English Dub Review: Sakura Quest “The Crystal of Melting Snow”

The dragon’s spirit awakens, but the town teeters on the edge.

Overview (Spoilers)

Yoshino and Shiori go to visit a successful bakery in the city. The CEO claims Manoyama as his hometown, and he wants to do something risky to help revitalize the place. He currently has two shops open in big cities. He wants to open the third in Manoyama. With Chitose’s help, they approach the owners of local shuttered businesses to see if they will allow Belem bakery to rent their space. Unfortunately, many are either unwilling to do so, since they live on the second level of the shop. There is one though, Akiyama, who has moved out to live on the outskirts of town. Chitose is unable to sway him, and he asks the board of tourism to leave. Facing this difficulty, Chitose calls an emergency, all hands meeting of the board of merchants, and invites the tourism team as well. The agenda? She proposes they dissolve the board. With new businesses moving into the old school building as a mall, and the staples of life being handled by shopping at the supermarket, there isn’t a need for the shopping district any more. However, many of the new and revitalized businesses aren’t willing to throw in the towel yet. They beg and plead with Akiyama to allow Belem into his shop. Things begin to get heated, until they finally ask Yoshino what she thinks. She doesn’t want the shopping district to die, but to force people to take renters isn’t revitalization, it’s just development. They should take a moment to see things from each other’s perspectives. That’s when it comes out. Akiyama took on a renter once long ago. The man skipped out on him, even though Akiyama co-signed on the loan. He doesn’t want to go through that again. In the face of this legitimate reason, one of the other shop owners decides his own reasons against Belem coming to his shop were trivial. He consents gladly. However, all this may be moot. Kadota has a meeting with some very official-looking people. Manoyama is going to be dissolved and merged into the nearby city of Tomikura.

Yikes! What a twist! And we only have two more episodes left of the series! This episode was dramatic, threatening the dissolution not only of the merchant board but the town. We are definitely at the “complication” part of the plot arc, and it’s looking more and more bleak for the girls. Despite that, we do get a moment of development for Yoshino. She’s starting to get worried. When the Mizuki Festival wraps up, her year as Queen will be over. She realizes that she has no appreciable skills or careers to fall back on. She’s also fallen in love with the little town that took her in. But what is she to do? Something else I do love is that they have decided to “make their own” golden dragon for the festival treasure, but they’ve done so with the Shining Dragon toy that leads to the creation of the book cafe in the old school. Now, they have a symbol of the new era of Manoyama, and without spending a ton of money. Seriously, though, that Shining Dragon is a huge action figure!

Our Take

This episode ties its events deeply in the history of the town, and the lessons of the dragon, which is at the heart of the Mizuchi Festival itself. As things continue in the Akiyama storyline, Maki and Ririko continue work with the acting troupe on the play of the dragon. Their rehearsal of the play directly echoes what is happening. As the town of the play begins their party, Maki (as the dragon) hides away. Her desperation echoes the exact feelings of Akiyama, who suffers in silence. He stayed silent about his problems so that other merchants wouldn’t shun outsiders. Even though Akiyama is technically the antagonist of this episode, the story goes to great lengths to show that he is not only doing things for a good reason, but the reasons for his silence mark him as a good person who wants the town to succeed. The play has a new ending, though. The spirit of the dragon appears and forgives the town for not being considerate of her, and the song becomes one not of sorrowful guilt, but gratitude. This happens just as the board of merchants learns from the mistakes in the legend, sees things from Akiyama’s perspective, and accommodating. We are shown that the two stories that began as mirror images have changed for the better. That makes the resolution of this conflict all the more gratifying and earning Ririko’s Dragon Song at the end.

And, man, I can’t get enough of Brina Pallencia. Her work on Ririko brings out emotion and humor for the most deadpan character, and her singing is far better than anything I’ve heard out of an English dub of an anime. She’s definitely aided by how Ririko is written, as the girl makes commentary all the time that gets softened by her monotone voice. Despite this, Brina manages to portray excitement and humor through this voice in the delivery of those lines. It’s like smiling with your eyes, only with your voice. That smile is gentle and slight, but still, has a warmth to it when she is interested in what’s going on. Further, Leah Clark’s work with Maki as the Dragon of the play gave me chills. She portrayed that desperation and frustration with such depth and power, it did justice to what the writers were intending with the scene. Together, these two ladies cemented the rehearsal portions of the episode as the beating heart and metaphor for the main plot of the episode.

The animation was the same painstaking level that we have been used to from this show since day one. I expect that in the next two episodes, we might see some more complicated shots, but in the meantime, the animators are doing this work with their full heart. No errors, smooth animation, and characters that express subtle, but genuine emotions. Combined with the amazing writing, symbolism, and superb voice acting, this episode is one of my favorites of the show so far. If they can keep up and improve this quality to the end, this show might be one I consider for my DVD collection.