English Dub Review: Plunderer “Cheating”

Overview (Spoilers Below):

The time travels have returned! And what does that mean? Time to party, obviously. Despite everyone being resistant to it, Nana loads the gang up with more alcohol than they can handle while threatening them that “anyone who doesn’t drink up will get felt up.” Licht turns Hina’s advances down due to her age, which sends her into a spiral of self-doubt and dunken rage.

Later on, Nana and Licht talk about their past and he thanks her for being the one who saved him after the war ended. Lynn tries to escape from her body image issues, but everyone around her eggs them on and she eventually collapses into tears. Hina confronts Licht, who reveals that he may have had a thing with her mother.

Our Take:

Big yikes. Just one episode after dealing with serious subjects like PTSD, inequality, and war crimes, Plunderer is back to doing what it seems to be the best at: disgusting scenes of sexual harassment and depressingly tone deaf body shaming. Cheating is an episode that’s so filled with junk that it completely loses sight of point of the episode. Nana and Licht’s past gets a small amount of time to shine, which is nice, but it’s a blink and you’ll miss it moment. Meanwhile Licht and Hina’s relationship is so strained that it’s hard to watch, and the show is seemingly saving the resolution of their struggles for next week, with barely a tease of why Licht reacted the way he did.

Let’s start with the stuff that’s was fine. There were a handful of genuinely funny gags, like Nana’s imitation of Jail as she calls him out for not keeping his convictions. That not only plays up his stereotypically droll nature, but also reminds us of the history of the characters and gets us more invested in their relationship. Honestly, Jail and Nana are probably two of the only redeemable characters at this point. And Lynn, poor Lynn. Nana and Licht get a chance to talk for a minute about halfway through this week’s episode, and it’s a discussion that they’ve been needing to have ever since the war ended. She’s frustrated with always taking care of him and never being thanked for it. He lets her known that all she did for him paid off, and he was so distant and cold because he couldn’t help it.

Those are really the only saving graces of the entire episode. The rest of the runtime is layered with some of the nastiest, most immature fan service I’ve ever seen. Hina, feeling inadequate about her chest size because Licht rejected her, rips off Lynn shirt in front of everyone to see if Licht will be interested. Which, of course he is, because he’s awful. As he and Nana assault her, Hina looks on, thinking that if only her boobs were bigger, she could get groped, too. And that’s just one example of how completely vapid and insulting an episode Cheating is.

The dub is good, but I can’t help but feel bad for everyone involved in the show at this point. I can’t imagine it’s a gratifying experience to deliver lines like “the only thing more shallow than my cup size is you.” Innuendos and fat jokes overwhelm an episode that’s ostensibly about Licht and the time travelers recovering from the history they’ve now lived through, and the bad stuff obliterates anything good about it.