English Dub Review: Masamune-Kun’s Revenge “Cinderella Doesn’t Smile”

Someone knows the secret!

Spoilers Below

So, you have an amazing plan to get revenge on the girl that broke you heart, and are well on your way to enacting your cunning scheme. You receive a letter from an anonymous creeper containing merely the childhood nickname used by this girl and the bullies to torment you. What do you do? If you’re Masamune Makabe, you freak out repeatedly and constantly all day long. Why? Despite his new physique and popular status, he has heart-shattering anxiety of ever being discovered. He fears others knowing that he was once chubby little rich brat, and being rejected.

Amid this, we get a brief scene of Masamune getting tricked by Aki’s maid Yoshino into braving the lunch rush to get Aki’s explosive croquette buns. She seems so sweet and innocent and clumsy. She spends most of the scene toppled over with her skirt upturned and panties to the sky, resigned to the horrors of the crowd. He takes this opportunity to get in with Aki again, showing off the injury he got protecting her and taking the opportunity to double down on the charm to fluster her.

As he walks away, he becomes ensnared in a rope trap. The mysterious Anonymous X reveals herself, none other than Yoshino. Not as sweet or bumbling as she appears! She offers to help him in taking down Aki, but he doesn’t much trust her. Instead, he continues his plan. Step two, get her email and begin correspondence. One thing, he has no contacts on his contact list, and is pretty certain if she finds out, she’ll reject the offer. He starts getting involved around school, even managing to get a class representative to ask him out. This grants him enough confidence to ask Aki out on a date. She doesn’t just reject him, she puts him through a scavenger hunt to find out that she’s rejected him. Yoshino reappears, and offers again to help him take Aki down. And the deal is struck.

As a guy who grew up an overweight outcast, it was refreshing to see a main character who not only moved past that, but continues to be haunted by the torment of his early days. These things stick with you when you grow up, and destroy your self-image through your adulthood. He isn’t just amazing all of a sudden, he’s still damaged by the bullying and body shaming. It also goes to show, men are just as vulnerable to this sort of thing as women. It’s nice that this show puts this issue in the limelight. My primary issue is that someone as logical as he was shown to be makes some really dumb moves in this episode, jumping ahead on his plan and outing himself by getting mad when Aki rejects his date.

Visually, this is the same level as the previous episode, but I noticed that the characters have little quirks in their movement that give them a bit more life than I had originally seen. The voices were synced well enough, and there wasn’t much of a call for sound effects.

I don’t dislike this show at all. RomComs might not be my cup of tea, but this show is relateable enough to me that I can get along with it. I am curious as to Yoshino’s betrayal of her master, and will continue to watch until I find out why. I give this episode seven explosive croquette buns out of ten.