WooooOOOOAAAaaHHHHHH (*Trumpets blare)
From the moment that OP first began playing, the anime world fell in love with Death Parade. Based on the OVA Death Billiards, another Madhouse production made for the animator training project “Anime Mirai 2013”, Death Parade sticks out as a very unique concept in a medium that frequently recycles ideas. People desperately wanted this show to be good simply because there was so much to like about it, but unfortunately, the favorable reviews this anime has been receiving are the result of people tricking themselves into believing that this show worked when it really, honestly did not at all. It does a terrible job fleshing out and balancing its recurring characters, the world building is awful, and the premise itself is left virtually unexplored. All enjoyment gotten out of this show can be chalked up as mindless, because the sad reality is that this show fails to execute anything noteworthy.
Synopsis: After people die, they are brought before beings known as “arbiters”, who are tasked with “bringing out the darkness” in their souls to determine if they are to be reincarnated or sent into the void. This is the story of those arbiters.
It’s pretty hard to argue that Death Parade isn’t entertaining because, well, it simply is. Drama is in a surplus here as we are frequently given intriguing and unique scenarios about people who lived, died, and now face judgment. The games are almost always entertaining and rarely will you want to take your eyes off of the screen. However, this is a double-edged blade. Because the show spends so much time on these stand-alone scenarios that don’t connect to anything and don’t do anything to flesh out the recurring characters, we are left with a show that is obviously only suited to be episodic trying to have an overarching plot complete with a large cast of characters, which it completely fails at doing. Don’t even get me started on their “commentary” about judging other people’s lives, because the more serious this show tries to be, the worse it gets.
The biggest reason that trying to have an overarching plot was a mistake lies in the fact that the world building is laughable. I was planning on writing out a list of questions that never get answered in this show, but then I realized that there are SO many of them that to write even a short list of them would be silly; that’s like showing someone a single beach and using it to quantify how many grains of sand are in the entire world. It simply won’t do the concept justice. See, the world design in Death Billiards didn’t really have to make sense because they don’t even address it; they leave it up the viewer’s interpretation. Death Parade, on the other hand, makes an attempt to explain how the whole setting and the arbiter system works to the viewers, and the moment they do that, it turns the intrigue and mystery of the OVA into frustration and confusion. You aren’t supposed to know what’s going on in Death Billiards because that’s part of the fun, but in Death Parade, you are, which makes it very off-putting when there are a million holes in their explanations. To put it short and sweet, Death Parade’s plot is fun, but it makes no sense what so ever.
The characters in Death Parade are handled pretty poorly thought out and clumsily utilized overall, but they have their moments. The episodic characters so a solid job serving their purpose; they come, entertain, then go. The main cast, however, leaves a lot to be desired. First and foremost, the description of what they are supposed to be makes no sense. Arbiters are supposed to have “no emotion”, when it is clear that all of them do. Even Decim, whose trademark is being emotionless, clearly has emotions if you pay attention to his reactions to the environment. Considering that the relationship between arbiters and emotions is the intended destination of the show, this is a massive oversight. Even if you can overlook all that, it’s impossible to deny that all of them are just simply shallow.
Other than Chiyuki, not a single character is fleshed out sufficiently enough for you to feel like you know who they are. They don’t have motivations, they don’t have backstories, and any attempt at development they are given is piss-poor. Even with the one character where these things are handled reasonably well, Chiyuki, it doesn’t actually happen until it’s just too little too late. You don’t really feel like you know her until the very end of the show, which is the opposite order of how you are supposed to introduce characters. Everyone else’s development is just nonsensical. Nona would be a good example of a character whose progression makes no sense whatsoever; it just happens for no discernible reason. Much like the plot, the only thing this cast is good for is mindless entertainment in the form of character quirks, which we all know are shallow.
In conclusion, Death Parade is not the greatest thing in the entire world, despite what its OP would have you believe. It struggles by trying to take a formula that isn’t suited to be an entire TV series and forcing it to become one at the expense of basic story structure. This anime is not good, but it’s not bad either; it will entertain you at the very least. I won’t go out of my way to recommend it, nor would I make any effort to recommend against it.
