English Dub Review: Darwin’s Game; “Hardness”

 

 

Overview (Spoilers Below)

With Kaname rescuing Shuka and Ryuji dealing with a twin threat, Kaname’s clan faces trials on multiple fronts while the terror of the Eighth clan looms over them and the true objective of the event eludes them.

Our Take

If you were truly interested in the androgynous little kid from the previous episode, as the plot of that episode would like you to be, then, boy does your wish get (mostly) neatly answered in this one.  

This little kid is actually two little kids at the same time, via good old, convoluted split personalities. The male personality is Sato, a murderous little asshole who can turn water into ice. The female personality is Sui, a timid and pacifistic girl who can freely control water. On the whole, much like their conflicting psyches, this character is a mixed bag. 

Their water/ice Sigil is frequently utilized to its best and fullest extent. The most shining example is when Ryuji falls into a fairly obvious trap in a convenience store. Sui liberates the liquids from all of the beverages in the aisles, and Sato freezes the water as it jets out of the bottle, creating a rather novel and deadly beverage-sword. There’s also how they communicate over a texting app on their phone, which is smart and expedient. However, the texting app seems to allow both speakers in the conversation to talk from the same text field. This is a little curious, but nothing more than a nitpick. 

Where this character starts to fall apart is when the show starts trying to explain how their split personality deal works. They both share a body, but the body is originally Sui’s. When Sui entered Darwin’s Game, she wished that Sato’s deceased soul would come back to her, and accordingly entered her body. This slapdash explanation doesn’t fully answer its own question and raises plenty of further questions. If this only affected them, I would be content with just moving on. But since this is a thing that can happen to anybody when they enter the game, it calls basically every character’s origins into question, serving only to needlessly complicate this game and the cast. 

I suppose, with Sui as the original owner of the body, this explains how she is able to win against Sato in the battle of control, which is fortunate for Kaname’s clan. Additionally, Sui’s English voice is annoyingly high-pitched. I know these sorts of voices are part and parcel for little girls in anime, but this particular voice threatens to break some sort of sonic barrier, which upsets the ears. 

While Ryuji is dealing with the twin menaces, Kaname is busy saving Shuka. He timidly gives her CPR, which, immediately upon being resuscitated, she turns into an ill-timed romantic moment. She then turns their escape into an even more ill-timed moment to exposit her backstory.  She explains her reason for joining Darwin’s Game; a man, presumably a player, killed her parents, who were also presumably players. She wants revenge not only on this mysterious assailant but also the creator of the game itself. 

For someone who supposedly hates every aspect of this game as a result of your traumatic experience with it, she sure seemed to like killing people in it. Maybe she’s killing people to easier get the attention of the creators of the game? Maybe her cumulative experience with the game has messed with her head? While all of these are plausible enough, some more concrete details would be better, even if just a little bit to tease us for later. This is just another batch of questions with no answers anywhere in sight. 

After both ends resolve their respective conflicts, Kaname and Shuka reconnoiter with Ryuji and the now de-fanged Sui. After some brief squabbling, they return their focus to tackling the event. The recent distribution of some new rings brought a diamond ring into play, the collection of which completes the set. Rein secures one somehow, compiles the information from the QR codes, and presents it to Kaname. Having some sort of suspicion of his confirmed, Kaname decides that the clan should drop all of their rings and focus on the true objective, which he “dramatically” does not mention. 

Just as the episode ends without even teasing what this could mean, they squeeze in the “big reveal” after the ending animation. This is a pretty poor place to put such important information to the plot, as I imagine some people by the sixth episode will stop watching the episode once the ending animation starts. Rein does some typically verbose anime genius deductions, where the title of the episode comes into play; the numbers from the gems on the rings must be organized by the hardness of the gems. That’s a pretty minor thing to name your episode after, especially something that only appears hastily in the last thirty seconds. 

Running parallel to the trials of Kaname’s actively forming clan are the violent exploits of the Eighth clan. We see even more small-minded thuggery from their members, with the exception of Wang, their leader, who is much smarter and has even figured out the secret of the rings. Growing ever more impatient, they begin their siege on the hotel. 

Fortunately, Kaname’s clan has already decided to ditch the original plan, which means abandoning the hotel as well, coincidentally avoiding their encroaching conflict with the Eighth clan. But with how much build-up regarding them we’ve gotten, and with Wang hot on the trail of the true win condition, a clash between them stills seems imminent.