English Dub Review: URAHARA “Cotton Heart”

Aliens appreciate art on a thoughtful episode of URAHARA.

Overview (Spoilers Below):

What if the only beings who appreciated your talents were aliens? This is the question that Riko starts to grapple with in the sixth episode of URAHARA. Sure, Mari and Kotoko say they like her drawings, but they’re her friends, and it seems like she isn’t quite convinced that their praise is genuine.

When the Scoopers show up (in another crazy new form), they head straight for Rito’s drawings. After a tough struggle, the girls teach them that just because they like the artwork doesn’t mean they can simply fly off with it. But there seems to have been a rapid advance of the girls’ colorful skin spots. They are mutating into something not entirely human… and Misa and the shrimp know more than they’re letting on.

Our Take:

Cotton Heart is definitely one of my favorite episodes of the show so far. It integrates the external alien invasion with Rito’s internal creative dilemmas in one of the most interesting ways yet. She’s dealing with something a lot of artists ask themselves: “Drawing whatever I want makes me happy… but is that enough?” Mari is known across the city for her fashion, and Kotoko, apparently, is a food blogger with over 400k followers. But Rito feels like her own talents don’t have the same kind of fanbase. It feels like by the end of the episode, she’s accepted the fact that she should draw what she wants to – even if her art doesn’t have the mass-market appeal that her friends possess.

Despite this episode making some good headway on the plot, the crepe salesperson, Sayumin, still seems to exist only to provide helpful pep talks. I wonder if she’ll factor into the show in a more important way in the future. Maybe the Scoopers will go after her amazing hairdo and Rito will come to the rescue?

Score
7.5/10