English Dub Review: HAKYU HOSHIN ENGI “Concentration”

“I”m sorry, did I break your concentration?”

Overview (Possible Spoilers Below)

The episode somewhat begins with a scene that I’m not sure leads anywhere as Ohtenkun goes into a speech to Taiko about how he’s a “dark reflection” of him and vice-versa, if it was a future flash like the previous episodes were infamous at doing, then all it does is confuse me and by extension the audience. Strangely enough, it turns out Taiko’s trust in a person he barely knows like Youzen wasn’t misplaced. While the previous episode showed us how much of a fucking moron Taiko is for repeating the same strategy of impulsively charging forth, It turns out ramming the entire floating Island of Konron Mountain actually worked, as it somehow managed to ram the island despite running into the shield with parts of the mountain exploding in the previous episode.

It turns out Youzen finally came through despite last episode making me think he wouldn’t do this as he’s weak to the point that he can’t even keep his human form together, but he really did turn the Kingo shield off during the collision. Consequently, Bunchuu is less than thrilled because Ohtenkun sorta lets it happen rather than stop him by giving him a choice to turn it off while playing verbal mind-games. Unfortunately, this small victory now presents itself with a new set of problems as Ohtenkun points out to Bunchu that knowing the selflessness of Taiko, Youzen will need to be rescued, and they should seize this chance to use him as bait to take out some of Konron’s heavy-hitters, but Taiko takes it upon himself along with Youzen’s mentor “Gyokutei” in entering enemy territory which goes about as well you’d expect, with him walking right into a different kind of trap that was explained to the audience seconds ago.

Unlike the Sand-Trap that Youzen was stuck in two episodes ago, This one turns people into toys if they lose to various board games within the space and Supu finds this out the hard way in which Taiko takes up the challenge to restore his friend. As Taiko tries to cheat to win a game of “Concentration”, which is a basic card memory game. His plan goes smoothly at first until it’s his opponents turn with a shocking reveal that his opponent can manipulate anything within this space by willpower alone making Taiko’s chances to win seemingly impossible. By the time Taiko realizes this, it’s already too late. The episode ends on a cliffhanger as Taiko gets turned into a bizarre looking plush, but before doing so entrusts Gyokutei to get them out of this mess.

Our Take

I guess last week was intended to build tension & suspense, but what happened here was implausibly dumb luck. the special effects are bright & colorful visuals, and a few action scenes that are seemingly the only thing going for it in this episode. I know this sounds repetitive, but the writing feels so damn contrived that they’d have to keep putting Taiko in dangerous situations that don’t always advance the story.

While I’m sort-of glad that Youzen came through, the writing still needs to stop with the flash-forward scenes before the intro. This isn’t like the fragmented narrative of Pulp Fiction where it encourages its audience to put these out of sequence/context scenes together in their heads to make sense of what’s going on because all it does it confuse rather than make us invested in anything or anyone in this series.

“I”m sorry, did I break your concentration?”