English Dub Review: Re:Monster “Re:Medy”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Parabellum takes on their first proper job against a human army and soundly defeats them, capturing a few of their key soldiers and learning that the reason for the ongoing war is over an elf resource to make potions. Also they find a hot spring.

OUR TAKE

We’ve reached the halfway point for the show and it’s starting to seem like we’ve finally found some sort of direction for the series moving forward. With the clan now united as the mercenary group Parabellum and becoming more dug into the developing Elf and Human war, we’re hopefully beginning to see the stage being set for the second half to get more into it. That said, by the halfway point of a show like this, even if it’s only six episodes, I feel like we should have a better emotional connection to these characters by now, and I’m gonna have to point out that I don’t think we do. Gobrou’s still pretty much just the overpowered leader with a literal harem, and this episode just adds to his power and harem! Heck, there’s a scene that I’m pretty sure is just him forcing himself on a human prisoner and I gotta say I’m not sure how I’m supposed to look on that favorably. Like dude, you’re already probably going to be the strongest thing in this whole fantasy world and you have a bunch of women who WANT to bang you every night, you REALLY don’t have to resort to this.

Not to mention that, with each new addition to their forces, the less attention each existing member can get beyond a handful of lines and appearances, meaning a lot of characters have been reduced to just showing up briefly in each episode to acknowledge their existence and little else. Some of them are also getting their own unique powers to use in battle, so maybe they’ll get a few seconds of cool animation, but when I barely know who they are as a people, it’s hard to get excited about what they’re getting to do in a fight, which unfortunately includes Gobrou himself at times. Every episode he gets a new and stronger fighting move or a special skill, which again, can look cool, but just destroys the tension of ever thinking he might be challenged and only ends up making him feeling overpowered. At the very least, they could try and making these moves tie together with some sort of theme or maybe show how the ones he chooses to use say something about him but I’m not getting that sense right now and I doubt we’re going to. So, yeah, I guess we’ll just kinda keep passively watching this story continue on autopilot instead of feeling anything worth emotionally engaging with.