A word of itself, taste salty in people’s mouths. The only people who likes talking about death normally I think are religious people.
So, what if there’s a place where the dead are going to be trialed.
A post-purgatory, if you will. A place where the dead hang around and be judged.
Life or Death
Heaven or Hell
Here, I bring my review: “Death Parade”
Let’s Rock!
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**STORY**
You’ve arrived at a bar with your partner/person whom you may or may not have met before from an elevator ride. Here, you see a bartender. You asked for a Martini, shaken not stirred, Bartender treated you and the other person good but later asked you to play a game with your life at stake. You refused at first but you have no choice because there’s no way of getting out.
Now, you’re playing this game. While you’re playing this game with the other person, memories starts to come in from your past. Now you’re making confessions that you have some kind of connection with the other person, who you we’re before and what have you done. After all that, the game is over and you and the other person are still alive. The bartender told you the truth that you we’re dead and got sent back to the elevator. Where the elevator takes you and the other person to a place where you’re going to be. Reborn again or the Void.
Life of an Arbiter.
Decim, The Bartender, is one such arbiter. He’s met with a woman who’ve died but her memories never came back, even her name. A fellow Arbiter insisted she’ll be Decim’s assistant until her memories eventually come back.
With each episode have trials that brings out the best and/or worst out of each individual that come in. All this to reveal their true selves then to be judged sending either or both to reincarnation or darkness(The Void). This sounded pretty much black and white but all human beings are colors of various shades of grey.
Even though, this anime is episodic, but also ongoing because of the dead amnesia woman, whose assisting Decim to help judging people.
As for judging, Death Parade invites the audience to play this game to determine what judgments are going to be before they’re officially “revealed“ to us.
This can lead to many satisfaction that you were right and also horrible confusion when you were wrong.
It’s very pleasing for me to have a story which is about after death. Not so many anime have touched this. However, there’s a problem I have with this anime. We have this setting where arbiters judging the souls of the dead but why? What is their true goal?
Only the good people get to be reincarnated and others go to the void? Is this how you cleanse the earth?
Hmm, if that is the case, then I want to talk with their CEO because last time I checked, Earth today is STILL horrible place to live in! If I ever have any right to decide where I should go after I die, I rather chose to be in the void because I don’t want to back to real world and face so many problems, we humans still have.
For an anime which shows only 12 episodes, I figured there’s no way to fit so much information. If they could, theoretically, it’s going to need 12 more episodes (22-24 ep. Max). I think this should’ve got more episodes because trying to squeeze in so much information for questions that needed to be answered for 12 episodes, it’s not going to cut it.
However, they somehow made it work by having you, the audience have to analyze not only the characters explaining things but also the surroundings. Death Parade is good at “not showing” things. I mean by, giving you hints, and referring to things offhand many times. So, you’re going to be a good detective because this anime will not full spoon you all the time. (-cough- -cough- DSP -cough- -cough-)
The episodic and ongoing stories are great here but having them together looks like contrasting. For an anime to keep flipflopping each other like that would drive me to the point of “I don’t even care“ level. I would suggest it could go episodic on the first half and then on the second half we get the ongoing on. I think personally, this anime would be better off being an episodic. Where the main characters meet different individuals and how they would react to them. It might not make Death Parade any better but that’s just me.
The ending to this anime I am not going to spoil, I have to say it’s good, but I am not completely sold on how it got to that ending. There are many key important plot points on Death Parade but when it reaches to the last episode, they’re either ignored or didn’t hold up that much. That which annoys me.
6/10
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**ANIMATION**
There are times, it’s fun for me to talk about colors and animations but in this, I have to say…. Umm, how should I put this? Muted.
We get to see the colorful characters much more than the backgrounds they get more toned down. Although, I still like it with the red, purple, etc. everything to make the whole bar very haunting.
The animation of the characters I have to say it’s pretty fluent on how they act and bringing out their emotions.
It’s not A1 caliber but hey, I can get by it.
8/10
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**SOUND**
Okay, right off the bat, the opening animation and theme is simply AMAZING! I can disco anyday, even though it’s very unfitting for an anime that’s so dark and talks about death.
Ending music is just awesome as well.
Best chosen Openings and Endings.
10/10
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**CHARACTERS**
I listened to both voices from the original Japanese and English Dub. They worked differently on how both portray the characters but they both work! Well, who am I kidding, it’s MADHOUSE. They always get great actors.
The Arbiters are the ones who judged the dead but they’re not always infallible. Arbiters DO make mistakes like humans do, if that soul is lucky they would admit that. Unfortunately, the anime didn’t describe on how they would fix this even they make that mistake. Huh, I guess this answers why Earth is still pretty horrible place to live in because mistakes like this!
Hmm, this come to show that you can’t completely trust some individual with God’s work.
I can see the premise that Decim is a empty shell and the unknown dead girl is the voice of reason, and human compassion. His conscience if you like to add. All to assist Decim’s judgment on different individuals. A nice pair, and working team.
We get to know the unknown woman because her personality traits leave her even though her she has amnesia.
This had a one good unique sub-plot working on with a particularly old Arbiter the anime was working but somehow…… died.
Well that was worthless.
Beside from that, the character development between Decim and unknown girl or everyone in purgatory held strong for me. It is pretty good, even though there are certain plot points that I feel don’t really needed. Like the 2nd arc of Ginti where it’s only purpose is to pull audience’s feel strings. It’s fine but it should’ve go for only 2 episodes at least. Any more is just too much.
Death Parade, as a whole, handled well, good feel strings but it’s not enough to make me or anyone else cry.
9/10
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**ENJOYMENT**
I really do enjoyed the main characters handle with each individual much more than the main story itself. It played as an impressive game on what is the determine fate on the individual to be judged. Having a group of friends watching this together will have a fun time with each episode.
The main story is okay, but it could have done some little more tweaking.
8/10
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**VERDICT**
After everything that happened, I’ll be completely cool if Death Parade never get a sequel.
However, after all the flaws Death Parade has, it ended pretty well. With that being said, Death Parade could do a 2nd season. A season where it’s more focused to be episodic. Well why not? There are billions of people on earth and who knows how many individuals these Arbiters have judged.
Who knows, we’ll just have to wait and see.
….then judge it!
VERDICT: 7/10
RECOMMENDATION: BUY!
