English Dub Review: Kabaneri of the Iron Fortress: The Battle of Unato

Overview (Spoilers Below):

Set six months after the original anime series left off, Kabaneri of the Iron Fortress: The Battle of Unato picks up with our heroes journey to the Unato station in order to take it back from the Kabane, zombies who used to be humans. Everyone from the show (minus Takumi, of course) is present: Ayumi, Kurusu, Sayo, Yukina, Ikoma, and Mumei. The Iron Fortress group teams up with a band of united forces in order to take back Unato, but things aren’t as they seem.

Ikoma and Mumei have felt strange since arriving in the region. Ikoma describes it as a constant headache. He also thinks the kabane in the area are acting abnormally, moving in groups and working together to take down humans. But nobody seems to believe him at first, and so he gets quarantined when he blows up with anger and attacks Mumei. A little while later, the united forces begin to move towards Unato Castle, their objective to liberate. Meanwhile, Mumei goes to investigate a mining tunnel that Ikoma was suspicious of. She finds it filled with Kabane, and gets trapped inside with a boss kabane.

As she’s fighting for her life, the main united forces group is overrun with kabane and their major weapon explodes. With the plan blowing up in their faces (literally), some want to retreat. But Ayami commands the Iron Fortress crew to press forward, where they will meet up with Ikoma and Mumei. Ikoma breaks free from his quarantine and goes to rescue Mumei in the mine tunnels just in time. Together with a few others, they follow the tunnel into Unato Castle and see Kagayuki, the former owner of the castle, guarding his daughter Miyuki, who is in a glowing orb, close to form a giant monster of connected kabane. The two of them became Kabaneri in a tragic accident, and are filled with hatred. Ikoma and Mumei are able to overcome them together, with some help from the Iron Fortress and a tunnel. There may still be danger and hatred around them, but they’ve learned all it takes to survive is someone you care about.

Our Take:

A country divided by hatred, suspicion, and fear. This is the world that Kabaneri of the Iron Fortress places us in. Originally an anime series that came out on Amazon Prime in the US in 2016, Kabaneri quickly became one of my favorite shows of that summer. It’s a mixture of grim themes, epic music, and emotional turbulence reminded a lot of people of Attack on Titan. Indeed, it shares a lot with that blockbuster hit, including being created by Wit Studio. But to me, it surpassed Attack on Titan in some key ways, like how it handled the world-building more logically and how the main character isn’t some overpowered hero to everyone. Ever since this movie was announced, I’ve been looking forward to it. Was it worth the wait?

Let’s get this out of the way first: this series has some confusing licensing deals. Despite being streamed on Amazon Prime, it was dubbed by Funimation, and the new movie is only available on Netflix in the US. Another weird thing is that Netflix divided it up into three ‘episodes’ of about 30 minutes each, rather than allowing it to be one long movie like it was in theatres. This presentation is just one of the factors that lead me to my conclusion that this does not really feel like a movie.

The plot itself is a lot of the reason for this. Of course, it wouldn’t be Kabaneri of the Iron Fortress without a lot of kabane killing action, but aside from some amazingly-animated combat scenes, this movie doesn’t really bring anything new to the table. Because of the shorter nature of a movie VS an entire anime season, there’s just not enough time to develop any new characters beyond a surface level understanding. We barely get five minutes of screentime with the main antagonist, and even then a lot of that is just exposition. I like that Kabaneri doesn’t usually pigeonhole its villains as being purely evil – Kagayuki didn’t intend on becoming this way, but the hatred and anger in his heart made him behave like this. Ikoma and Mumei nicely summarize this theme at the end of the film, but I can’t help but feel like it would’ve hit harder if we’d had more time to unpack the meaning for ourselves rather than just hear our heroes say it flat out.

Another one of my issues with the movie was that there just wasn’t enough of the side characters for me. Obviously, there just isn’t room for everyone when it comes to big-screen adaptations like this. But one of my favorite parts of Kabaneri is the group dynamic. There’s a princess, a soldier, a child prodigy, and an average train worker coming together to beat their common enemies. Battle of Unato sidelines most of the characters aside from Ikoma and Mumei for the first half of the film, and even though they come together in the final ‘episode’, I still didn’t get enough of characters like Ayumi, Yukina, and Sayo. (Although I gotta praise the movie for giving us one scene featuring Yukina’s abs.)

Finally, I didn’t know what to make of the new relationship between Ikoma and Mumei. All throughout the show, and even in this movie, Ikoma is shown to view Mumei as a little sister. Because his own little sister was killed by the kabane, he sees Mumei as a ‘second chance’ in a way, vowing not to let her die and giving her a promise to make her human again someday. But from the very start of the movie, it’s clear that Mumei has something of a crush on Ikoma. I never got this from the show, so it seemed really out of the blue here. I guess that’s what a six-month gap will do! And with Mumei growing up with an older brother who turned out to be a villain, Ikoma has filled that positive older role model space for her. But after an entire movie worth of getting saved by Ikoma (kind of a turn around from the series, where Mumei gets to be more of a badass), Mumei ends up giving him a quick kiss as they ride away victorious on the train. Their whole dynamic seems to be getting thrown aside in favor of a generic romance storyline, and I’m not sure what to think. If they had to kiss, at least it went as well as it could’ve, with it being framed as more of my mischievous Mumei thing than something Ikoma was actively pursuing. (And I haven’t even unpacked the age difference between them.)

I really enjoyed the movie’s ending message about how the kabane virus feeds on anger, anxiety, and hatred. It speaks to worries of today, and Kabaneri has always done a good job of translating modern troubles into an enticing steampunk, post-apocalyptic future. Another thing that helped finish the movie off on my good side was the group dance number. That’s right after the zombies are defeated and the evil vanquished, the entire crew of the train breaks out into a traditional Japanese dance. It was maybe out of place, but I loved it!

With a solid dub that seems to replicate most of the good casting of the original Funimation series dub, Kabaneri of the Iron Fortress: The Battle of Unato is definitely worth a watch for fans of the show. While it has some issues with characterization and focusing too much on Ikoma and Mumei to the detriment of other characters, it was nice seeing the Iron Fortress gang together again. Sure, it may not be as exciting as the biggest moments from the show, but it was still a nice epilogue of sorts. And there may be more Kabaneri content to come, as I don’t think we’ve seen the last of them.