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

You’d be upset if you woke up from a coma with a bad dye job, too.

Spoilers Below

Chtholly has a bit of an embarrassing problem. Two locks of her hair have switched from being blue to pink. It may not seem like much to you or me, but in a world of magic, where you are a living weapon, any changes to your body can be big issues. It doesn’t look bad, really. It makes her look a bit like Twilight Sparkle, and you know that I… never mind. We’ll talk brony later. She tries to hide the problem hairs under the hat Willem gave her until she can get Nygglatho to give her a physical. Said physical has some strange portents. Nygglatho discovers that there are no traces of dead soul in her. This means that for some reason, Chtholly is no longer a Leprechaun! However, the girl feels fine, so it likely isn’t a grave issue. If she can’t be a weapon anymore, she should focus on other things… like snagging Willem before anyone else does. If Chtholly can nab the fatherly officer, he’ll stay at the warehouse forever! Lofty priorities, huh? All the same, to celebrate the successful failure of their three Leprechauns, Willem makes enough Butter Cake for the entire warehouse. For some reason, however, Chtholly isn’t there. That doesn’t sound right. She was the one that requested the cake in the first place. He takes it over to her room and asks her about it. She’s really just sensitive about the gang seeing her pig out on sweets. She doesn’t want anyone to see her lose control like we all know she will. This puts Willem in the very exclusive “Watched Chtholly Eat Sweets” Club.

In another town on another day, Willem and Nygglatho meet up with Limeskin. Since he lost the battle a few episodes ago, he’s been put on suspension, and can’t be seen in uniform. His civilian outfit looks more like Magnum P.I. cosplay than going around wear. He has some news, however. One of the survey vessels that was out on patrol has gone down, attacked by one of the beasts. Willem is confused, why are they meeting an off-duty Limeskin about a survey ship? Nygglatho tells him that the warehouse is home to more Leprechauns than just the three and a half he knows. There are two more, Rhantolk and Nopht, who were on the ship when it went down. Throughout the episode, we’ve been treated to those two interacts with Grick, Willem’s Goblin friend from episode one. Now, we’ll get to see them take down a monster…

This episode was loaded with beautiful shots. There were several scenes with Chtholly and streaming sunlight that seemed almost like gothic windows. The animation in the battle sequence at the end was pretty good, with the monster morphing its tail rather seamlessly into a pair of punching fists, and Nopht slicing the beastie up. Otherwise, it’s a big talking episode, so the team focused more on beautiful shots than on how things moved. Speaking of Big Talking, Amber Lee continues to kill it with Chtholly’s voice. She’s very authentic, especially when it matters. Though this series doesn’t get me in the feels as hard as some anime have, I do appreciate the emotion these characters are emitting.

Chtholly’s situation is an interesting one. We can assume that the little girl she met in her coma was, in fact, her previous life. If we are to go a bit out of the show’s normal storytelling and look at the opening credits, we can learn that girl had pink hair and also wielded Seniorious. So, it is entirely possible that her return from her coma has made her more of her original self. Her old self could be reasserting itself, slowly overriding her. This could be why she no longer has any of the “dead child” in her. Her old self is alive again! What this means about her ability to fight, we don’t know. This scenario is dark and melancholy, but it also keeps you wondering. It’s beautiful storytelling with characters that have real and complicated emotions that lend the fantasy setting with a groundedness that makes it genuine. We only have three episodes left in this series, so I hope we’ll get to the root of things soon. I give this episode eight butter cakes out of ten. Wait, have I used butter cakes before? Whatever.