English Dub Review: Shenmue the Animation “Daybreak”

Overview

The Hazuki Family’s maid by the name of “Ine” hands a letter to Ryo, who is restless from his Father’s death. The letter was sent from a person named “Yuanda Zhu” to his father which contained characters he cannot read and may require a proper translation…

Our Take

This time around, Ryo now has another clue to begin his quest to find out about his father’s past that could possibly connect him to Lian Di. As he starts to ask around to see if someone can read the letter that was addressed to his father after he died. And given that this Anime’s story and by-extension the game it’s based on takes place in 1986, Google Translate doesn’t exist yet. So it’s quite a challenge to translate a letter that appears to be written in a specific Chinese language that no one understands. I also thought the scenes of Chai (one of Lan Di’s henchmen who looks like a beefed-up Smeagol) lurking in the background was a nice touch and makes sense to the unpredictable nature of him randomly attacking Ryo in the games.

To me, one of the best highlights of this episode was the visual Sega easter eggs that can be found in the episode’s scenery, as the games themselves often referenced other sega games, such as a local Arcade containing Virtua Fighter, Hang On, Space Harrier and Fantasy Zone, and a small figurine of Tails from Sonic the Hedgehog on Ryo’s desk. And the flashbacks of Kid Ryo reading manga while his father demands him to be checking out his awesome martial art book instead did give me a chuckle at least. I understand getting your kid into perfecting their skills, But if I was in his shoes, I’d slowly meet him down in the middle and introduce him to martial art action movies instead.

Overall, this was a decently well-paced episode that consistently delivers on the action and investigation aspects of the games as intended, and shockingly spot-on and part of the game’s scenery and character progression as well. It was also wise for the show’s producers to condensed hours of content in an effort to move the plot along. From the supporting characters such as Yamagishi to the Heartbeats bar to even the small-time crimelord named “Charlie”. The proceedings and the plot remains properly replicated and so far with each cliffhanger, Ryo keeps getting a new lead, also the newly introduced end-credits theme called “Sympathy” performed by Narudora had a nice soothing atmosphere to end it on.