English Dub Review: Rinshi!! Ekoda-chan “Episode 6”

“It’s not all that different from your average middle-aged dude.”

Overview (Spoilers Below)

The episode begins with Ekoda-chan coming home from a day of work. Her internal monologue clues us into the kind of neighborhood Ekoda is. The bad kind. She opens the door to her studio apartment and winds down for the day. She first strips off all of her clothes and gets herself a beer from the fridge. She then starts to cook a stir fry but keeps getting oil on her chest. Her solution is to wear a paper bag bra to minimize cooking burns.

As she prepares her meal, she is beset by calls from her family and friends. She ignores them as she has decided that she’s already in for the night. She considers the trials of the young working woman and how they aren’t so different from anyone in a workaday job. Ekoda is roused from her malaise by a call from her would-be boyfriend Maa-kun. She saran wraps her dinner, puts her clothes back on, and runs into the night to meet up with him.

Our Take

After a while, it gets harder and harder to say something novel about these episodes. While each of the animations is unique in its style and approach to the material, they just are not the constitutive nature of watching Rinshi!! Ekoda-chan. That ignoble distinction is taken up by the endless interviews with the directors and the star. I know I’ve mentioned this before, but it is simply teeth-pullingly dull to watch these things week-in and week-out trying to carve some kind of interesting take or meaning out of the proceedings.

I sound like broken record, I’m sure, but this would be a much easier job if I could use anything from these lengthy Q&As to speak at all to the voice work being done during the episode, but since the anime shorts are dubbed and the interview portions are subtitled, they don’t meaningfully interact whatsoever. As a result, basically, my only recourse is to talk about them as two separate entities, the director’s commentary acting as my bridge between the two sections. In previous reviews, I have mentioned that these directors’ very presence is likely biasing my experience of the source material toward the parts that middle-aged men could understand, but it’s beginning to feel like more than that. With only the male director able to comprehensibly (to me, at least, given the aforementioned dub/sub issue), their process is also privileged in my analysis. All of this is to say that, a little over halfway in, this task is starting to feel pretty Sisyphean.

What, then is there to say this week about director Takahashi Ryosuke and actress Mimori Suzuko? I think the main thing is that they seem to get the material the most of anyone I’ve seen. The show has been on an upswing ever since the fourth episode when it comes to directors. While the first three directors had no idea why they were even doing the project, let alone having some sort of take on Ekoda-chan, the latter three directors have all at least made an effort to understand and adapt the source material. This week is no exception, Ryosuke actually told a story about listening to a woman during his creative process. I know that doesn’t seem like the biggest deal in the world, but if you haven’t been watching or reading my reviews, that’s absolutely the best we’re going to get.

What was interesting about this episode, though, is that it wasn’t funny. More than that, it didn’t seem like it was trying to be. There were some small jokes here and there about bodily functions and a wry observation about the similarities of after-work routines that I quoted in the title, but it’s not the constitutive nature of the three minutes. More than anything, it’s a sad portrait of Ekoda-chan’s loneliness. She sits in her crappy apartment in a bad neighborhood waiting for something to happen. She’s the worst kind of lonely, as well. She’s surrounded by friends and family that would love nothing more than to speak with her, but she’s holding out for someone who doesn’t have to love her, and probably doesn’t at all.

Suzuko continues another trend that I’m very happy with in these interviews. Like last week, she actually seems to get Ekoda-chan’s ethos. Many of the Rinshi!! Ekoda-chan actresses don’t seem to understand the whims and motivations of an aimless twenty-something, and if they fail to grasp it, there’s no hope for the aging directors. Suzuko does understand, though. She talks about working in the theater in her twenties, long before she even knew anything about the anime industry. She, too, was aimless during this time in her life, and she tries to bring some of that to the performance. It is truly a shame, then, that those of us in the US aren’t going to get to hear it.

There’s something interesting about seeing the bastardized version of something before you experience the real thing. It’s like seeing the Mario Brothers movie before you ever play the game or playing Harry Potter on a CD-ROM before picking up a book. It’s compelling that we can still fall in love with a watered-down version of a character. It’s especially interesting when you know that other versions exist, and they are likely better than what you’ve already experienced.

There is something truly unique about Ekoda-chan. It’s messy in a world of clean lines. It’s aimless in a planned society. It is the exact kind of spontaneity that is both misunderstood and coveted by the endlessly square. They will take something like Ekoda and take everything from her that makes her unique and subversive, and only then will she be ready for mass consumption. This is where we find ourselves. We are after the end of history. The neoliberals have taken global control, and what we get for our efforts, is Rinshi!! Ekoda-chan. If I must have it, then, might it at least really be voiced by Mimori Suzuko?