English Dub Review: Sarazanmai “I Want to Connect, but You’re So Far Away”

Oh Brother, where art thou?

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Haruka is due to leave the hospital soon, and just in time for a Sara Azuma meet up! He’ll get to meet the real Sara!…just in time to find out his brother’s a fraud.

Toi is also dealing with an odd relationship with his brother, though he wants to run away with him because of something his brother did to “save” his family’s Soba Noodle shop. We learn that his parents were conned by a friend of theirs and killed themselves after getting deep into debt. Chikai, Toi’s brother, got into crime himself and started selling their parents’ valuables to feed Toi. He also taught Toi a lesson: “Bad guys are the ones who survive in this world.” Still, their shop started to go under, not helped by Chikai’s newly worsening reputation. So, he took drastic measures by stealing from the mob boss he worked under in order to pay back the shop’s debt and keep it open under his relatives.

Enta stops by to ask Toi about giving up the next Dish of Hope, though he refuses. Next, Kazuma asks him to help kidnap the real Sara to keep up his lie to Haruka, which he goes along with reluctantly. But as they plan, a new Kappa Zombie starts gathering Soba. This time, he’s the ghost of Yudeo Sobatani, arrested for stealing a woman’s used bath water for his noodles. As before, he’s the victim of Mabu and Reo.

Toi is more eager to become a Kappa this go around, mostly to help his family’s shop. Since this is his episode, he gets to lead the Sarazanmai dance. But this also means it’s his secret that gets revealed afterwards. That being that Chikai’s old boss came looking for blood after Chikai stole from him, but he’d skipped town after being disowned by his relatives. Little Toi tries to take care of things himself by stealing the gun Chikai left. He’s targeted by the boss, but ends up killing him in fear. To his surprise, Chikai appears, takes the gun, and fires more shots into the body so that he’ll be responsible.

The next dish is another silver, meaning no one gets a wish today. But Enta is freaked out about Toi killing a guy, something Toi defends unflinchingly. Kazuki seems to agree, handing over today’s dish to Toi, saying that even though he’s fighting for Haruka, he hates him.

OUR TAKE

And now all three of the boys have gotten an episode to themselves. Unlike Kazuki and Enta, Toi was established upfront as not coming from nearly as simple a family as the other two. While Kazuki clearly has his baggage with Haruka, it’s likely not nearly as complicated as Chikai turning to crime and covering up Toi’s coldblooded murder. No amount of cross dressing is gonna amount to that. It also explains, at least a bit, why Toi plays as such a bad boy: he’s modeling himself after his brother, who he admires for making such a huge sacrifice for his family and shop, but also Toi himself. As such, he has almost no affection for the relatives looking after him because they badmouth Chikai and is waiting on his toes for the day that he’ll be able to live with his brother and a “bad guy” who truly survives and isn’t forgotten.

It also explains the floating item of the week, Soba Noodles, which has a link to Toi much like Kisu Fish had a link to Enta and the cats had a connection to Kazuki. Soba was what Toi’s family made their shop about and the brothers likely have a lot of warm memories about that before their parents were conned and killed themselves. Chikai also did the worst he could think of in order to preserve that shop and Toi leaps into action this episode in order to defend the shop when the Soba flies away. I’m not quite making a connection about how the guy wanting used bath water for his noodles, but maybe it’ll come to me. The point is that Soba is a multifaceted symbol for Toi’s character as something that he will do anything to protect because of what it represents about his past, present, and future.

And while he’s pained for people to find out about him killing a guy, even in self-defense, he’s much more composed and adamant about defending his actions and his brother’s when confronted that Kazuki and Enta were. Then again, when it comes to cross-dressing, stealing cats, or having a crush, murder seems like something you either commit to defending when pressed or else be totally crushed by it. Not that I would know. Definitely not.

But yeah, all three protagonists are more elaborated on, which means it should be about time for the status quo to get shaken up a bit next time.