English Dub Review: Chronos Ruler “The Concept of Anxiety”

I’m pretty sure time doesn’t work that way…

Spoilers Below

The mysterious woman reveals her nature and intent. Aisrehdar, daughter of the god of time Chronos, wants the Unique. It was once hers, and she used it on a crusade against the horologs, but lost it during a battle. After Victo found it and used it to plug up his wound, she allowed him to keep it, to see how he would do as its guardian and wielder. Mina, worried for her husband, runs in, only to find Aisrehdar’s hand stuck into his chest. The sisters (yes, sisters) do mighty battle over Victo’s corpse while Mina has a flashback to when their mother died. Apparently, falling in love with a human and having his child removed their mother’s immortality, and she died of old age. Mina isn’t going to let any more of her loved ones die. Even though her leg is frozen in time, she uses raw physical effort to break herself out of the lock to kick at her sister…

Oh, by the way, Kiri is still fighting that dude. The water that makes up his sword is evaporating away because of the heat of the flames. Thought you ought to know.

…but her kick is stopped by Victo’s cards. Aisrehdar’s attack on him was merely her repairing the damage to the Unique. Now, it has all of its abilities unlocked, and he no longer leaks time when he uses speed-up. However, she isn’t yet satisfied with Victo as its guardian, and the two must do battle to decide the ownership of the relic. Though the demi goddess’ powers are incredible, the boy-man is no slouch either. As she uses her power to control the earth and air around them, Victo uses his cards in ever-more creative ways. He places a shield of them up with the slowdown, holding back a wave of cards that have been sped up to act as an attack. When Aisrehdar dispels his shield, the speed-up she adds to the cards stacks on top of the speed-up of the hidden cards, and they rip a hole in the building. Aisrehdar might just have her work cut out for her on this one…

Okay, I’m just going to say this. I’ve been thinking about this since the first episode, and I just can’t go on ignoring it. TIME DOESN’T WORK LIKE THAT. Just because you speed up or slow down the relative time of an object, doesn’t impart onto it or remove from it a bunch of kinetic energy. If the object is already moving, sure, I could buy speeding up its relative time would turn it into a nasty projectile. But control over the relative time of objects does not give you telekinesis, hydrokinesis, pyrokinesis… or any other abilities that we see in the show. Oh, and freezing an object in time, unless that time is still relative to the time around it, would be disastrous. The planet’s spin and orbit, compounded with the orbit of the sun around the galactic core and the velocity of the galaxy from the center of the universe, that’s a ton of speed. Make one object come to a complete and utter stop without it being relative to its surroundings, and watch it shred through the planet, likely causing a massive explosion upon the first impact. This show treats time like a bunch of other shows treat chi, mana, or whatever other units of magic they use. Now, if they were spending and gaining their own personal lifetime to utilize special abilities, that would be a whole other thing. Until then, in order for my head to not nerd-rage every time I watch the show, I have to treat it like a unit of magic that just happens to be called time.</soapbox>

This episode explains a few things and resolves a bit of a conflict. First, we can see why Mina is eternally young. She’s a demigoddess. Second, Victo tells the audience in his thoughts that he didn’t trust Mina as much as he seemed. After seeing her crying in his arms, however, he believes that she is truly his wife and mother of Kiri. Their explanation of what happened to the Unique makes good sense of why it had so many limitations. My big issue with all of this was Aisrehdar’s actions. She just snaps out and starts attacking him, saying that she’s going to take the Unique and “put him to bed… forever”. Then, out of nowhere, it seems she repairs the Unique instead. Then she wants to kill him again. Aisrehdar doesn’t seem to know what she’s doing or why, and just alternates between trying to kill Victo and helping him. Also, Kiri’s fight might as well have not been in the episode. Nothing actually develops in the tiny scene we are given, and what little happens could be easily assumed when we return to it in the next episode. It just used up time. In general, this episode’s plot just feels ramshackle.

The animation, however, is pretty darn good. Even those parts that are looped cycles are well made, with a high frame rate and smooth transition. We really see this in the fight between Aisrehdar and Mina, as well as the one between Kiri and Blaze. In the shot you see above of Aisrehdar attacking with the ground chunks, it spins around her, Matrix-style. Though the rocks are CG, she and the background are traditional. It is a visible difference, but a cool shot that looks dynamic. Really, the action in the episode was fun and enjoyable. The voice acting, on the other hand, was kinda meh. Nothing terrible, though Jad Saxton’s Mina was a shriek-y one throughout. She’s going to the default high-pitched scream to show her character is upset. I’m not a fan. Put together, I give this episode seven time goddesses out of ten.

And seriously, every time they said Aisrehdar, I heard “Ice Radar” and thought it was the dumbest name ever.