English Dub Review: Stand My Heroes: Piece of Truth “Piece 10”

Overview (Spoilers Below)
After a lengthy recounting of information from the past few episodes, Rei discusses the Anonymous Case with Makoto. Thanks to his brother’s kind words regarding Rei, Makoto places his trust in Rei and reveals some details regarding his relationship with Ida. Towards the end of the conversation, Makoto spills one interesting sentence Ida stated during his last conversation with Makoto: ‘Don’t worry, I gave it to the child.’

With the discussion over, Rei heads to the Kujo family’s home to chat with Soma Kujo himself. Rei quickly asks if Kujo is involved with the creation and distribution of Plus. Kujo, understandably, denies the accusations. Rei then reveals the evidence that is against him, to which Kujo says is careless of her to reveal. With the conversation getting nowhere, Rei takes her leave.

During the night, Kujo heads out without escort from his bodyguards. This development surprises Miyase, thus causing him to notify Rei on this development. As shown via an on-screen message, Kujo’s meeting with someone to move things along a bit faster…

Our Take
Why? What’s the point? Is any of this necessary? Throughout the entire first half, these questions constantly penetrated my inner thoughts. While the second half improved slightly, it still felt as though the show didn’t know what direction to take here. Much how Aoyama tells Rei that Miyase is clouding her judgment, my brain is filled with a thick fog of confusion and filler.

There’s absolutely no excuse for the first half of this episode. It’s one unbearably long recap of information we as an audience already know. It’d be one thing if this information was summarized into the first few minutes, but nope! The series fills up half the episode with unnecessary recounts that do not progress the story in any way, shape, or form. Additionally, is it really necessary for the series to state that Hattori’s working on getting clearance for Rei to speak to Makoto? Why couldn’t the episode simply segue into Rei and Makoto’s discussion? Based on the last episode, this is essentially a done deal, so why do we need to wait for their meeting to begin? Not only is all of this irritating, but it’s simply a bore to have to trudge through. Simply put, the first portion of the episode is a nightmare-inducing mess.

The second half, thankfully, is an improvement, but not by much. By this point, we find out some information from Makoto. However, the useful portions of said information are so vague that it barely feels like any progress was made! To introduce such an uncertain bit of evidence with only two episodes left is unfathomable to me. Rei’s meeting with Kujo largely feels unpurposeful too. One could argue that it provides evidence towards Kujo being in the right and wrong. At the same time though, it essentially just reaffirms what Rei was already considering, to begin with. There have already been hints both ways throughout the past few episodes. I suppose it’s more concrete now that it came from the man himself, but it still feels as though the train has derailed from the tracks.

Overall, pointless is the perfect word to describe this episode. A large portion of it already summarizes what we as viewers already are aware of. Additionally, the tiny fragment that does progress the mystery is so shrouded in un-clarity that we might as well have not progressed at all! At this point, I’m just counting down the days until this series ends and I can finally hop off this joy ride into nothingness.