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After finishing my 3rd rewatch after 5 years of the 2nd rewatch and after I undergone my entire rose-coloured college life, I finally understood something about this Yuasa masterpiece.

*STORY*
The story shows itself in a pretty simple way, a young adult trying to achieve the perfect college life, but he always misses "something" that's right under his eyes.

Well, without spoiling anything, this is a story about all of us, about growth and about a journey of self-awareness.

Tatami Galaxy in the surface is a Romantic Comedy with paranormal elements - since due to his unsatisfaction the main character (without name, since he is the mirror of the ... viewer himself) returns back at the first year of the university, but something always seems missing.
This is one of the most interesting way to use a loop, and each time everything seems totally different. Yeah, events surrounding "watashi" are totally different, but what about others? Well, unlike "watashi", others characters are pretty sure about their lives and more or less certain about their future. Because of this the events around them are always more or less the same, but at a first impression, since we look from "watashi" POV it seems that also they always follow him and alway make different things each loop.
This is a really interesting element that I never noticed with the first views. I guess I was young and naive at that time.

*ART*
Well, it's Yuasa. I love Yuasa art because it's always different anime after anime, each one of his creations always have a unique appeal that fits really well with the story, the mood and the characters.

Particularly here I loved the mash-up between live-action backgrounds and animated characters. Amazing also the change of color palettes during different scenes, fitting perfectly to the mood. This all also thanks to Yuasa's direction: his scenes really capture the heart of the characters, their emotions. It's all so lively and ecstatic.
GG Yuasa, you'll always be one of my favourite directors.

About the animations, well MADHOUSE did really a good job.

People that despise Yuasa's artstyle should just get out a bit from their comfrot zone and appreciate some unique-styled anime once in a while. It's not a matter of tastes, but just a matter of open-mindedness.

*SOUND*
Well, the OP is one of the best OP I've ever heart, but especially thanks to the animations (and I already talked about the art)
The OST is really good and fits well every scene, creating a very nice atmosphere.
I'm not giving it 10 only because it's not the thing that makes you love the anime so much.

*CHARACTERS*
This is the most important point, but hell if I should analyze all the characters I should lose at least one hour of my time and ain't got that.

Let there be known that ALL the characters are unique. Each one of the minor characters outstands in their scenes. This is helped by the fact that more important characters have a better defined artstyle (and again we come back to the art) and it's not given importance to background characters that are basically a ctrl+c ctrl+v. This is a really smart choice and lets all the characters shine in their own way: from Ozu to the gorillas of the cycle crew

About Ozu well, he's such a good character. You can make an entire analysis on how Ozu is a positive character. And us viewers, like "watashi", undergo his same growth from hating him, to understanding him, to loving him.
And if you notice that before "watashi" you'll laugh on how he is thick-headed and often blind, basically using Ozu as a scapegoat for all his faults (that are caused by himself first of all).

**MORAL OF THE STORY**
Don't focus too much on what's wrong with your life. Think how "watashi" self-sabotages himself and throws away every good thing about his life by wanting a perfect campus life.
Well, life is not perfect, and we shall stick with what we have. And maybe the imperfections of our lives are way better than being isolated in a fourth and a half tatami room.

Don't think always bad about every people. Think about the motivations about their actions. Maybe an evil demon like Ozu may be a demon only in your mind but in reality he's a friend that's actually always helping you.
Bonds are important for our lives, the important thing is not refusing all the other people because they look "stupid" or "mischievous" or "fake".

And finally: don't throw away opportunities. Be aware of what's surrounding you, maybe you have an opportunity under your nose that is waiting for you. But reality is not an anime and if you throw away opportunities you can't go back in time and fix what you have done.

Death Parade is an anime about life and death.

At a first glance it takes your typical "killing game" tropes (characters must fight one another to obtain something), but soon changing the expectations, revealing itself as a much more character-driven story, with the games being only a contour.

**STORY**
The story is basically character driven and in a static scenario, it isn't really the focus of the anime, but I'll talk of it more regarding about the "lore" of the setting.
The choice of making the afterlife as a set of lounge bars is pretty interesting and original, and the atmosphere of the setting is very well developed.
But asides ... the atmosphere, the lore isn't really explored much. Again, this is a character driven story so it isn't really important and that wasn't the focus of the anime.

**MAIN CHARACTERS**
The main characters, Decim, Nona and the Black haired girl (I will call her "goth-girl" from now on for shortness) are really well developed characters.
Decim is an out of the ordinary judge, and we see him grow almost every episode. He is the mirror of us viewers, and both of us every episode are exposed to moral dilemmas about human behaviour, sins and redemption.
The difference about us and Decim is that he cannot feel any emotions, has never lived nor died so he continuously tries to understand humans in order to be a better judge.

The problem of having a judge that doesn't feel emotions but has to judge humans is on of the main focuses of the series and it's constantly developed during the series.

Decim is accompanied by a human, the goth-girl, which is a mysterious character. Just like Decim she has no memories of herself (with the difference that Decim is a doll, so he had no past beforehand), but she is the voice of us viewers, and the character through whom Decim tries to understand human existance.

These two are the main characters, two halves of the same medal and very well written and developed characters.

**SECONDARY CHARACTERS**
Nona is the best secondary characters, acting as a severe judge of an higher rank than Decim, but also goes under a bit of development (I won't go any further to not spoil anything)

Unfortunately, due to the small number of episodes, all the other characters appearing are not really much deepened.
I'm talking more about the judges, since most of the humans appearing are just a liaison to talk about moral dilemmas and they serve very well their role (they job wasn't to undergo character development).

In particular, in my opinion Ginti was a pretty weak character, having a bit of generic angery personality. It felt a bit out of place, being presented as a character that had some potentiality in his development but disappointing that expectation.
For the same way, Maya was presented as a dual person to the goth-girl with some potentiality of development, but instead she was just a "macchietta", maintaining her role of boyband fangirl until the end.

I think that the authors wanted to talk about more things they could due to the time, so some characters and storyline are just left empty and a bit incomplete.

**FINAL THOUGHTS**
But overall, Death Parade does really well its job. I really enjoyed it especially due to the atmosphere, the two main characters and the moral dilemmas proposed.
It would've been even better if they focused more on fewer characters instead of adding secondary characters with some potentiality but keeping them on the side.

I want again to underline that I'm not complaining about those human characters that appear for only 1 episode, since they serve very well their role and do exactly what they had to do: ways through talk about moral dilemmas.

Regarding the animations, I felt it a bit plain some times. But I'm not an artist nor an animator, so I can't really talk a lot about them. Overall I felt they were pretty okay.
The sound (OST and OP) was great, but I don't think I have to add anything more about that.