English Dub Review: Gleipnir “Where the Promise Was Made”

Overview (Spoilers Below):

Elena and Naoto tell a member of their group how they know about the man guarding the spaceship as he’s an old friend of theirs. Naoto mentions how his girlfriend, Aiko seems off somehow to Kaito as they’re walking home from school. Kaito doesn’t think about it too much, but while meeting with their friend group he mentions Honoka. The group tells him about how Honoka moved to live with relatives because of her father’s situation. Kaito tracks down Honoka’s relative, but her relative doesn’t know where she is. Then he considers Aiko’s words and finds her suspicious enough to follow her.

He follows her to the alien and then he calls the others to the rundown hotel. The alien explains that the Aiko they know is actually a transformed Honoka. Afterward, the group decides to keep things as they are. One day he follows Honoka to the cram school where he then kills her. Later he finds out that Aiko committed suicide and he admits that he killed Honoka. He shows up with a coin to the alien, and after the group discusses the rumor of a girl causing people to disappear. Then we return to the present as Clair visits the cram school as she calls Shuichi who then hangs up.

Our Take:

At this point, Gleipnir is a tragic story about a friend group with supernatural powers and an alien. The episode had a long flashback to explain Shuichi’s old cram school friend group, and how one of them took it too far for the sake of justice. Even though the flashback helped fill in the blanks, the anime could have focused on the present with Clair and Shuichi and how their actions are affecting their lives.

The cram school friend group is not the best friend group in the world. Kaito’s reason for killing Honoka was extreme and it flopped for me with how he rushed to that conclusion. It could have been easily straightened out with a conversation. The lack of communication in this friend group is frustrating with how the others don’t tell Kaito anything about Honoka. Their decision to stay quiet about the revelation that Honoka is now Aiko is understandable considering how the alien demonstrated his ability to transform his arm. If there was one thing I liked about the flashback was the alien commenting on Kaito caring that Honoka was gone. His recollection of when Honoka asked for her wish despite his hesitation was a nice scene as well to show how much he cared for Honoka too.

There’s also the flashback that sets up Kaito as the main character in this tragic story. It goes back to the previous episode on when he killed the group of gatherers and his decision to change the ending. The episode gives us a lot about a new character introduced an episode ago. It’s nice to know how he separated from the group, but the execution could be handled better.

Back to the present, there isn’t much to Clair’s visit to the cram school other than the fact that she finds a plush toy that looks like Shuichi’s mascot form. At least we know where she was when Shuichi was at the car dump. Hopefully, the last episode will have their story end at a proper conclusion or stopping point.

Overall the episode didn’t add much to the present conflict. It does clarify Shuichi’s relationship with his old friends through a long flashback. However, with one episode left there’s not much room for Gleipnir to wrap up the plot threads in the present.