English Dub Review: How a Realist Hero Rebuilt the Kingdom “The Forefinger Twitches”

Overview:

Tomoe shares her secret! No one has been able to communicate with the demons so far. But with Tomoe’s ability to talk to animals she was able to. If this somehow got out it could cause trouble. So, to protect Tomoe and her family, Souma has the previous king and queen adopt her. After that Souma broadcasts a cooking show of sorts to show people different foods they can eat to try and combat the food shortage.

Our Take:

Yes, this episode ends on a cliffhanger too but don’t worry the stakes aren’t as high (seemingly) as the last time. Still kind of odd to have it happen two episodes in a row. Finding out what Tomoe had to tell Souma was definitely worth the wait. Her ability to converse with animals was cool enough on its own. But finding out that up until now no one could converse with the demons but the fact that Tomoe can was really cool. Maybe this will open up a path to negotiating with the demons.

To try and keep Tomoe safe there were a couple of ideas suggested and not all of them were great. One thought was to have her be one of Souma’s consorts, and apparently, ten is “within the allowable age” for this. I thought that was gross but this show handled it better than most. Souma shut that down immediately not wanting any part of it. Instead, he got the previous king and queen to adopt her since he can’t yet because he and Liscia aren’t married yet. This show narrowly dodged a pretty gross bullet. While maybe not a dealbreaker for most I like to include that so you can form your own opinion on the matter.

Speaking of Tomoe she’s voiced by Emi Lo, who is definitely on my watch list. After covering Shadows House I fell in love with her performance as Kate. Here she has to do more of the cutesy voice but she crushes it. I really like Tomoe so far and I think her ability will make her a big part of the story as it unfolds.

The cooking show was really cool and I like how they are trying to solve the food shortage in a unique way. By showing people things that they might not have thought of as “food”. Though I do find it hard to believe just cause people don’t live on the coast they never thought to try octopus. I don’t live on a coast but I knew eating octopus was a thing. Still, it was cool to see how it was handled. We didn’t get to see the final food Poncho revealed but what could be more shocking than eating insects? Guess we will see next time!