English Dub Review: Bartender – Glass of God “North Wind”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Ryu runs into a mentor from his past who has since become disillusioned with the bartender game.

OUR TAKE

Okay, four episodes from the end and we finally have another episode that focuses on Ryu. Not to say that I would ONLY want the show to focus on him, just that the time it hasn’t been about him has not been the most entertaining thus far, and I don’t see that changing much. But this time we finally get an episode that delves into and explores his seemingly rigid mindset bartending being for accommodating and comforting patrons, while also challenging that view’s possible weak points through Kitakata, who used to teach Ryu when they both worked under their former boss Goro Kase. While Ryu has continued to focus on pursuing the Glass of God in order to find a drink style fit for everyone, Kitakata has just decided to deal with the people in front of them and give them whatever they need to drink their sorrows away, even if it’s on the unhealthy side. It’s part of the uglier side of drinking that this show has mostly avoided up until now, but is still a side of it that it would have to deal with and discuss at some point, and what better way to do that than through a former associate of Ryu’s.

That said, it’s not like the two are bitter enemies now simply because they took different paths in how they give out booze. Both Ryu and Kitakata understand that these are just two sides to their professions that exist, though Ryu disagrees that Kitakata’s side is all bartending ever should be. However, that disagreement holds a little less water when they meet up with Goro, who is now hospitalized after carrying on as a Bartender alone well into his old age. This isn’t an inevitable future for Ryu or anything, but it is a warning that he may end up giving too much of himself to every stranger he meets that he tries to help through making drinks. Kitakata seems to have remedied this by simply not investing so much in his customers but Ryu simply may not have it in him to detach like that. Getting that job with the Cardinal Hotel might help this somewhat, but then we learn of Ryu’s greatest shame: Ryu won a cocktail competition in Europe and one of his clients died, so he blamed himself and went home to Japan. And I guess we’ll see in the remaining episodes how he reconciles with that.