English Dub Review: RErideD: Derrida, Who Leaps Through Time “Who Is Left in the World”

The Iron Giant meets The Walking Dead, just in time for Halloween!

Overview (Spoilers!)

Enormous, red-eyed robots stumble around the deserted city. One fires a stream of blasts at Derrida, who dodges out of the way. Zombielike, the robots descend upon him. Just as one straddles Derrida and goes in for the kill, someone else shoots it, shutting it down. The man, Vidaux, tells Derrida that it’s now 2060. Derrida has traveled 10 years into the future.

Vidaux explains that the DZs malfunctioned during the war, destroying cities and making Andrei rich. Vidaux tells Derrida that he’ll protect him, but only for $200. Shooting a bunch of DZs, Vidaux leads Derrida to his car “Graham,” where his young daughter Mayuka is waiting. She tries to use a machine to extract a chip from Derrida’s arm; he doesn’t have one, leading her to ask if she’s dead. Graham barrels over some more DZs, and a chase begins. The DZs launch rockets at the car, but Vidaux manages to swerve around them.

Andrei’s robot assistant informs him that Derrida is still alive. Vidaux, Mayuka, and Derrida squat in a ruined building as Mayuka make dinner. Derrida wants to find Mage because she has the access key that will run the patch file that will fix the DZs, but Vidaux refuses to help without pay. Derrida promises to give him the patch, which he can sell for a fortune.

Driving along the somehow pristine highway, Vidaux can’t find any info on Mage, so Derrida asks him to go to Nathan’s old house. Mayuka is reading Pinocchio and says she made up her own ending rather than read the real one. When they arrive, Nathan’s house is in shambles. A girl appears in front of Derrida; he thinks she’s Mage, but she says her name is Ange. Derrida relives Yuri’s song from the party, but the room soon fades back to its derelict state. He hears Yuri’s song and follows it to the garden, but no one is there.

Suddenly, a woman appears and holds Derrida up at gunpoint. Believing it’s Yuri, he assumes she’s only pointing a camera at him, but then Yuri fires a warning shot. Oops. Andrei hires a mysterious woman to kill Derrida. Derrida explains who he is, and Yuri says that Mage is dead.

Our Take

Maybe it’s because I watched this episode alone at night, but the opening is genuinely terrifying. A robot turns its blazing red eyes towards the camera, and it looks like it’s staring straight at me, marking me as its next target. The robots’ slow, limping motions are somehow more frightening than if they were running. I have to admit that this show is incredibly successful at creating ambiance. I feel the terror of walking through those deserted streets, further highlighted by the creepy wing imagery present in Vidaux’s attacks against the robots. The scene where Derrida recalls Yuri’s song is genuinely moving. And although Natalie Hoover’s rendition of the tune is a little rocky (I mean, she is playing a seven-year-old), it’s a beautiful piece of music all the same.

While still not perfect, this episode corrects a lot of the first episode’s wrongs. The writers still can’t get dialogue right, but there are scary robots, emotional moments, an exciting car chase, a cool assassin, and a reasonably well-done reveal at the end. Congrats, show!

But, yeah, the dialogue just doesn’t work, mostly because Derrida is so over-the-top rude and dramatic all the time (and Adam Gibbs’s shouty portrayal doesn’t help matters). After Vidaux saves his life, Derrida screams at him to demand answers, and I fully identify with Vidaux’s response: “Won’t you just shut up?” Derrida recaps his whole story out loud, which is pretty boring for us to listen to—even though it’s obviously intended to remind the audience of last episode’s plotline, because his speech sure doesn’t make any sense to Vidaux (“I don’t even know what you’re babbling on about,” says Vidaux, who is my hero). Why does Derrida furiously scream “WHO’S SHE?” when he sees Mayuka, after she already called Vidaux her dad? It reminds me of something my own father once said: that he doesn’t like anime because everyone in it is always screaming. I thought it was an unfair comment at the time, but Derrida might make me rethink that opinion. It’s not just Derrida who annoys me, though—Andrei does his own fair share of randomly spouting exposition for no real reason.

This episode could also stand to do a little more explaining. I have no idea what’s going on with the patch file/access key thing. It seems like the patch file is a flash drive with some info on it, and it can’t be used without the access key? But who has the patch file? Why did Jacques give Derrida the access key? And why did he give it to the eight-year-old Mage, of all people? What’s going on with the chip in people’s arms? That was never explained. And what exactly is the DZ malfunction? How did a bunch of soldier robots get convinced to turn around and destroy their own country, and how is Andrei still in business after that happened? Also, when Vidaux and Derrida break into Nathan’s house, Vidaux unlocks the door, and this baffling conversation ensues: “What are you?” asks Derrida, which is already a weird thing to say, but Vidaux replies, “I’m a destruct.” “Huh?” asks Derrida, and so Vidaux clarifies, “A demolition man.” But how does that clarify anything? How did he get into Nathan’s house?!

On the other hand, I do like Vidaux and his daughter. His attitude is refreshingly honest and to-the-point, and Mayuka’s Pinocchio story, while it comes totally out-of-the-blue, is charming and a little profound. “In my ending, Pinocchio becomes human, and then a chef!” Mayuka explains. “Not every human is happy with just being alive. So Pinocchio gets to be a chef who makes and eats all the tasty things he couldn’t have when he was a puppet! … I think happiness is getting to eat lots of delicious things whenever you want to!” While this points to the obviously difficult life she must have led, eating whatever’s available in a dystopic wasteland, it’s also an interesting meditation on people. We’re not just happy being alive. We need to feel like we have some kind of purpose, too.

It’s also telling that, while the suburbs full of ordinary people are in shambles, Andrei’s expensive, high-tech office building looks just as pristine as it did ten years ago. The city appears untouched by the DZs, presumably making a commentary on how it’s ordinary people, and not rich CEOs, who take the brunt of a disaster. It’s a relevant comment on a modern day, and it’s animated very well—Andrei’s building is pristine and gorgeous, as is the assassin in it. God, I love that assassin. I love that she points a gun in Andrei’s smug face, that she calls him “vile” for trying to bribe her with clothes. I love that she doesn’t take any of his crap, that she’s the one who’s really in charge here. Of course, when I saw an adult woman with brown hair in 2060, my immediate thought was that she’s a grown-up Mage, but shhh, if my theory’s right, it might be spoilers.

All in all, this episode is a mixed bag. I enjoy Graham’s weird automated voice, but the rocket launchers are ridiculous and impossible to take seriously, and the animation does a poor job of expressing the fear of Derrida and Mayuka’s faces. Nathan’s garden is gorgeous in the twilight, but Andrei’s arms are way too long when he puts on his coat. The opening song is catchy, but the new ending song isn’t as haunting as Yuri’s song, which played during the credits of episode 1. And the idea that Derrida would think Yuri still is holding a camera, even ten years later, is so ridiculous that I wrote: “HE’S AN IDIOT” in my notes. Yet the reveal about Mage? Appropriately shocking and sad.

All in all, I applaud this show for trying to do better. Who knows? By episode 3, maybe it’ll even be good.