit of keeping someone’s reputation squeaky clean. Unfortunately, that’s very realistic there, but still quite the downer.

So now we’re starting THIS new story (that definitely does continue into next week, I checked this time) which involves the old “body swapping with animals” type of gags. These include the tried and true comedic situations of “cat crawling all over male friend in female friend’s body”, “trying to call someone on the phone with cat paws”, and “frantic game of charades”, among many many more. I mean, there’s nothing necessarily wrong with this type of story if you can put a fresh spin on it, but I unfortunately don’t know if they do. It is sort of interesting that Kuroi the Cat does recognize both Kei and Cecil, which makes sense considering she’s known both of them for awhile before Tilarna got there, but she can’t exactly contribute to the case because she’s just a cat with a cat brain. Though I guess we don’t want to get too ridiculous here, even with the fantasy element.

Also nice to see Cecil comes back into the story for at least a little bit. Her characterization isn’t the most complex, but she’s a pleasant sort of presence on the other characters she interacts with, including Kei and Tilarna. She’s ALSO not meant to be a rival character but someone who has genuine good ties to both of them, being a way of looking into Kei’s past that the audience can learn through Tilarna’s questions. Though I guess this sort of situation of body swapping would be too much for just a coroner, huh?

And I should probably point out that we’re back to using the intro talking about the show’s premise, which I assumed we dumped back in the fourth episode once everyone watching was already on board with what was going on or jumping ship. But not even that is as surprising as how they make use of it next episode, though I’ll save that for then. Basically those issues with spacing out the story well enough are about to pop up again, even going into the final stretch of episodes. Then again, Cop Craft seems to be pretty notorious with its management, so at this point I really shouldn’t be surprised. And what the hell is up with this title?