English Dub Review: Dead Mount Death Play “The Magician”

Overview (Spoilers Below):
The Shinoyama family is out of danger, but the Corpse God still needs to explain himself to Polka’s father, Rozan! How will the gruff tycoon react to his youngest son’s fate? Meanwhile, an eccentric criminal stages a jailbreak.

Our Take:
The nefarious “Firestarter”, or as we’re aware now, the phony “Firestarter”, is out of the picture, and I’m not talking about last year’s horrible remake of the 1984 Stephen King film. However, there’s still a matter of Polka’s family for the Corpse God to handle. The members of the Shinoyama clan seemed convinced that the necromancer was the real Polka, except for one. That one exception is Polka’s father, Rozan, who surprisingly knows someone or something is inside his son’s shell instead of Polka’s soul. Polka’s soul resides in a plush shark toy if you still can’t tell.
Fortunately, it only took one action from Polka to get Rozan to recognize his own son inside the plush toy, triggering a flashback involving a young Polka protecting his pet white alligator. Yes, you read that right. Polka has a pet alligator living in a cage. After a final farewell to the twins, Polka and Misaki return to their base, where they discuss how much the real world has in common with the Corpse God’s realm, including dragons. Additionally, Polka bought himself a radio which informs him of the incident that killed the fake Fire Breathing Bug.
But, of course, that’s not the only issue we’re dealing with in this episode. The other problem Tsubaki and Arase confront is Ten’a Soroyama, the Phantom Solitaire. The Phantom Solitaire is a peculiar criminal who uses magic tricks to commit crimes, including escaping from police custody and making an entire building disappear. While his purpose was far from threatening, as he wanted to bring magic back to the world, Ten’a’s not something for the protagonists to take lightly. The reason is that he may be in cahoots with the actual Fire Breathing Bug responsible for murdering the person pretending to be him.
With the series providing comedy in its mixture of action and dark fantasy, it seemed fitting for the episode to have a criminal as silly as an ordinary magician. His approach to comedy may not be something special, but the Phantom Solitaire offers an acceptable balance of humor and seriousness to make himself less annoying than I feared. He even communicates with the Fire Breathing Bug via phone even though they’re standing a few feet from each other. It’s dumb, but it’s also a bit amusing, so I’m not complaining. But, of course, we also get a visit from Polka’s other niece near the episode’s conclusion, signaling that there could be another family problem for the Corpse God to handle. Just how many nieces and nephews does this guy have in the family?