English Dub Review: Special 7: Special Crime Investigation Unit “Seiji Nanatsuki’s Running Report”

Overview (Spoilers Below)

Wait. Stop. We’ve made an error. There are no “spoilers below” in this review. Episode 8.5 of Special 7 was nothing more than a recap—a clip show—and not a particularly interesting one. It took the form of Nanatsuki’s narrative in which he reviewed everything that happened to him and the others in the first six episodes. The idiot even left out episodes seven and eight, except for two random end scenes. There was also a quick rundown of episodes to come, presented in a seizure-inducing flash. Most of the content was incomprehensible. And that’s how it ended. Nothing lost, per se, but absolutely nothing gained.

Our Take

Trust your audience, Special 7! We’re only eight episodes in—eight and a half, now. Why on earth did you think we’d need a refresher course? I hate to break it to you, but you’re not as complex as you think. You give us intrigue and some excellent action scenes, but it’s not as if we’re dealing with a political thriller, here. You present all of the parts for your audience to put together. And the audience you’re after should be able to accomplish such a task with ease. You’re not making any friends by talking down to your audience; I hope you realize that.

Okay, so if you absolutely had to do a clip show, it needed to at least be interesting. But you hardly gave us any new material. Nanatsuki’s narration may have been new—I don’t even remember—but it was all information we received in the earlier episodes without it being data-dumped into our laps. Nanatsuki is a reasonable, everyman protagonist, but he’s not the most compelling talker. Did you see Al Pacino playing Jimmy Hoffa in The Irishman? Now that was a compelling and exceptionally interesting orator. If you had brought Al in to record this recap, it would have succeeded all expectations. But you didn’t. You didn’t bring Al Pacino in to record this recap. You used Nanatsuki, which was about as poor a choice as you could have made.

There were a few flashes on the screen that offered some new information, but it was unnecessary filler crap like the ages and blood types of the officers. Do I really need to know that Gramps is fifty-eight, Bellemer is twelve, and Akane’s blood type is AB? If I didn’t have this information, could I still enjoy the show? The answer is a resounding, YES!!!

This is the sort of information you might find in the original manga. In many manga books displaying a character’s age and blood group is commonplace, sometimes even expected. So, if they were adding this to give us information exclusive to the manga, I wouldn’t like it, but I could at least accept it. The only problem is, there is no manga! Special 7 is an original anime. It may receive a manga or light novel order in the future, but for now, it exists entirely in animation form.

Next week’s episode is called “Nine Years’ Rage.” So unless something insane happens, we should be back to normal, and back to a semblance of sanity. The less we speak of this superfluous episode, the better.