Overall: 9/10
Death Parade is short anime about life and death. It's presented somewhat episodically, but with a strong enough overarching narrative to keep the plot steady. While somewhat abstract, the questions Death Parade asks its viewers (and characters) are intriguing, and it's the type of anime I was thinking about well after it finished.
Story: 8/10
In Death Parade, characters called "arbiters" judge the recently deceased as they pass through a purgatory-like world. The dead are tested in a game to determine the quality of their soul, and then subsequently sent to either Heaven or Hell based on the arbiter's decision.
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Every game attempts to push the deceased to a point where they'll show their true character, so there's an element of mystery to it as you and the arbiter are trying to discover what type of person they really are. As a game designer, I found this aspect of the series to be a lot of fun, and it works well to supplement the more emotionally heavy segments.
While the trials the deceased go through are entertaining, the real meat of the series is in how the arbiters themselves are judged. How can one truly judge humanity without any humanity themselves? Doesn't everyone have at least some capacity to do evil? These are the types of questions Death Parade asks. It's subtle about it, so there isn't really a point it's trying to shove in your face, but the themes are there.
As I mentioned earlier, the story in Death Parade is fairly abstract, so it asks you to suspend your disbelief almost immediately. While the world is adequately fleshed out, there could definitely be some more clarification on the setting and overall structure of the arbitration system. A little more stipulation on the setting and mechanics of the world would have gone a long way. Still, I very much think these problems are negligible as the show is almost entirely character driven.
Art: 8/10
Death Parade has a fairly standard art style, though the quality of animation during the more emotional segments is very powerful. When the theme is designed around pushing characters to their emotional limits, the animation has to reflect that, and it does so in spades.
Sound: 9/10
In terms of voice acting (sub), there was a large task of portraying the huge range of emotions characters had to express, and like the artists, the voice actors deliver. The two leads in particular give some very great performances throughout the series.
Character: 10/10
As stated before, Death Parade is a very character driven show. Every so often, new side characters are introduced as simple archetypes, but slowly evolve throughout their judgement into three dimensional human beings. They don't know they're dead upon reaching the arbiter, so seeing how each person deals with their slow realization of the situation is very compelling. Some I sympathized with, some I pitied, and some I disliked, but there are no characters I completely despised. Every single character is justified in his/her motivations, which makes it all the more challenging for the arbiters to judge them. This pattern is extremely riveting, and the questions it presents for the main characters are what really push it over the top.
The main characters themselves get the benefit of having the entire show to develop, and the payoff is truly wonderful. Decim and his assistant are the primary arbiters, though they have conflicting ideals in how an arbiter's job should be done. The growth created from this conflict was very real, and you wonder yourself how you'd judge the deceased were you in their shoes. Both characters serve to show how complex an arbiter's job is, and they do so masterfully.
Enjoyment: 9/10
Death Parade is something of an emotional roller coaster. I went from happy, to sad, to angry, to heartbroken - it's really a tough one to get through. I tend to binge shorter series like these in a single sitting, but I simply couldn't do it with this one. It was only 12 episodes, but it felt much longer to me due to how emotion-packed it was. The show is great, but there were times when I simply couldn't watch another episode due to the previous one leaving me so weighed down.
The questions it had me thinking of after the fact, however, really bring it up several notches for me. I'm not particularly religious, but it makes me wonder how you could even judge somebody based on their past experiences in life. After watching this series, it seems like an impossible task to me. I commend the creators for taking on such bold material.
In conclusion, Death Parade is sort of a conduit for posing questions about life and death, though it's never in your face enough to subtract from the core narrative. It has its underlying themes, but it's still a solidly told story with well-written characters. Suffice it to say, Death Parade is a very mature anime, so while I do recommend watching it, do so when you're ready to really sit down and take it all in.
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Jan 19, 2016
Death Parade
(Anime)
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Overall: 9/10
Death Parade is short anime about life and death. It's presented somewhat episodically, but with a strong enough overarching narrative to keep the plot steady. While somewhat abstract, the questions Death Parade asks its viewers (and characters) are intriguing, and it's the type of anime I was thinking about well after it finished. Story: 8/10 In Death Parade, characters called "arbiters" judge the recently deceased as they pass through a purgatory-like world. The dead are tested in a game to determine the quality of their soul, and then subsequently sent to either Heaven or Hell based on the arbiter's decision. ... |
