English Dub Review: Fairy gone “Stubborn Blacksmith and Biased Rabbit”

Artificial fairies, black fairy tomes, and catty assassins.

Overview (Spoilers Below):

The third anniversary of the war is rapidly approaching, and everyone in the series is busy. During the first half of the episode, the whole Dorothea crew is sent over to play peacekeeper between the Ministry of Fairies and the military while they inspect one of the malfunctioning artificial fairy soldiers. They don’t know who could be behind the recent string of sabotages, but it’s clearly someone with experience who knows what they’re doing.

In the second half, Bitter Sweet recruits two Dorothea agents, Klara and Marlya, to come with her to Mr. Warlock’s house in order to retrieve the black fairy tome. Warlock is one of the top brass at Gui Carlin, so it’s no easy task to get past him and his guards. In a twist, Bitter Sweet offers the two agents up to him as payment to get to the tome herself.

Our Take:

Well, I’ll give Fairy gone this: it’s one of the best shows at dealing out cliffhanger endings that leave me curious to see how the situation is going to play out next week. To be honest, though, that’s one of the only positive things about episode seven, Stubborn Blacksmith and Biased Rabbit. 

Fairy gone is nothing if not eager to overload us with information, and the story is no different this time around. From random ministry members speculating on the cause of the artificial fairy soldiers rebellion to Nein Auraa, the head of Dorothea, sitting in on a cabinet meeting, we get lots and lots of information that mostly just fades away as the episode drags on. It’s kind of exhausting, frankly, and I did not want to keep watching. (I did find Nein Auraa’s inner monologue predicting what the bureaucrats would say pretty funny, though.)

Two slightly interesting things I noticed as I was watching this episode: Axl the informant is known for being a rat, and yet he’s still employed with the mafia. This is so ridiculous but I love it. Everyone knows he’s telling everyone’s business to everyone else. At this point, I hope he sticks around until the end, just getting on everyone’s nerves. Or maybe he’s the secret mastermind behind the malfunctioning fairy soldiers! The other thing was how Marlya sounded a little hypocritical when dismissing Bitter Sweet because she was just using every organization for her own personal gain. Isn’t that just what Marlya is doing with Dorothea? She only joined to find Ver, really.

The English dub was solid overall this week. While I haven’t loved Morgan Garrett’s performance as Bitter Sweet, I think she improved this time around in sounding more natural and realistic rather than a stereotypical femme fatale. Jill Harris is still doing great work as Marlya, too: “What do you have to do to get a house that big?” I thought this quote from one of the fairy technicians has translated cleverly: “Artificial fairies aren’t machines, but that doesn’t mean they can’t go haywire.” Marlya’s reaction to hearing about Bitter Sweet’s proposal turns out to be pretty accurate: “The woman’s a liar and a thief – what could go wrong?” Finally, I really liked Warlock’s response to Bitter Sweet turning up on his doorstep with two random women: “You can show up with as many gorgeous ladies as you wish, but my answer is still the same.”

In its seventh episode, Fairy gone proves to be more boring than usual. There’s just too much exposition that doesn’t really matter while not enough action is going on. At least it picks up a bit towards the end, with Bitter Sweet’s plan being put into action. Here’s hoping next week will lean more on Fairy gone’s strengths!