English Dub Review: The Quintessential Quintuplets “Five Fifths”

Boom! Five divided by five equals one! Quick Maths!

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

As the rest of the quintuplets and Raiha either enjoy the fireworks or contemplate things, Ichika explains her schedule conflict to Futaro. Seems her job called her in so she’ll have to miss the fireworks show. When he tries to keep her from leaving, she questions him on why he cares so much, which he has trouble answering. As he thinks on this, Ichika’s boss comes looking for her, forcing her to fake hug Futaro in order to hide. This gives him a chance to say he isn’t even really sure if they’re friends, which is surprisingly hurtful. She then asks why exactly he studies so hard, which (in lieu of simply wanting to get better grades so he can get a better job to support his family) triggers a brief flashback about some long haired girl.

While he forms an answer, it turns out Ichika’s boss has mistaken Miku for Ichika (more on that later), so Futaro comes up with an answer to the “relationship” question. He and the girls are “partners” in a mutually beneficial relationship. The boss then reveals that Ichika’s job is actually being an actress, who’s on her way to a big audition. At Miku’s behest, Futaro leaves her behind and meets Ichika as she waits for her ride. She fills him in on how big this audition is for her and how much this job means for her to stand out and have her own dreams. As they wait, they go over the lines for the audition, which just so happen to be a teacher congratulating a graduating student.

Futaro then admits that the reason he cares is that, while he does want to get paid, he wants to earn it by properly teaching the girls, though he’d actually prefer if she failed the audition so that would mean more time for studying. But he leaves her with some heartfelt words about being honest with herself and her sisters, which actually helps her nail the audition. Once it’s over, Futaro leads her to a nearby park where the rest of the girls are so they can finally watch the fireworks together…even if it’s not as big as they’d have liked, and everyone apologizes for their part in botching this tradition. Though it seems Ichika is starting to take an interest in Futaro.

OUR TAKE

So, that fizzles out the fireworks story and ignites the next one of the girls to grab a ticket for the Futaro Love Train. Aren’t mixed metaphors the best? But while this week did wrap up things in a touching way and get my personal choice for Best Girl into the running, I can’t help but feel that it was just a bit weaker than last week. That might have to do with it more narrowly focusing on one girl when the first half seemed to be good at fleshing out all of them. Learning about Ichika’s dreams and dilemmas was also certainly nice to see, but for some reason I liked Futaro’s time connecting with Miku more since it was over common interests, which is more how I like to connect with people. The whole “what’s your relationship” question was also definitely laid on a bit too thick this time. While I was pretty much expecting some melodrama in this show, there’s a limit to how much I can take before it starts to bother me.

But another thing that is probably going to bother me for at least the rest of the season is people mixing up the quintuplets just because of their faces. Again, this probably makes a lot more sense in the manga, where the lack of color leaves only the character designs to tell them apart, but in a fully colored anime where each sister has their own distinct hairstyle, this becomes a lot more difficult to take seriously. The best possible explanation you could give in the case of Ichika’s boss would be that maybe Ichika is known for disguising herself in order to sneak away from work, but that’s never even implied. I guess this was just something they were probably aware wouldn’t translate well to the adaptation, so I’m not gonna harp on it too much from here on, but I figured I should get my feelings out of the way on that.

That said, despite all of the minor and hard to specify annoyances, this episode was pretty thick with subtext for future plots. Seemingly innocuous moments throughout the story are actually just the first nudge of things to go in certain directions, such as Miku and Ichika picking the same sparkler at the end or Miku being alright with admitting she likes Futa-er I mean, that sparkler. I mean, those are just two at the end, but there’s probably others, and if you familiar with these kinds of shows, they’re not exactly subtle about where things are headed. But they’re organic set up for the future, which is more than I can say for other attempts at this. So, overall, still liking the show, but this felt like a bit of a dip that I’m sure it can recover from.