English Dub Review: APPARE-RANMAN! “Rain In The Dark Night”

Overview:

Kosame might not wake up again.

Our Take:

Here we see Appare at his lowest state. Kosame being injured and potentially not being able to wake up due to blood loss. While Hototo is watching over him, Appare can’t bring himself to do so. This is the most emotional that we’ve seen Appare, ever. He is dejected, even claiming that he doesn’t find any point in the race anymore, and can’t bring himself to visit Kosame. He also doesn’t really understand why he’s feeling this way, and can’t even name that he’s dealing with grief.

It’s really nice because as heartbreaking as it is, we get to see what Kosame really means to Appare. While Appare is for the most part, devoted onto to his craft and flippant about most other things, now we know that isn’t really the case. Kosame is in truth, Appare’s connection to his emotions. When Kosame is around, he mostly reacts to things the way most people would, so that Appare can devote most of his energy into focusing on his work. When Kosame isn’t around, then Appare has to do that work himself, and he flounders. He also hasn’t really thought about why he feels the way that he does, only that he can feel the pain. He really hasn’t done a lot of emotional labor in his life, because Kosame has been around to be his heart for him.

On the racing side, we see that all but one car has been trashed, and Gil has the upper hand. It’s bad publicity all around, and the financial strain to be able to repair everything is too much. The most devoted person is unsurprisingly Al, since Sophia has been kidnapped, but he’s lacking parts. The one genius who can possibly repair things, Appare, is feeling crushed. Now comes a surprising hero: Seth. Before, we saw that Seth is a very ambitious person who wants to move up in his company, and is willing to follow the rules to do just that. However, he’s stifling his mechanic’s spirit in order to climb the ladder, and is truth just as passionate about cars as the rest of them. This time, he valiantly defies orders to get the mechanic teams on their way, and start repairing the cars. This isn’t easy for him to do, but it’s the right thing to do, and that’s pretty cool.

Also, props to Appare’s VA for doing a fantastic job.