English Dub Review: ISEKAI QUARTET; “Sneak In! The Principal’s Office”

Overview

High school boys desire alcohol. A silly heist is formulated. It goes poorly.

Our Take

The assorted lads from The Saga of Tanya the Evil and Kazuma lament the fact that they haven’t been able to acquire a decent buzz since arriving in the school dimension. I don’t know about the Imperial boys, but I’m fairly certain Kazuma is not of legal drinking age and is just tagging along to be part of the guys and seem cool to them. 

The entire affair is regarded with the same juvenile tone that would accompany the antics of a gang of high school boys trying to nab some beer from one of their dad’s private fridge in the garage. Except, in this case, the alcohol is in the principal’s office, and they refer to it as “the red stuff,” for reasons unknown and probably not worth knowing. 

Fortunately for them, the principal is gone on a business trip, providing a prime opportunity for some breaking and entering. Unfortunately for them, Aqua shows up just in the nick of time to crash the party. This was probably going to go south anyway, but as anyone who has caught even a glimpse of Aqua’s track record can tell you, her arrival spells certain doom. But hey, perhaps if you lived her lifestyle, you might want a stiff drink too. 

Lo and behold, Aqua nonchalantly barges into the principal’s office, opens the cabinet and takes a bottle of wine. This sets off a needlessly elaborate array of Mission: Impossible-style traps, complete with a referential theme song and real lasers capable of searing flesh. The group successfully disarms all of the traps, but then some frogs come out of the wall and eat some of them. It’s exactly as dumb and unexpected as it sounds. 

The Imperial boys employ some basic mathematics, counting four frogs and five people. They surmise that four people can get eaten by a frog each, allowing the remaining person to escape with the wine. A noble plan if ever you could make one in this particular set of circumstances. The group decides that Aqua should be the one to escape with the wine. However, Kazuma hoses her at the last minute and bolts, condemning her to an admittedly hilarious amphibious demise. 

None of this mattered by the way, because Ram ratted Kazuma out to the teachers beforehand. I knew she was a demon, but who knew she was a narc?

This episode represents a lower point in this show’s travails through the laundry list of cliche scenarios involving high schoolers. It’s just all of the standard components of “dumb high school boys steal alcohol,” but with no real unique spins or updates that take advantage of the isekai setting. Even worse, they threw Aqua into the mix for no good reason.