English Dub Review: ēlDLIVE “Chuta, the Voice, and the Qualifying Exam”

Wacky, unique, and talks to itself.

Spoilers Below

Have you ever talked to yourself? Worse, have you ever responded? Chuta Kokonose knows that problem. He and his inner voice have been having a dialogue since he was young. It isn’t like normal. This voice has a mind of its own, and their conversation is screwing up his life. Rumors spread about how strange he is, and he’s always getting in trouble in class. The only place he finds respite is at home in his Aunt Mimi’s muffin shop, where his Home Ec awesome makes him a rock star in his guardian’s eyes. She’s taken care of him ever since his parents died, but she’s useless with housework.

In a moment, Chuta is ripped out of his boring loner lifestyle and tossed onto an alien spaceship. Bizarre extraterrestrials man the bridge and welcome him to ēlDLIVE: an interstellar police force controlled by a supercomputer called MOTHERS. Nobody knows why MOTHERS chose Chuta. He has none of the required abilities or characteristics. So, they give him a test. All he has to do is catch a low-ranking carnivorous baddie that lives near him.

Finding said criminal, he must defend an innocent in a hostage situation. The only question is how? His inner voice comes to life, revealing itself as a symbiotic alien with the ability to control an energy called SPH in whatever way its host imagines. Chuta handily uses his sewing know-how subdue his target with energy sutures. Now officially an ēlDLIVE officer, young mister Kokonose is ready to defend the solar system!

ēlDLIVE is a charming sci-fi shonen anime created by Akira Amano, the same manga artist who made Reborn!. It shows in the quirky characters that populate the Solar System Bureau. A baby chicken, a colony of triangles, the obligatory catgirl, and a tentacle monster, all lead by a humanoid who gives off serious vibes of Colonel Roy Mustang from Fullmetal Alchemist. There’s also Misuzu, the girl from his class, a top agent secretly assigned to observe him. He thinks she’s cute. She thinks he’s garbage. It’s romantic, ain’t it kiddies? This first episode does a good job laying down some plot hooks for us. How did this symbiont (called a monotalien) come to attach itself to him? Why is MOTHERS so interested in the two of them? The humanoids seem to have a good amount of story development behind them, at least in how they act, so I look forward to seeing more. The themes remind me of Tenchi Muyo! GXP meets Hunter X Hunter, all wrapped up in a Men In Black plot.

Artistically, it’s what you’d expect from a shonen action show. The style is not only reminiscent of Reborn!, but the aliens have a vibe of Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo. Did I have enough “Bo”? I always get confused around five. I like how the humans look plain, yet have enough distinguishing features that they feel like actual characters, and they contrast so heavily against those extraterrestrial weirdos. We haven’t yet reached a point in the story where real combat comes into play, so we haven’t seen what the animation crew is going to pull out for us. Given Chuta’s Green Lantern-esque powers, I think we may be in for some fun.

The voice acting is great. I believe each voice in each character’s mouth, and they emote just fine. The distortion effect of the monotalien’s speech is a bit grating, but still bearable. My recommendation is to turn up the volume a little bit at the beginning. Chuta speaks softly, and the audio isn’t balanced very well in a couple scenes, so the background music drowns him out a little bit. Otherwise, the dub sounds fine and syncs well.
I actually would like to see more of this show, and I hope the plot goes somewhere fun. It develops slowly, but I feel like it will be worth it to continue. Solid art with real character, good voice acting. I give it eight space police badges out of ten.