English Dub Review: ēlDLIVE “Something to Believe In Part 2”

Do the evolution, baby.

Spoilers Below

Dr. Strangelove’s lab is now revealed, with the elderly professor lying on a table, his guts splayed out for all to see. A mysterious youth stands beside the corpse. The evil waiter launches an attack, only to have the boy disable him with the lab’s various robotic arms and tools. The teal haired boy studies his opponent, taking note of the amber (strange, that looks red to me) membranes of his irises, with a characteristic line. Well, gonna have to study that the next time. He deploys an SPH blaster and fires a shot the completely consumes the waiter.

The team moves in to arrest the boy on suspicion of murder, but the interloper stops to explain a couple things. One, the waiter isn’t dead. Nor is he an alien. The amber membrane is a clear sign that the perfectly ordinary human was under the influence of a mind-control SPH. Second, that the corpse on the table was an unintended anomaly. The process he usually uses to reset his body went wrong while he split off from his old one, destroying the shell. The boy is Dr. Love! Wow! Amazing! Nobody could have seen that coming! Check his SPH! It really is him! So many shocked faces! Well, time to take off the handcuffs and escort him back to base.

Veronica is now missing her internal organs and a good pint of blood. A green SPH blast has shot clean through her. The source? A certain raven-haired damsel. Ninotchka’s has switched sides? No, her eyes have that strange membrane over them, and her personality is completely different. And it’s red, despite everyone saying it’s amber. Look at that picture on the right, the stinking eyes are red. She’s being mind controlled. But, mind control or no, she’s on the assault. The doctor won’t surrender to her, but his shields and robotic arms lack the power to stop her. Chuuta and Dulough jump in, but even their Sympathy Sewing can’t match her blasts. After a brief crisis of faith, the symbiotic pair comes up with a plan to create decoys and blast her from behind. However, her shots are thought guided, and she arcs it over their attack. Dulough turns to block with full force. The collision sparks a blast that scorches the landscape.

Chuuta lies in a crater, half his face burnt. He can’t move, he can’t talk, and he can’t hear Dulough. When he manages to open his eyes, the only thing he can see is the burnt and mangled biomatter that used to be Dulough. In his despair and desperation, he calls out mentally to his monitalien. Weakly, the creature responds. He has been watching Chuuta closely. Seeing how elDLIVE has changed the boy, he notes that he started by liking, then believing in Sonokata, then believing in others. Even believing in himself. Because of that, he believes in Chuuta. If it were up to him, Dulough’s wish would be that he could live in this symbiotic relationship with Chuuta forever.

Too bad he’s not programmed that way. As Chuuta lay dying, Dulough’s core programming takes over the symbiont’s powers, forcing an evolution so that it could subdue and attach itself to a new host: Ninotchka. It assumes a slightly different form, with more spikes and strange looking wings. It fires smaller, more powerful cutting beams that slice through the muscles of the girl’s arms and legs to disable her. It attempts to fire more blasts to knock her out, but Chuuta uses his dwindling strength to pull the creature’s head back. He turns it around, aiming its next blast back at himself and screaming “This isn’t who you are! I believe in you!”.

Their shared feelings overides the monitalien’s programming, reasserting Chuuta as Dulough’s host. Dr. Love comments that this connection is extremely rare, with a success rate of .02%. Now evolved beyond their previous level of power, and armed with an even more powerful bond, Dulough and Chuuta are ready to take the fight to Ninotchka, and her mysterious controller.

Let’s talk about the writing. If you couldn’t tell from my use of Ultrasarcasm^tm earlier, the writing doesn’t really throw you a huge amount of curves. Combined with a spoiler-riddled opening theme sequence, I initially felt that I could write the summary of this episode without even watching it. I wasn’t all that surprised when Chuuta lost the fight, nor that he would regain control of Dulough with an upgrade. It’s pretty formulaic. The way they played it out, with the near death of Dulough, was good enough that I could actually feel for the characters. This made it better than the last episode, at least.

The animation, similarly, is using too many of the cost-cutting techniques that older anime are known for, and an episode that could have had some really great action ends up falling a bit flat. Art-wise, though, there is one high point and one low point. The dying form of Dulough was strangely shocking, and a bit grotesque, but not gory. It was extremely detailed, and it made an impact seeing a character of the show in that state. On the other hand, when Dulough is under the control of his programming and attacking Ninotchka, he looks like something you could find on some kid’s DeviantArt, filed under his Sonic the Hedgehog self-insert persona. It tries very hard to be edgy, while its underlying form is cartoony. It wants very hard for people to take it seriously as an intimidating threat, but everyone just laughs at it. That’s kinda been a problem I’ve had with Dulough the entire time, but never really said. He doesn’t seem to fit, visually, as a part of Chuuta. It doesn’t even make much sense when I look at it. What is that thing coming out of its head? Why do its wings not look anything like the rest of its body?

Voice acting… I… can’t really complain? Chuuta was a bit screechy-whiny sounding for a moment there, but I don’t blame the voice actor. Chuuta is screechy-whiny. Otherwise, everything is fine in the auditory department. I give this episode seven nearly-naked Ninotchkas out of ten.

Oh, did I forget to mention that? Ninotchka spends the vast majority of the episode in her transformed magical girl form, which is wearing leaves over her naughty bits and nothing else. No wonder Dulough was going to leave Chuuta to get in that body. Surprised Chuuta didn’t get a nosebleed.