English Dub Review: The Ones Within “BORN THIS WAY”

Our friendly neighborhood Let’s Players hatch a panda with an afro.

Overview (Spoilers Below):

The next challenge is on, and Mr. Paka has quite the idea this time. The players have to take part in hatching an egg and then raising the girl to win over the local high school hottie in a part nurturing, part dating sim game. Akatsuki, Himiko, Anya, and Makino wind up being the players, and with a group like that, of course, something goes wrong. They hatch a part human, part panda creation… but can she find love elsewhere?

Our Take:

The second episode of The Ones Within is totally absurd and I kind of loved it, but also kind of hated it? There was definitely a lot of silly humor, which I’m all about. But there were also a few majorly problematic elements that made me cringe. At least the good outweighed the bad for the most part and seeing a new group of characters interacting was fun to watch.

I hope Mr. Paka’s challenges keep getting weirder and weirder because a nurturing and dating sim put together was genius. To be fair, it was only this fun because of the players who completed the challenge. Anya is adorably tsundere, and Makino’s aloof nature is even funnier when contrasted with Himiko’s obsessive dedication with nurturing games. One of the best bits in the episode is the creation of the girl herself. When hatching from an egg, all four of them think about their ideal girl. Except Akatsuki is thinking about missing Pandarou, and so Murasaki turns out to have the head of a panda. “The world may not be black and white,” Akatsuki tells her, “but you are, and you’re gorgeous!” Himiko is almost as charming as Akatsuki himself. I initially wrote her off as a stereotypically meek anime girl, but she shows a lot of spunk where nurturing is concerned, even going up against Anya: “Your temper is too short, just like your eyebrows!” Not sure if this is good or not, but it was sweet how supportive she was even after finding out Mr. Genji was a teacher: “At least she’ll be with an educated man who has a steady job.”

As for the less lovely bits, how about that Yuzu and Karin scene? I was all excited about getting some diverse romance when Yuzu started being creepy. When Karin expresses obvious discomfort and reminds her that they’re both girls, Yuzu says, “I don’t recall specifying that I was a girl.” It’s just a really gross scene that ends up being played off as a joke to raise the view counts. (Because apparently they’re even live streamed in the bath?) I was enjoying Yuzu’s character, but after this, I’m not so sure. Being willing to go to any lengths for views might make Yuzu succeed in Mr. Paka’s book, but not in mine. The other weird thing was that Mr. Genji turns out to be a teacher. Everyone just accepts it rather than pointing out how wrong it would be. If they were trying to raise Murasaki right, they would encourage her not to enter into a relationship with such an obvious imbalance of power and experience. Granted, this may just be lampooning the dating sim genre, but it was still strange and the part at the end where the teacher seemed to be crushing on Makino didn’t help.

The dub adaption had a ton of clever wordplay and jokes in it, which is an absolute necessity with a comedic episode like this. It wouldn’t work without the great translation, so props to the team! “You wouldn’t happen to have a power drill, would ya? I need to crack this baby open!” Yuzu is so cool, but I just don’t know anymore. I’m not happy to see how her obsession with Akatsuki will turn out. “How dare you insult me, you angsty bastard!” Zakuro is funny and I’m sad he didn’t play in this round. Himiko’s passion is so cute: “Naming your character things like AAAA or making them run around naked is an insult to the nurturing genre!” Also: “We’ve got to give the babies everything we’ve got… to the death.

BORN THIS WAY did a lot of good things, like focusing on a silly premise that allowed for a lot of absurdist humor. The characters of Akatsuki, Himiko, Anya, and Makino meshed well and ended up being one of the more fun groups to watch so far. But the scene with Karin and Yuzu really put me off, and watching them try to win over Mr. Genji was more uncomfortable than funny. That said, I’m eager to find out how weird Mr. Paka can get next week!