English Dub Review: Ensemble Stars “Halloween Party”

Overview (Spoilers Below)

Everyone is preparing for the Autumn S1 Halloween Party — AKA, the Halloween DreFes. Anzu is in charge of planning it once again — but everyone’s taken notice to have Ritsu — Sakuma’s little brother — hasn’t been sleeping in his usual “vampire cycle” (during the day.) Ritsu resents his older brother for “losing” him, but also opens up to Anzu about how he doesn’t want to be alone. Anzu shows Ritsu to the bed that Sakuma had designed for him (a coffin.)

Some Anzu/Sakuma fan-service happens, but when it’s finally time to perform, UNDEAD and Knights unite to talk before they perform. UNDEAD performs a fun, haunting and jaunty melody about Halloween. After, though, Anzu goes to look for Ritsu, and sends him out onstage to unite with his big brother. Sakuma then makes a public apology to Ritsu for not being as close to an older brother as he could have been. He also declares that he — and all his friends — care about him and won’t leave him. Ritsu accepts the apology and apologizes for making everyone worry. The feud ends between them when Ritsu agrees to perform with Sakuma right then and there.

Our Take

The line is very thin between what is filler and what is…plot. This show is kind of all over the place in the sense that Trickstar will sometimes go episodes without being relevant, but then suddenly jump back into the spotlight. There are so many characters and it’s sometimes hard to tell which ones are actually going to be relevant. Mama, for example, seems like a character that’s going to be pretty big — at least for Anzu, that is. However, all this build-up could just be for one big, Mama-relevant episode, and after that, he may just fall to the wayside like some other characters do once their “arc” is finished.

They really pushed Ogami and Sakuma onto the fangirls, this episode. Wolf boys and vampires — how predictable. In any sense, it’s still difficult to comprehend what Ritsu’s real problem with Sakuma was. It wasn’t fully outright explained, so we’re left to just assume he just felt like he and Sakuma had drifted apart after Sakuma’s rise and fall by Trickstar.

Once again, this serves as another awkward instance of the characters saying, “Hey, you know where we should air our dirty laundry and talk out our differences? Here, live on stage!” The audience is never heard reacting to any of this or seen. It’s just really weird scene placement.

Anyway, shout out to that one minor character voice actor who called 2wink and UNDEAD to the stage. At least he had fun with the filler.