English Dub Review: WorldEnd: What are you doing at the end of the world? Are you busy? Will you save us? “My Happiness”

Soylent monsters are made of people…. PEOPLE!

Spoilers Below

Willem, Chtholly, and Nephren have arrived at the survey point, and have rendezvoused with Rhantolk and Nopht. First order of business, Willem has to work out all their venenom poisoning with a good massage. Like any good massage, emotions come bubbling to the surface. Nopht can’t help but bust out laughing, but Rhantolk… is really getting into it… That doesn’t mean she trusts him, baka. In fact, she is gonna sleep with one eye open with him around. All of her reading has suggested that humans were responsible for the 17 Beasts that ravaged the land. He confirms her suspicions that the beasts were bioweapons. This brings up another, much more important question. If these beasts were genetically created by man, how did they replicate so quickly? Now, there are so many monsters, and with so little in common with each other. That is a question that will have to wait for another day. While the rest of the team goes about their duties, Chtholly decides to make herself useful, just so nobody will think she was brought along just to “comfort” Willem. She leads the soldiers in cleaning the ship from top to bottom and cooks the most delicious meals they’ve ever had. She even sews cute patches on their undershirts. So sweet.

Willem heads down to the dig site to start tracking down Lapidemsibilus, the Dug Weapon that might prevent Chtholly from losing her mind. Along the way, he meets up with Grick, complaining to his superior about a number of people heading into the caverns below. They never operated in groups above seven, for fear of awakening… something. But, what’s done is done. The weapon is back on board the ship, but things are so horribly organized, Willem has to sort through all the boxes on his own. Rhantolk and Nopht drop by and offer to help, not because they like him, but because he’s working hard for all the Leprechauns (especially Chtholly). He declines their offer, as he manages to find it on his own, but takes their Dug Weapons to give them a tune up. This reveals a terrifying secret. Nopht’s weapon, Desperatio, is very special. It is created by humans to kill humans, and won’t hurt anything else. If that’s the case, it shouldn’t be able to hurt the beasts as well as it does in her hands. Unless… The beasts are really humans. After the release of the 17 Beasts, they infected all of humanity with a disease that turned them into beasts, necessitating the creation of the Leprechauns from the souls of dead children. Nothing about this situation is right, and the slippery slope of necessity versus ethicality has turned into a full-tilt water slide of bad decisions.

Oh, and those people sent into the caverns? They died horribly. And Chtholly’s hallucinations have taken on a narrative of a woman with her sword (Seniorious) killing a little girl. Thought you ought to know.

This episode gets the plot pushed along, and it makes me wonder how fast we’re going to go from here. With only two episodes left, we are going to have to cover the remaining origins of the monsters and either Chtholly’s final descent into madness or her miraculous return. It doesn’t feel like we have enough time to cover all of that, but I’m ready to see them try. This episode also shows us how much falling for Willem has forced Chtholly to grow, seeing her through the eyes of the long distant Nopht and the keenly analytical Nephren. They see that the power of love has given her the will to improve her home ec skills to try and win him over. It’s also funny to see how the crew of the ship go from ridiculing her as a girl kept to help Willem with “other things” to falling in love with her for her incredible efforts. Her dream of the other woman suggests that the girl she’s been seeing is not her previous life, but someone different that may be closer related to the 17 beasts. If the beasts were based off a human genotype, it is entirely possible that the strange powers the girl displayed marks her as the source material. The Liliya of the dream went in to kill the girl to stop the beasts but likely failed. Conjecture, but I think the scene supports it.

It seems like something I should have put in the summary, but as Willem sorted out his feelings on the origins of the beasts, he full on asked Chtholly to marry him. This was an odd placement for his confession of love for her, and her reaction felt off as well. As if she didn’t actually process what he said, and just kept consoling him. I’m not entirely certain I understand where the characters were, emotionally. I am glad, however, that Micah Solusod and Amber Lee Connors managed to retain the vulnerable intimacy of this scene without going over the top and sappy. It felt like there were deep, complicated emotions there, even if I couldn’t understand them. There is solid animation during the scenes with the survey team getting caught by the monster, and it’s always fun to watch Willem tune the swords, even if it’s simple CG work. Otherwise, there wasn’t anything wrong with the animation, even if the backgrounds were a little more plain than normal. They weren’t plain by laziness, but by narrative necessity. Most of the story happens on the ship. So, because of this, and the really great plot development going on, I give this episode eight adorable patches out of ten.