English Dub Review: ENDRO! “Snowy Mountain Dream!”

Seira saves the day by crushing some dreams!

Overview (Spoilers Below):

Our heroes are being given the cold shoulder by their latest quest, and they are having a hard time surviving! Stuck on an icy and barren mountainscape, they huddle together for warmth. Despite warning each other not to fall asleep, they can’t help it, and a monster comes to feast on their Cartado cards while giving them crazy dreams. Luckily, Seira has enough willpower to break free of her dream and rescues her three companions just in time.

Our Take:

Snowy Mountain Dream! opens with a savage-looking scene. The girls are stranded on the side of a tall mountain peak, and there’s more snow than they’ve ever seen before. It’s not looking good for their survival. Despite this intense opening, this week’s episode of ENDRO! was one of the more laidback ones in a while. (It was definitely the sleepiest adventure the girls have ever gone on. Hah!) That’s because this episode chooses to focus on the relationship of our main characters themselves rather than spending time on the quest that brought them to the mountain. All we know about that is that Mao sent them there with a promise it wouldn’t be snowy, which sounds a little ominous… is the Demon Lord back to their old ways, or is Mao just that clueless about weather patterns?

Since we don’t get to accompany the girls on an epic quest, we spend a lot of time just enjoying their banter back and forth as they attempt to endure their night on the mountain. It’s freezing out, and they don’t have anything to build a fire with. (Mei suggests lighting a fire with their clothing, but the others don’t see the true genius behind her idea.) They start discussing their dreams and goals in an effort to try not to fall asleep, but it quickly fails. The episode turns into a montage of each character’s dream. Yusha is throwing down with the Demon Lord, of course. Fie is off on a mission to sample all the yummy food the world has to offer. Mei is after legendary Cartado, obviously. And Seira just wants to clean her room. (And, sigh, grow a bigger bust.) Here’s where the episode works and doesn’t work for me. At this point, I realized we wouldn’t be getting to see the quest, and so it was nice to settle back and have a relaxing dream adventure in each girl’s mind. But also, this would’ve been the perfect opportunity to expand on what we know about these characters and offer up something new. Alas, ENDRO! has no such goals in mind, and we just rehash the same old tropes we’ve come to know. Fie likes food, Mei is a Cartado aficionado, etcetera etcetera.

Despite the lack of meaningful character progression, there are at least some decent jokes littered throughout the episode. The gag where each girl takes a turn falling asleep and getting rudely awakened is funny, as is how Mei describes her dreams of owning every Cartado card. It starts out innocently enough, but soon she’s talking about how the cards will become too powerful and remake the world in their image. Her friends dismayed and unbelieving reactions are pretty great. Seira’s major life goal is cleaning her room, which is just silly enough to be funny. It also helps that her messiness has been a consistent theme.

The dub this week gave everyone room to bring out the best performances in their dreams, and the cast delivered a great English language adaption. Seira’s line about cleaning her room was great: “Realistically, I’d like to do something about it before graduation.” I’d hope so, young lady. Yusha’s line about being “Sassy and without fear” is a perfect encapsulation of her heroism. Mei geeking out about Cartado is always welcome, and Trina Nishimura does an excellent job selling her passion for it, especially in the scene where she discovers a monster’s been munching on her precious cards.

The tenth episode of ENDRO! is a sweet, if the mildly underwhelming episode that serves as somewhat of a reintroduction to everyone’s character trope. It also gives Seira a chance to shine as the savior of the group, which was very cool to see. They may not have defeated a demon lord or eaten lots of yummy food, but they’ve survived a night on the mountain and they have each other to thank for it.