English Dub Season Review: Stand My Heroes: Piece of Truth Season One

To be honest, I’m not sure what to make of this series. At points, it’s a genuinely interesting program. On the other hand, it’s a convoluted mystery that grows tiring at times and attempts to throw too many characters and plot details at the audience all at once.

For starters, the characters. Why did this show feel it was necessary to have so many of them? It’s one thing when they’re minor. But here, pretty much every single character introduced plays a vital role in the storyline! The show expects that you remember all of these characters! It’s ridiculous. The quantity of characters takes away a lot of character development that the very main cast could have had. You barely feel like you know anything regarding most of them by the time the season’s over and done with. It’s an unfortunate blemish on the series that didn’t need to be utilized.

To continue, the overall storyline of the series. While I did enjoy certain parts here or there, a lot of the story felt all over the place. I was constantly getting important details regarding the mystery wrong. Additionally, I was just barely understanding any of the core conclusions the characters made when new evidence was found. The plot is by and large the epitome of flying right over your head. Part of the problem stems back from the immense amount of characters. If they were downsized a bit, then perhaps the clues would have made a bit more sense.
It also doesn’t help that a lot of the series’ drama did not feel all that interesting to me. The first half really just introduces a boatload of unnecessary characters or adds a bit of workplace dramatics here and there. For a series that concentrates on stopping drugs, there’s a noticeable lack of solving these cases until the latter half of the season.

That being said, I did enjoy how everything played out in the end. The route the season took for its end was quite an unexpected one, one that I certainly didn’t see coming. Unfortunately, with a rather bland beginning and confusion running rampant throughout, there’s not much point in sticking around till the ending point.

Animation wise, things are decent enough. None of the character models look unappealing. The scenery tends to feel a bit uninspired sometimes but is overall alright. A significant amount of shortcuts take place here, such as shots of absolutely still movement, to scenes where characters just stand around with their flaps yapping. In summary, it’s not the absolute worst looking thing, but it could have been so much more.

Overall, the series is like a fast-food restaurant that you don’t particularly like but can live with if necessary. It’s a bit disappointing that it’s like that though. There’s a couple of really thrilling episodes here that are full of tension and surprises. But, with all the problems surrounding the bulk of the series, I can’t really recommend viewing the whole season just for two episodes worth of enjoyment. I’d much rather watch a show that was enticing the whole way through rather than one that constantly takes missteps in the wrong direction.