English Dub Review: Dies Irae “Self-Destruction Factor”

Okay, these people have some seriously messed up families.

Overview (Spoilers)

Alright, I know we just escaped the battle between Ren and Eleonore, but let’s go somewhere completely different, M’kay? You remember Shirou? Ren’s friend who died a couple episodes back? Well, he isn’t quite so dead and is instead of having a chat and a waltz down memory lane with Heinrich. He remembers the first time Ren came home to his “adoptive” parents. Parents who were already legitimate parents to Kasumi. Oh, and in case you forgot, his adoptive mother from whom it is implied some genetic material was donated, is the reborn Marie. Anyways, Shirou saw the two kids bicker and became friends with them, like you do. Then, he randomly killed Ren’s psychotic scientist father… like you do. Ever since then, he’s had his invulnerability deja vu power. While musing how it’s all connected, Heinrich explains. I couldn’t understand a lick of what the guy said, though, and Funimation doesn’t give subtitles for English dubs. If I understood the visuals right, though, he was forced into his current role in order to support Ren in becoming the ultimate nemesis of Heinrich, and fate is working to preserve him. Shirou is the Yin to Ren’s Yang. He wanders into a torture chamber, where he encounters a girl. She seems important. Wish we could know mo-nevermind.

In the meantime, Rusalka goes to the church to taunt Rea. It seems that every time a swastika opens, she gets pains in her stomach. Almost as if she’s pregnant. She throws Rea around and, for some unknown reason, Rea announces that she must not be the only one having stomach pains. Then, in waltzes Wilhelm, mad because Rusalka stole his prey by attacking Shirou and his girl. Except, he knows for some reason that Shirou isn’t dead, and is instead inside Rusalka’s womb. Oh, holy heavens. As if on queue, a fully grown Shirou busts out of her like a chestburster on steroids and now he has a relic of his own. He can summon spiked chains to fight for him like tentacles. Of course, Wilhelm has his own relic that he hasn’t fully revealed. He revs the genocide engines up to maximum. The moon turns red and every living thing in the area not protected by a relic gets the life energy sucked out of it. Flying petrified tree versus chains. Just when it seems that Shirou is getting the upper hand, a girl pops out of Wilhelm’s back and gives cover fire. He introduces her as both his sister and his mother. Oh! I get it! You have a messed up family tree, and your power is a messed up petrified tree! It’s thematic! Wow, something I finally understood in this anime.

Courtesy: Funimation

Their fight continues, but as it does, a new challenger appears. Wolfgang Schreiber appears and Rusalka begs for his/her help, claiming to love him/her. Wolfgang responds by breaking her neck and laugh-screaming like a maniac, then promising to get revenge for her. Using yet another giant skeleton soldier, s/he kills Wolfgang, opening another swastika. They tell Shirou about the revenge plot, but seeing as Rusalka is kind of immortal, it’ll take her a while to die. You can’t avenge a death that hasn’t happened yet, so he’s got some time to prepare. While Rusalka dangles in a pitiful, torturous form of half-life, Wolfgang scream-cackles at maximum crazy…

And that’s how the season ends.

Our Take

Wait a moment. I’m gonna go get some rum. I’ll need it to finish this review. If there was ever a thing wrong with this show, this episode did it at double strength. We open with an extended exposition sequence done primarily through a nearly unintelligible, false German accent. That leads to a scene where a pair of characters talk about things they have no way of knowing about but still don’t manage to fully explain. Then, we get a fight sequence. Yay, fight sequence. Then Wilhelm shows up and all rational activity ends. Literally, nothing about Wilhelm is revealed, to the point, I can’t even figure out their gender. Male name, flatchested, suggested to be romantically entwined with Rusalka who is implied to be straight but they never actually say it. But, long hair and voiced by Mikaela Krantz. Reads as a female in the face, but that’s just because so many characters have similar faces in this show. We have no concept of their history with Rusalka, or even who they are. Just a boat of crazy we’ve never seen before to wrap the season on.

Literally, every plot point brought in on this episode made me go “Wait, what is happening?” Nothing is explained despite the fact that the first half of the episode is all exposition. And can we talk about these messed up relationships we have going on? Two of Ren’s three primary romantic interests are family. Kasumi is his adoptive sister, and Marie is his mother’s past life. Wilhelm’s family is even more messed up. Now he just needs to adapt his mother/sister and marry her to get the full collection. Seriously, the creators of the game gave the characters such incredibly messed up romantic/familial ties that it makes me wonder about their home lives.

The voice acting. Man, I am so glad this show is over. The voice acting has been terrible all season long. Since we now have two to three spots where I couldn’t understand a word they said, it only got worse. Wolfgang’s VA was downright painful. I guess we got a bit more of Jeannie Tirado’s skill than the others, as Rusalka showed a range of emotion.

The animation was… there. The action portion was not all that enthralling. Low-quality animation, primarily characters floating around on a background while their abilities zip about. Everything was painted in shades of gray and red and lacked a bunch of detail. The best art I’ve seen in this episode (and show in general) was again, Rusalka. As she taunted Rea, her facial expressions were full of attitude and drama. I liked that. One thing. One thing in this show I liked. Wow.

Score

Summary

So, in summary... It's crap. I give it two mother/sisters out of ten.

2.0/10