English Dub Review: The Quintessential Quintuplets “A Mountain of Problems”

Law & Order: Accidental Pervert Unit

In the anime justice system, harem protagonist based offenses are still somehow considered viable comedy. In Neo Tokyo, the dedicated senpais who investigate these awkward mishaps are members of an elite squad of nakama known as the Accidental Pervert Unit. These are their stories.

DUN DUN.

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Futaro’s made clear connections with Yotsuba and Miku, but he’s still nowhere close to getting everyone to sit down and study for once. One major trouble maker still stands in his way, Nino, the one who drugged him to get him to leave. Determined to interfere, she manipulates each of her sisters to get them to leave: Yotsuba’s caring nature gets her to help out a desperate basketball team missing a player, Ichika needs to head off to work, and Itsuki gets convinced to study somewhere quieter. The only one who decides to stay put is Miku, but his only leads to her and Nino fighting, which somehow leads to a cook-off to determine if they’ll study today. When that goes nowhere, Futaro concedes for the day, though Miku says she’ll come around if he comes to her in good faith.

He then leaves, only to realize he left something inside. Miku buzzes him in while she takes a shower, so he expects to not see her…only run into Nino, who is drying off and also apparently wears contacts, because she can’t see him mere feet away from her. However, she does know SOMEONE is there, who she assumes is Miku, so hijinks ensue until she trips and almost gets hit by some falling books, which Futaro breaks his cover to save her from. Unfortunately, this ends up putting him right on top of her in a really compromising position right as Itsuki walks in to snap a photo. Thus, the trial of the century begins with Miku on the defense and Itsuki on the prosecution regarding whether Futaro came to take naked pictures of Nino. All seems lost until further examination of Itsuki’s picture shows the fallen books, clearing him of suspicion. Frustrated, Nino storms off.

As he leaves, Futaro notices she locked herself outside, so he decides to take this chance to understand where all of her anger is coming from. Turns out she loves her sisters a lot and she’s bitter about letting someone outside the family into their group, which makes him Nino Enemy #1. Before they can make a breakthrough, however, she fully commits to never accepting him. One step forward, two steps back.

OUR TAKE

Well, they couldn’t all be won over in one episode. Makes sense, seeing how we gotta fill at least 12 episodes out of this and after getting in good graces with the fifth sister, what were we gonna spend the latter half of the season on? Futaro’s sister? His dad? More harem shenanigans? Probably the latter, but basically what I’m getting at is that connecting with these girls should feel like a challenge if we want the payoff to feel like it matters. Placing Nino in this order does make sense, come to think of it, since Ichika and Itsuki don’t necessarily hate Futaro right now like she does, but they don’t like him enough to immediately side with him on things, which would REALLY drive her away. Plus, I imagine those other two are going to take at least a little more work for them to come around.

The core of Nino’s issues with Futaro are, as the end of the episode points out, a feeling of exclusiveness between her and her sisters that she is viciously clinging to. With that in mind, I can’t imagine bringing anyone into their home, especially a boy around their age who’s solely there to make them do boring things like studying, would go over with them. I never had siblings close to me in age, but I have to wonder if this wouldn’t be a situation that I or they would be in if they or I brought a potential romantic partner home. Suddenly someone is interfering with this special bond you feel you have with your sibling(s) and you can’t do much, short of drugging them and putting them on a taxi. And with someone like Nino, who knows every way to manipulate her siblings, she’ll certainly be a tough nut to crack.

This is clearly something that’s going to be elaborated on more next week, so the main thing I can really dig into besides Nino’s issues would have to the courtroom scene, which was unexpectedly pretty funny. The “tripping onto half naked girls” cliché is pretty well worn in anime and manga, but I can’t say I’ve seen as many fake trials shortly after. Makes me wish we could get a whole show dedicated to investigating anime cliché crimes. Is this giant robot squad for saving the world just a cover for insurance fraud? Do shonen protagonists have to pay for damage they cause during climactic fights? Is the cute mascot actually running a friendship smuggling ring? All these questions and more! Call be, NBC!

Executive Produced by Dick Wolf, obviously.