I was in the mood to see some delicious ZR (which is nothing out of the ordinary), so I loaded up Tokyo ESP for the first time since it aired, which was already 6 years ago by now. Pretty crazy if you think about it, I felt like I watched this just the other day.

Setting aside how old we’re all getting and how much of our lives have been consumed by bad Chinese cartoons, I’m taking a look at FFF’s subs this time. I’m reviewing episode two because I spent all of episode one ogling Minami’s thighs.

No real issue here but I’m not super fond of the “lives below us” here. It feels a little off, maybe a bit too stiff or something. Can’t really put my finger on what I don’t like, all I can say is it sounds a little strange. I’d probably go with a more stock “It’s the old man from downstairs!”

This line is a bit too literal for my tastes. The phrase she’s using does technically mean “what is this”, but it can be used much more broadly. In this case, it’s a knee-jerk expression of surprise at the fact that her hair turned white, so something more like “What’s going on?” would work better in my opinion.

I have to stop and praise this line. Word for word, the first sentence would be “The inside of the house is—”. We all know how I feel about trailing sentences, so I have to give credit where credit is due. “Something weird’s happening!” is an excellent extrapolation that captures the meaning perfectly.

Though I can’t leave this one without a small nitpick. “Right away” is a bit of an out of character phrase for a high school girl. “Come home quick!” would fit better and add some much-needed punch.

This line is kind of needlessly literal as well. I think “I need [more] money!” would be the more natural choice here. I’d argue it doesn’t introduce any ambiguity here either, because the lines before are all about her needing to go to work. Pretty clear she’s not about to go rob a bank, so it’s a safe choice.

I feel like this line came up before. This time though, she’s actually asking “What is that?” in reference to something in the distance. Technically a translation error, but a really minor one.

Major nitpick, but I don’t think this sentence is grammatically correct since it has no verb. It can probably still get a pass since it’s a fragment in response to a question she asked herself, but I’d tweak it to “There are glowing fish swimming through the air?”

The way this line is worded makes it sound like she’s confident she can get inside, which isn’t exactly the case. She said “I might be able to use my power…” Doesn’t make much of a difference here but may as well point it out.

Unfortunately we couldn’t escape trailing sentences entirely this episode. It’s pretty clear here that the outcome is that she might get hurt, so just be explicit and write it out. I’d also argue that something going wrong would be the obvious reason for her to get hurt, so you could cut that entirely if CPS was the issue. Short and sweet, “You could get hurt!”

This one’s an interesting one. The original is another dreaded trailing sentence, so kudos for finishing it off. However the meaning is more in line with “[I’m only here today] because Dad was there for me.” It’s a bit of a stretch to jump from there to “He’s all I have”, which makes me question whether this was a deliberate choice or a legitimate error.

As it stands, I want to lean towards the latter. “He’s always been there for me” is a fine, similar-length alternative. Though as far as sentimentality and all that fluff is concerned, it’s not too far off. If the writer were to argue that it was intentional then I’d probably be okay with it. The meaning might not really be the same, but it gets the message across nonetheless.

There’s a pretty important detail that’s missing here. They refer to Black Fist as the “Phantom Thief”. Think Kaitou Kid. It’s explicitly stated here but the viewer kind of needs to piece it together from context, so I think it would be worth including. Granted, it would be kind of unwieldy and difficult to work in here, so I can appreciate why it might have been omitted.

This line is also technically wrong, but not in a way that really matters since it’s arguably jargon. Professional boxing isn’t a level, it refers to the style of boxing in contrast to amateur boxing. Only real differences are the money, the bouts being longer and the headgear (or lack thereof). You’d say “she’s a professional boxer” to be correct, but again this doesn’t really change anything for the layman viewer.

So that’s all I’ve got for this episode. Initially I felt like I didn’t have much to say and I really had to try to find things worth writing about, but I think I raised a few pretty good points towards the end. That being said, and given it was a TV release, it was a perfectly serviceable episode with plenty of great lines and no major issues. Good stuFFF.