English Dub Review: Shikimori’s Not Just a Cutie “Jolly Times at the River!”

Overview

Summer break is here at last! Izumi and his friends arrive at the river, where they get started with a barbecue. As they divide up the prep work, everyone suddenly feels very anxious… because Izumi has picked up a kitchen knife! Even Shikimori’s eyes grow wide… but she’s once again charmed by Izumi and his ability to do just about anything. After the barbecue, they all decide to play in the river, but Izumi gets into some trouble…

Our Take

We get the “obligatory camping trip episode” this time around. Izumi’s cooking & knife skills in one scene, in particular, were pretty funny though he was good at it which is hilariously ironic given that Izumi usually has a bad luck streak with everything else while Shikimori surprisingly is the extreme opposite with her bad at cooking while hyper capable with everything else.

When I saw the empty train with all of them being tired near the end, that scene was screaming your typical “sleeping on the shoulder” cliche you’d come to expect and they delivered, it was great, first Shikimori sleeps on Izumi’s shoulder and then the way Shikimori (after checking several times that no one is looking) puts Izumi’s head on her shoulder which made the proceedings all the more wholesome.


Overall, I think this episode feels a bit more mature because Izumi is not all the time knocking on death’s door and being saved by Shikimori who didn’t lose her shine because of it. Arguably, flawed characters are all the rage as they’re easier for audiences to connect (Steven Universe was the clearest example of this since Rebecca Sugar often wrote flawed characters on purpose.). But it’s almost like the writers had to nerf our titular heroine just to make her flawed to a certain degree.