English Dub Review: Chronos Ruler “The Transcendence of the Ego”

Aiks is just. So. CREEPY.

Overview (Spoilers)

We enter this episode with three simultaneous fights underway. First, Mina/Nana is up against Kyosuke, whose snakes aren’t much for her to fight. Unfortunately, she didn’t realize that Kyosuke had been feeding his horolog all manner of venomous animals, and its bite contains a neurotoxin. What HE didn’t realize is that she is a descendant of Chronos, and her blood purifies horologs and their venom. It took a while, but his snakes dissolve away. She encases him in a vacuum bubble, and lets him suffocate to death. In the meantime, Blaze fights against Raiko, whose incredible physical strength defy logic. As it turns out, Raiko is actually quite frail and atrophied, but his body has been fused with that of a horolog. Not only does he have insane strength, his speed is such that none of Blazes attacks can land. That’s when the old man spots it, particles of slow-burning gunpowder floating in the air. Blaze ignites them all, turning Raiko into barbecue. Finally, Kiri fights against Aiks, with little results. Aiks summons smaller horologs to eat the sped up time of Kiri’s attacks. These can also be used to attack, and keep the boy on his toes. He uses a technique of attacking with the ground water, ripping up through Aiks with a million tiny blades. Unfortunately, he spends too long gloating, and Aiks uses a strange technique to recover. He eats his own time, reversing the injury back to full health. While pondering this strange ability, Kiri doesn’t pay attention, and gets bit by one of the horologs. He stabs it through, preventing it from eating his time, but takes a heavy injury instead. Just as Aiks is about to administer the finishing blow, Victo readies a counter… and is stopped within his own mind. A part of him realizes that if he kills Aiks, his parents and past self will all vanish. After struggling in his heart, he decides to break free of the past and launch the attack to save his son.

I was fully expecting this episode to completely reveal Mina/Nana’s story, explaining to us once and for all if she is Kiri’s mother. Instead, we get confirmation that she is immune to horolog bites, making her tearful revelation of her scar in episode two all the more suspect. There is a whole bunch she isn’t telling, and we’ve only got two more episodes until this show is kaput!

Our Take

This episode was all about the action, and lots of it. Really, if you’re looking for good, character-based writing, you shouldn’t be looking here. However, the direction was just as it should be. The pacing of the action was good if a bit broken up. There were three separate fights going on, but instead of focusing entirely on one at a time or constantly flipping between the three, the director hybridized it a bit. Instead, what we see is a toggle between the Mina fight and the Blaze fight, until both completes, then the view switches to focus on the Kiri fight. This is because Kiri’s fight with Aiks has a bunch of little details and exposition in it, which the other two do not. Blending it too much with another fight would make it harder to follow. The other two fights are pretty straightforward, so toggling with them keeps them interesting. I do find Blaze’s fight a little difficult to swallow, though. He had to have been releasing that gunpowder through the air during the fight, but his inner monologue was talking about how he had to think of something. Further, that gunpowder would have been washed away by the rain. Also, Kiri should not have been losing that badly. It was raining. His weapon was literally everywhere. He could have shredded Aiks to salsa without even trying, but he kept thinking far too small in the application of his water control. This is a guy who is touted as being the intelligent one of the bunch, but even Blaze is a smarter fighter than him sometimes. That’s kinda depressing.

The action animation is quite nice, barring a few small errors in faces here and there. The Blaze fight was energetic, being that he was fighting a martial artist. Though Raiko’s flurry of punches was a shoddily done cycle with a bunch of blurs, the remainder of the fight had them jumping around and getting slammed into and through trees, with an impact you could feel. Mina’s fight may not have been as about maneuverability, but she does pull off a few acrobatics. Kyosuke’s snakes move fluidly as well. What really stands out during their fight is her face. It is tough to read, but there is a ton of hatred, anger, and other ugly emotions running around in her at the fact that he calls her Nana, and it makes her scary to look at. The art on Mina is great and totally makes her segments. Kiri’s fight has those mini horologs flying about, and they are incredibly well animated for being traditionally rendered. Kiri fights primarily with thousands of tiny water blades, and you can see them all in the shots where they appear. It’s a stunning number of them, and they have been rendered properly for their various angles, despite the dramatic composition of the shots. Between that and Aiks just being a creeper, this part of the fight had some of the best animation this series has seen since episode two.

I wish I had as glowing a report for the voice acting. Jad Saxton’s subtle hatred certainly made listening to Mina interesting. She’s brought out much of the immortal’s emotions, where several others would have just let it lie at the baseline performance. Other than that, most of the characters were voiced at the same level as they always are. It doesn’t inspire anything, but it doesn’t pull me out of the experience of the show. I would like to hear more depth out of Victo and Kiri, as they are the most central characters, but I doubt I’ll get that. With the action and animation as good as this episode has it, though, I guess I can look past it.