English Dub Review: Restaurant to Another World “Carpaccio / Curry Bun”

D’aw, siren’s got a crush.

Overview (Spoiler)

Okay, remember Alphonse Flugel? Castaway with no Wilson who found a door to the Nekoya on his island? Well, now that he’s gone home, a pair of sirens have taken up residence there. They found a note from him and a bag of money he left that gives directions to the Nekoya. So, the sirens head on up to try it out. They eat raw fish, and they are the only sapient species they know that do. Fortunately, the Nekoya has a dish called Tuna Carpaccio. The meat is sliced or pounded thin and served with vinegar, olive oil, and spices. It’s normally an appetizer, so they need a bit more. While they are there, they discover a piano and decide to start singing while they play with it. Aletta and the Master get woozy and are about to keel over. Fortunately, Kuro is immune to their power and was asked to protect the weaker people in the Nekoya by Red. She hushes them up. They are impressed by her telepathy and fangirl out about her. And then, while they eat, who shows up but Alphonse Flugel. The more tomboyish of the two looks at him like she wants to carry him off to her nest. Which used to be his nest. Afterwards, the Nekoya staff enjoy a meal of fried Curry Buns with a bit of a drink with a name I had a hard time making out. Fermented milk, effectively. Their meal complete, they all head home. As they leave, Kuro actually says her goodbyes with her mouth. I know, it doesn’t sound like much, but for her… it’s major.

This episode was kinda adorable. The sirens weren’t the man-eating murder factories we hear of in myths and stories. Just bird chicks with somnorific voices. Wait, is that even a word? Yay! Somnorific is a word. Congrats me. They enter the Nekoya and descend upon its concept like children with too much sugar. Seeing Arius go blush upon seeing Alphonse was also really cute. She’s got a crush on him and… wait. I’m looking at the wiki article here and it says that Arius is a dude. This changes my perceptions of their portrayal of sirens. For the better, actually. See, the myth has always had a bunch of different monster races that were invariably all female. Or all male with a few of them. Seeing this show just toss in a male siren is pretty cool, but it’s also how they showed him. He is really effeminate, so technically, anybody who sees him might mistake him for a girl. So, while the lore is maintained, how they approached it is well thought out. Good job, guys.

Our Take

So, let’s get past the cute bird girls and bird girly boys and talk about what’s going on in this episode. The entire thing from beginning to end was not really about these sirens. It was about Kuro. We open with her talking about her loneliness, the second portion is all narrated by her, and she’s the one we learn about the most. While this does operate with the formula we are used to since the sirens had to be properly introduced, that introduction is nested within the framework of Kuro’s experience. She’s really lonely, we already know that, but this Nekoya is a place where she has all the warmth and joy she’d been denied for thousands of years. It’s slowly giving her strength of heart, and we can see that in the ending. Nobody else notices that she talked from her mouth, but that was her little way of saying thank you. She’s honestly touched that these puny mortals would be concerned for her safety. Though the change in her is slight, she is definitely growing from when we first met her.

So the question we have to ask is, is this too little, too late? Guess what, folks? The next episode is the series finale. Kaput. Finito. I can count the amount of real character-building episodes one hand, and the plot-developing episodes with half of the other. If this show wanted, it could have very easily developed these characters much earlier and it would have been an amazing series. Here, we have a character who was introduced as a staple several episodes ago and is only now getting any development. And it’s a tiny amount of development, too. At this rate, in order to get an appreciable amount of growth out of a person in this show, we would need to have a seven-season run. And that would get boring. Why? Because, as I said, we have only two or three instances of plot development in the series thus far. We have no clue about why this door opens into the other world. We don’t know how the master pays for all the food on Saturdays since all the proceeds from that day go to getting exotic samples from the other world. Have you seen how these people eat? That is a ton of loss. His business model is untenable. You ready for the biggest bomb? We don’t even know the name of the dude that owns the restaurant where we spend over half the series watching people shove gourmet delectables down their monstrous, bloodthirsty, or bourgeoisie gullets. We call him the master, and that is all we get. Like this is some BDSM fantasy gone strangely culinary.

The animation we see is good. I didn’t see any errors floating about and that’s my typical measure of badness. The talons of the sirens looked oddly shaped though and didn’t seem at all like they were actually walking on them. Then again, these sirens have forward-knee architecture, while birds generally have it backward. Reference materials may be a bit short. Or the artists just BS’d it and said: “they’re only here to look at pretty food anyways”. And, to be honest, I didn’t find the food in this episode all that appetizing. It didn’t look like there was much to it. What was great, however, was the characters’ faces and expressions. Those were all well done: Expressive, consistent, and entertaining. When we get into the voice acting, it is generally pretty good. I totally believe all of those characters. Monica Rial pulls out a great amount of subtle depth as Kuro, even though on a whole it sounds like its monotone. What I dislike was Bryn Apprill and Mikaela Krantz pretending to do something in the realm of singing. It sounds more like they are just yelling LA repeatedly. Hey, Krantz, you’re already on notice for Yayoi in Hina Logic. Watch yourself.

So, while this episode is pretty well written, and has some character development, it feels like it’s too late in the game to be doing this growth in baby steps. The animation is good, and the voice acting is good, each saves a couple of qualms. In the end, did I enjoy it? Yes. Yes, I did. It was cute, funny, and enjoyable. And that’s what I got on my computer for in the first place.