English Dub Review: High School Prodigies Have It Easy Even In Another World, “Masato Is Serious About Making Money!”

 

 

 

Overview

In his efforts to pay back Elm Village, Masato takes it upon himself to start a business for them. In doing so, he also aims to take out the big manipulative trading company in town. 

Our Take

The first of the seven high school prodigies to truly step up to the plate is Masato, the world’s top entrepreneur. Make way for capitalism. 

In contrast to the very efficient first episode, this episode is content to move at a much slower pace. It’s so slow that there’s even going to be a second part to this story arc.

For the most part, this episode feels like a crash course on basic economics and capitalism. Masato gets a permit and proceeds to take that and skirt around the rules to start up a business. As expected, he succeeds greatly, but how greatly? Evidently, he’s going to completely crush the opposing trading company into the ground. This doesn’t seem entirely necessary, but if he didn’t do that we might not know he’s the greatest economic mind in the world. It’s also obviously much more entertaining to watch. 

From his introduction, Masato seemed like he would be the asshole of the group. It’s not just the notion that ridiculously businessmen like him are inherently greedy. He seemed to come off that way initially, holding a “by any means necessary” ethic. That ethic has been employed in this episode, but it hasn’t come off as selfish. Obviously, there’s the fact that he has to and wants to repay the village who saved him. But while he clearly is enjoying screwing over the rival company, he also does seem to be genuinely enjoying helping people out. This little ripple in his character makes him more pleasant to watch.

Even in just the second episode, it seems the most useful prodigy out of the seven is Shinobu, the world’s top journalist and ninja. She’s the only prodigy with two distinct titles, and it’s a pretty convenient combination to have. Being able to infiltrate anywhere and know exactly what to look for will probably be the linchpin to a lot of the schemes in the future. 

The star of this episode though is arguably Roo, the cute cat gal that Masato decided to take under his wing. Her primary role is just to look adorable in any situation she’s in, with her tail constantly wagging behind her no matter where she goes. But she’s also greedy in this weird way. She likes money literally. Not that she likes buying things, but she enjoys physically being near money. This is probably just some weird character trait made to make her look even more adorable, but it’s a little odd. Roo is in the opening animation, so I imagine she’ll be showing up more, probably just to drive up the cute factor.

It’s probably because there isn’t a lot of action so far, but the animation has been pretty on point. Except for Tsukasa, who looks like a typical over-designed anime protagonist, all of the character designs are pretty sharp, even the secondary ones. Almost every shot thus far has been executed very well, with little errors or low effort drawings. Hopefully, this stays consistent. 

The show is just starting, but the pace seems to be slowing down just a bit too much. We’re getting two whole episodes focusing on mostly one of the main characters. At this rate, the subsequent episodes are probably going to be cramming more characters into more complex plots.