English Dub Review: Tsurune “Irreplaceable”

This is it, boys: it’s the Big Game.

Overview

Once Kazemai landed their spot in the tournament, they quickly rocketed their way to the finals, barely missing a target and shocking the audience with their newly found skill. Soon enough, Kazemai has to face off with Kirisaki for the winning title. In the moments leading up to the match, Syu reflects upon his memories of Minato — an excitable child who would never let someone know he was hurt. He then razzes Seiya about whether or not he’s still “following Minato around,” but Seiya calmly replies that he loves the sport for the sport.

Once the match begins, Minato beautifully narrates all his friends’ techniques and personalities as they hit almost every target. While poetic shots are being made, one of the twin brats from Kirisaki has — ironically — gotten target panic — causing Kirisaki to lose. Minato makes the winning shot and Kazemai wins. An injured but healthy Masaki watches from the sidelines, along with the whole crew. Syu welcomes Minato back to kyudo, and Minato reflects upon his “reason” for shooting: his team.

Minato and Masaki talk about how “everything happens for a reason” later that night in the dojo where they met, and Masaki makes his 1000th shot.

Our Take

Thus concludes our adventures at the kyudo range. Tsurune’s final episode brought about a hopeful looking future for Minato and the team, and the overall tone of the show has become much more colorful. Let’s talk character development!

“Irreplaceable” was all about showcasing the changes the (main) cast members had gone through. Once Minato realized that the secret to finding his kyudo mojo rested in the Power of Friendship™ all along, it also symbolized the way Minato had been dealing with grief for years. After the death of his mother, he became uncharacteristically soft spoken and dull-eyed — clearly withdrawn from others. Now, with his team, he’s learning to rely on a support system again, and to let himself be more vulnerable to people (aka, letting them see when he’s hurt — circling back to the relevance of that flashback with Syu.)

Seiya’s independence was another big feature. His emphasis to Syu about his genuine feelings towards kyudo highlighted the fact that Seiya is now truly stepping out from behind Minato’s shadow as his own person — not just “Minato’s friend.” It appears that every person who knew Minato growing up had formed some kind of emotional attachment, seeing him as someone they looked up to — Ryohei and Syu included. Seiya parting away from Minato as his central point of purpose makes it clear that even though Minato is someone he looks up to, he’s ready to lose the crutch of always following in his footsteps.

Masaki also appears to have come closer to making peace with his grandfather, but that was about it as far as strong character development goes (unless we count Manji. Honestly, it was surprising that he and Minato didn’t have a heart-to-heart about target panic.) It left a lot to be desired for characters like Ryohei and Nanao, who didn’t even seem to have a lot of personalized screen time, to begin with (and don’t even get us started on how pointless the girl characters are.)

Tsurune has come a long way as far as visuals and sound effects go. The music in this episode was as inspiring as it was enchanting, and we finally got the beautiful, engaging visuals we’d hoped there’d be at the very beginning of the show. The dazzling nature effects used in the kyudo scenes were as poetic as Minato’s monologue-ing. It definitely gives us something to think about: that this is a show that improves upon itself.

While there were plot points that weren’t touched upon thoroughly (Minato’s mother, Ryohei & Nanao’s lore, etc.) things were pretty cohesive all the way through. It gives us a satisfying ending, yet leaves a lot of wiggle-room for future episodes, should there be a season two.

So, pun fully intended: is the show worth a shot?

Here’s the thing: Tsurune is a perfectly fine show. There’s nothing wrong with it, it’s just that there’s nothing amazingly right with it, either. It hasn’t done anything unique, special, or different. It’s a perfectly passable narrative — a decent 6.5/10. “Straight as an arrow,” if you will. However, though ordinary, Tsurune has proved that it slowly adds more quality as episodes pass. Visuals, SFX, voice acting, and narrative structure have all been refined from the beginning. Take the first episode of Tsurune and pair it with this one, and it’s clear that the show holds potential.

So, now we can answer a question we’ve been asking ourselves since day one: is kyudo boring? Not as much as it could be — and it’s all thanks to a team of lovable sports-boy archetypes.