English Dub Review: ēlDLIVE “Misuzu’s Lie″

Bowling, the interstellar past time.

Spoilers Below

The three new teammates have joined into Chuuta’s class, and they’re already popular! Tateyan shows a bunch of initiative in welcoming them by asking Ninotchka to manage the football team! Apparently, these three have never really understood the concept of undercover. They all carry on as if they knew Misuzu and Chuuta were life-long friends. Dr. Love doesn’t even bother to remember his new alias. Tateyan gives him the nickname of Ta-kun for short. He also invites the elDLIVE members out to bowling. The only catch, Chuuta has to convince Misuzu to go.

She resists, while still wearing those strangely-colored noseplugs. Chuuta tries to convince her by communicating through their elDLIVE badges, afraid to get too close to her. You see, in the last episode, she made a comment that Chuuta’s SPH stank ever since Dolough’s update. He’s been self-conscious about it ever since. She tries to lie, saying it’s just a fashion accessory. All the same, his efforts are in vain until Captain Brick comes on the line. Apparently, the bowling alley they were going to had some faint, but anomalous, SPH readings. Time to investigate and Misuzu is ordered in!

Of course, this is all a ruse. Not only is there no SPH to be found, but Brick and two other senior staff are there, bowling as if they weren’t a purple catgirl and a man made of onyx. There isn’t any problem, though, as all the terran bowlers just think it’s all cosplay. In order to further allay suspicions, however, all the elDLIVE agents are playing with a handicap. The girls are all making sure to roll a split on the first roll. Brick is closing his good eye and only rolling with his pinky. Not to be left out, however, Chips arrives in his “Mrs. Sonokata” mecha and attempts to bowl. He hits the eject button by mistake again, launching himself down the lane instead of the ball. After slipping through the pin spotter he finds himself in a strange back room. Tiny aliens are packing up insects into crates for shipping. It’s an aanthropoidalsmuggling ring! And they all gang up on Chips! Oh well.

Back with the rest of the crew, the rivalry between Veronica and Misuzu is heating up. Veronica is a Kushutorian, a species that believes they are superior to all other forms of life, and that victory is bred directly into their genes. She continues to lord this over everyone until Dr. Love points out that she is not, in fact, a pure Kushutorian any more. The injuries she sustained in the previous mission required that he install several artificial organs to keep her alive. Suddenly, her superiority is all gone, leaving her to cry out in the middle of a bowling alley: “I’m not a pure girl anymore!” Yeah, I don’t think anyone took that differently than she was intending. However, Dr. Love isn’t done with the revelations. That noseplug Sonokata’s been wearing? It’s actually ritual jewelry for a particular alien species. When the males began to come of age, they would wear it to train their noses to smell SPH. When their bodies would release SPH, it would fly off and self destruct.

Which it chooses now to do. Without the protection of the bangle, she smells Chuuta’s SPH at a heightened level, losing control of her own SPH and her body. In her convulsions, she launches her ball behind her, removing Tateyan’s hair and knocking a hole in the wall. On the other side, Chips is drunk with candy, bribes from the little smugglers. They had been using specially designed walls to hide their SPH! The Case is closed, and everyone is free to go back to the ship… Now if only Dr. Love weren’t so creepy about asking to give Misuzu a physical…

After the more intense episode we just had, this one is a little more fun. There was plenty of humor to be had. Not a huge amount really was done with the plot, though I have a strange suspicion Misuzu isn’t really repulsed by Chuuta’s SPH. Probably the opposite. Animation was nothing really that special, although the ball throwing scene at the end did have a bit of a peak as Chuuta had to dodge.  Voice acting? I think the actors were having a little bit of fun with this episode, and might have gone over the top a bit with some lines, but it all fit into the fun of the episode, which I give seven exploding noseplugs out of ten.