English Dub Review: The Helpful Fox Senko-San “It’s Going to Be a Rough Night”

Reunited, yet split apart.

Overview

Senko senses that Nakano is going to have a hard day at the office, so she prepares a minibar with a luxurious meal. She also has a flashback to how she helped Nakano as a child when he was lost in the woods. When Nakano gets home, Senko gets him #WhiteGirlWasted and vulnerable enough to talk about his work problems. A client was making unreasonable demands, but his boss demeaned him and dismissed it with “the customer is always right” logic. Senko successfully comforts him — he cries and falls asleep on her tail. Senko notices the dark aura around Nakano, though, and wonders why it won’t go away.

Overlooking the view, Sora and Shiro note that Senko and Nakano have been together for a full year. Sora cryptically quips that it will be over soon.

Later, Nakano’s boss notices Nakano has too much paid leave time and forces him to take a day off before the delivery deadlines approach. While he and Senko originally planned to go to a supermarket Senko wanted to see, Nakano gets a call from his mother, informing him his father had gone to the hospital. Senko urges him to go see his father, and that they’d go to the supermarket another time. He reunites with his family, and Senko — feeling their union — packs up and mysteriously leaves. At his grandmother’s grave, Nakano puts together that Senko has always been watching over him. He remains unaware that she left.

Our Take

There were all kinds of foreshadowing in this episode as to what the end of the season will entail — and it seems like they’re really getting ready to play up the drama. If there was one word that could be used to describe this episode, it would be “mystery.”

The entire backdrop of the dark aura surrounding Nakano was curious — back in the first episode, Senko was able to easily make it dissipate away through her care-taking, but now that same bad energy is back, and it seems that no matter what Senko does, it’s not enough to make it disappear anymore. This could be one of the reasons she left — much like a Mary Poppins sort of deal, she might have realized that she can’t magically make all of his problems go away. Considering that most of Nakano’s happiness stems from childhood memories, it may be possible that reuniting with his family is the key to him finding healing within himself.

With Nakano’s realization about Senko’s involvement in his past and with his ancestor, it’s likely that we’ll get a fuller view of these things in the final episode. It would pretty much feel cheap if they didn’t. Besides — Senko leaving felt…sort of random? She didn’t even seem upset.

It’s likely that this could all be one big ploy to tug at the audience’s heartstrings. Maybe Senko isn’t actually going anywhere, and Sora is wrong. She might just be going to the supermarket on her own, for all we know! Even if it’s all one big melodramatic finale where Nakano realizes how much Senko really means to him, it’s definitely been a ride. The visuals in this episode are pretty as always (except for, like, the glaringly obvious character design flaw) and it was nice to see some new environments.

Will Nakano find Senko? Does it involve him putting up lost pet flyers?

We can only hope to god not!