English Dub Review: RErideD: Derrida, Who Leaps Through Time “Those Who Search, Those Who Conceal”

Trout Theory Replica.

Overview (Spoilers!)

Remember Cassiel, that guy from the museum footage? Apparently, he used to be a researcher and then became a destruct (WHO IS THIS MAN). Derrida wants to track him down, and Videaux just… knows that he’s in Garbon somehow. Okay. Derrida explains that the time ride works by sending your consciousness back to your past self, through something called the Trout Theory (LOL). Derrida wants to go back in time to redo his last day in 2050 and save Jacques, Nathan, and Mage.

Graham is broken, so Videaux and Mayuka head out to find a mechanic. Yuri is hiding a secret. She offers Derrida her camera to help with his time ride experiments, and a video sends him back to the final drive he took with Nathan (with a creepy send-off from Ange). Derrida tells Nathan to stop the car before they’re ambushed. In the present, though, Nathan is still dead.

Derrida returns to earlier in that day and tries to warn Nathan about Andrei, but he’s forced back to the present after only writing a sentence down. Now Yuri is searching for a notebook and pen. Derrida apparently changed her actions.

Derrida time rides to the morning of Mage’s birthday and plans to give Nathan an access key. No changes. Yuri remembers finding… something? while sweeping. Derrida goes back for the ninth time and leaves a note for Nathan. In the present, he takes a celebratory photo of him and Yuri.

Derrida barges in on Yuri sleeping and finds her gun. He’s transported to a timeline right before Mage’s party that doesn’t match with his own memories. He plans to mess with the autopilot in Nathan’s car and overhears Mage and Yuri talking about him, realizing that he changed their actions as well by being late to the party.

Yuri runs away in the middle of the night for… some reason. She reveals that it’s her fault that Mage is being hunted because she once accidentally opened the access key. A man puts a gun to her back. The next morning, Derrida, Videaux, and Mayuka find Yuri’s camera lying in the street.

Our Take

Boy, this show is confusing.

And it’s a shame, because when I can understand what’s going on, I actually enjoy the plot. Derrida going back to that day countless times in order to save his friends? Derrida only being able to make small changes to the past, having to expend all his mental strength to focus on his memories, meticulously writing down the details of each attempt using the scientific method? That’s fascinating. This is an approach to time travel I’ve never seen before, and it’s genuinely exciting.

But when the show starts talking about Derrida’s memories that he doesn’t recognize, when he thinks he’s experiencing someone else’s past—I’m lost. Derrida says that he can’t go back further than the morning of the party, but I have no idea why. I don’t understand why Derrida writing something down in 2050 caused Yuri to look for a pen and paper in 2060. I’m equally mystified by what’s going on with Yuri. What’s the item she’s hiding from Derrida? Why would her opening the access key by accident mean that Mage is being hunted? Why did Yuri run away at all?!

Unbelievable details really stop this show from being something special. Why would Derrida barge in on Yuri while she was sleeping, practically screaming at her? Why did Yuri and Mage leave their front door open while it was snowing? When Yuri says that Derrida looks like he’s been “up late working,” is it sunrise or sunset? Her words make it seem like sunrise, but then she goes to sleep immediately afterward? Did Yuri stay up all night too? Why? Plus, Graham and Mayuka’s convenient exit feels a little contrived, as does Yuri finding out about the time rides by “accidentally” catching sight of Derrida’s notes over his shoulder.

Also, are we just… going to forget about the Cassiel plotline? Surely next episode will have to be spent saving Yuri, right? Will the characters ever go after Cassiel? And seriously, who is this guy? Derrida keeps name-dropping him as if we should know, but he’s never been in the show before. I thought it would be he who kidnapped Yuri, but Cassiel blonde and that dude has brown hair. Who knows—maybe he pulled a reverse Donna and got a random dye job in the middle of the series.

Perhaps the worst sin of this episode, though, is that a huge amount of the plot hinges on a series of notes Derrida takes, detailing what year each of his loved ones died in. If he manages to change the past, the year on his paper will change. But because all writing in this show is done in a stylized, sci-fi style, it’s impossible to read what number is actually there. It looks like 2642, not 2050, and that makes it very hard to get invested in waiting for the number to change.

In general, the animation in this episode is truly atrocious. Whole conversations take place on one static frame, with only characters’ mouths moving. Poses are awkward and undetailed. The soundtrack, which has been great up until now, gets pretty repetitive during Derrida and Yuri’s conversations. But at least there’s some decent comic relief here. I love that, to alert his owners that he’s been damaged, Graham just… screams. And Yuri and Mage laughing at Derrida’s pretentiousness? That’s adorable.

To be fair, I’m pretty curious about one fact that keeps getting highlighted: the idea that Mage and Yuri are practically identical in personality. Honestly, I was expecting a reveal where Yuri is actually Mage in disguise, and it’s Yuri who is on the run. That doesn’t seem to be what the writers were going for, but I’m still holding out hope that we’ll get a twist that clever in the end.

Score
4.0/10