English Dub Review: Kemono Michi: Rise Up “Hero × Demon King”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

With four matches down, the Hero team and Demon King teams are tied up, leaving the final match being the tie breaker. For one final time, Genzo dawns the Animal Mask mask in order to face MAO, who has been striving all this time for this chance to fight him. The two wrestlers end up communicate their feelings in the only way they know how: fighting. Through this, MAO gets his feelings across to Genzo, who confesses his dream of opening a pet shop, which helps them to settle their differences and understand how they both got dragged into things, allowing them to focus on the fight at hand. Though that doesn’t stop Joanna and Rose from trying to cause some chaos in their favor, starting an uproar in the audience. Genzo and MAO still manage to finish their own match in a fiery climax, with Genzo the winner. He gladly asks MAO to challenge him again any time.

Still, even with as much money that was made by the event, he, Hanako, and Carmilla still end up racking up a huge bill that only drags Shigure even more into debt. But who cares, now that he can open his pet shop? All that means is that they still have to take quests to pay the bills, the next being meeting a Minotaur!

OUR TAKE

Kemono Michi concludes its first, and possibly only, season in a pretty predictable fashion, but ends up looking pretty cool doing it. Naturally, the focus ends up being on the resolution of Genzo and MAO’s rivalry, which pretty much dissipates as soon as they’re able to have a proper conversation, then reignites with equal fervor. That’s not going to be enough to fill up the last twenty minutes, however, so the rest is filled in with more villainous antics to pad things out, along with a giant riot…and when THAT doesn’t get them to the right runtime, we get a pretty long epilogue that doesn’t even feel like much of an ending. Both Genzo and MAO are still stuck in this world, neither have any intention of going back to the human world, we don’t check back in with anyone there because I guess there wouldn’t be any story potential in people there trying to figure out where the most popular wrestlers went, and Genzo never quite opens up his pet shop.

All in all, things just sort of…stop instead of having a proper ending. We even get the same old ending theme so the episode itself feels very run of the mill, just without a preview for the next episode. Just…“okay, I guess it’s over”, when it should feel like pretty triumphant an conclusive resolution. I guess I shouldn’t exactly be surprised since this show has felt like it’s cut corners for about half the episodes of the season, but it’s no less disappointing. For such an interesting premise, I was really hoping that it would be handled with some more finesse, especially with how oversaturated this genre has been for nearly a decade now. For every novel and different sort of take they go with, there also seems to be something that’s been half assed or not taken towards its full potential.

I can’t deny how much fun I’ve still managed to have with the series, but it still feels like it’s been powered by its own hype instead of being able to carry its show. As said, I don’t really watch wrestling on its own, but from what I hear, it does seem to have instances like this. But on the whole, I suppose it still ends up being a net positive in the end. Perhaps going over the show again for the Season Review will remind more of why I liked it to begin with.