English Dub Review: RobiHachi “Common Fame is a Common Isekandar”

Pay no attention to the tourist trap behind the curtain!

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

After ten grueling episodes (or however long it is in the actual story), the Nagaya Voyager makes it to the famous and heavily sponsored Isekandar. As soon as they land, Robby and Hatchi are immediately swept up in all the scammy deals despite still having no money to spend. But Robby only has one plan now: secure one of the legendary Akufucrystals that bring you amazing fortune, and because he doesn’t know his debt’s been paid, he NEEDS that crystal, which he sees give multiple people stupendous luck! And Hatchi seems certain their journey is ending soon, so he’s living it up while he can. However, in Robby’s desperation for better luck, he ends up uncovering a secret cavern that reveals that all the legend and mystery surrounding Isekandar and its crystals are nothing more than fibs and tall tales. The crystals are fakes, all the people praising it were actors, and everything else is a total fabrication to sell everyone on the legends.

Naturally, this shatters Robby’s hopes for better luck, as well as making the trip to get here feeling PRETTY anti-climactic (you’re telling me). But it turns out that there IS a real Akufucrystal where you might be able to get better fortune, that’s where Robby heads to. Meanwhile, Yang finds out that Robby’s debt has been resolved, but he won’t quit now and takes his men to Isekandar, where they also end up nabbing the giant fake Akufucrystal and causing a big ruckus that sends the tourists into a panic. In the chaos, the Lunar Fleet arrive in search of the Prince of the Moon, who Hatchi admits to being.

OUR TAKE

So, we finally make it to the reason for this whole journey, Isekandar, AND…it’s just another gimmicky planet like the half a dozen we’ve already been to, only this time the gimmick is that everything is a scam. After even a couple episodes of hyping this place up so much, I figured that the payoff was either going to be something HUGE or that the planet would just be a giant letdown…and even in terms of INTENTIONAL letdowns, it’s still a letdown.

This was meant to be the culmination of everything the series had been building up to, but it’s really just another one-note gimmick like all the other planets. No further development on Robby and Hatchi’s relationship (like maybe whatever weird drama you might be able to pull from Hatchi paying his debt for him), so expanding on their respective backstories and how it relates to them as characters or their arcs, just a general lesson of how if it seems too good to be true, it probably is. I don’t know if scammy tourism things are more common in Japan, but it’s not that hard to find here in the states, so the importance of this lesson kinda fell flat for me.

To be fair, it looks like we’ll be getting on that expanding on backstories next week in the final episode, but the lack of it here isn’t the main problem. I just now suddenly wonder what the heck this trip has been all about or what Robby has actually been trying to obtain. I guess he did start out with bad luck, but was his plan really just to find some possibly blessed rock that MIGHT be able to increase his luck? There wasn’t really mention of any more practical reason to visit the place, but…god, it just seems so dumb and poorly thought out now that I think about it all. And it looks like it might not really matter whether they got to Isekandar or not, because the finale doesn’t seem to have much to do with it either way.

I don’t know what exactly I was expecting, but all the build up for getting to Isekandar just…felt like it would be MORE than just one more random and unremarkable planet tourism gimmick. Like maybe it would be a major driving force for some huge development that would be the climax of the show in terms of plot and character growth, kind of like how Samurai Champloo (another show that had the main characters travel a lot) did when it reached its own final stop. But regardless of the result, it looks like the show’s over after next week, so either way I’ll be done with it.