English Dub Review: Kuma Kuma Kuma Bear “Bear, Meets Feudal Lord”

Overview (Spoilers Below):

The Adventurer’s Guild of Crimonia gathers to harvest the Black Viper that Yuna killed in the first episode.

Fina stops by Yuna’s house, where the latter is busy casually magicking furniture into existence. When Fina reveals the Black Viper’s mana stone, Yuna notices a small cut on her hand. Fina waves it off, but Yuna insists on seeing if she can heal it.

Like everything else she attempts in the game, it goes well. But she urges Fina to take the next day off to ensure it’s healed fully. Fina mentions that the guild admin wanted to see Yuna.

When Yuna arrives back at the adventurer’s guild, she learns she’s been invited to meet with The Lord of Crimonia. She’s adverse to the idea, and starts rattling off fairly legitimate reasons. The guildmaster agrees with her, but assures her their lord is a good guy, and encourages her to go to keep the trust in the guild high.

Yuna reluctantly agrees, and visits Lord Cliff Foschurose (Yung-I Chang.) He introduces her to his daughter, Noire “Noa” Foschurose (voiced by Amanda Lee, aka AmaLee) who’s Yuna’s biggest fan.

After spending an exciting day at the mansion, Yuna gifts Cliff the sword she won off the goblin king, in exchange for a future favor. She promises an excited Noa she’ll be back for another visit soon.

She returns home, only to find a distraught Fina at her door. They rush to Fina’s home, where her mother, Tirumina, has taken a turn for the worse. Yuna tries her healing magic, which restores her strength a bit. She realizes her basic healing spell isn’t enough, so she revises her approach to remove the source of the illness.

This does the trick. Relieved and grateful, although perhaps a bit flustered, Fina, Gentz, and Tirumina all pledge to find a way to pay her back. Yuna explains she doesn’t want their money, she did it because Fina’s her friend.

Fina officially introduces her younger sister, Shuri, who asks if she can hug Yuna’s bear suit and is delighted at how cuddly it is.

Our take:

A few questions answered this episode, although more always arise. Despite the whole “two steps forward, one step back” approach to storytelling, there’s plenty of humorous moments and new skills for Yuna to show off that make it more than worth watching.

So far, we’ve seen plenty of her combat skills, so it’s refreshing to see her non-fighting abilities. Healing, building a house and filling it with furniture, and of course, showing off her bears help flesh out her capabilities, as well as how gameplay works in this world.

The Black Viper fight from the first episode seems to chronologically have taken place between the second and third episodes. Since she was officially “trapped” in the game as of episode 2, either her visions of the outside world were flashbacks, or we’re just not supposed to worry about it.

Additionally, there’s no explanation yet on whether Fina and her family are NPCs or players. Gentz (who I don’t think I’ve mentioned is voiced by Tyson Rinehart yet) could also use a little more explanation. He’s a recurring character, and even though I think he was introduced as a “family friend” of Fina’s, there seems to be a romance gearing up between him and Tirumina (who’s voiced by Molly Searcy, btw.) Her “death mom” ponytail seems to suggest she might not be out of the woods when it comes to her illness, but I suppose it’s possible this series will buck that trend, along with so many other anime “traditions.”

Funniest line of the episode by far goes to Cliff’s straight laced “can I ride your bears” request. I’m excited to see more of him, and hear more of Yung-I Chang in the process.

Despite a distinct lack of action in this episode, there’s not a dull moment. I’m hoping there will be more of the same next week!