Death Parade has a phenominal OP and it's one of only three anime where I never skipped the opening and instead was dancing to that fun, groovy, and overly addicting music. It's a beautiful well constructed OP and even without seeing the anime you'll appreciate the work and groove that went into it. In fact, I think most people who watched the OP might have just got sucked into it so much they watched the anime. Some people might not like that I added a point just for the OP but it's my review so keep it to yourself.
While very catchy the OP only tells minimal about what to expect because it's a very fun and exciting theme while the anime's general tone was almost dull and depresssing. It isn't very light hearted, and got me chocked up in tears a few time if I have to admit. The anime wants to focus on death and emotion so it's trying to get you have emotional response to the themes even at some points adding a little bit of comedy to keep it not so doom and gloomy.
For me personally, I felt the anime's attempts to reflect emotional response and the purpose was much rushed. Without giving away anything about the series I'm mainly going to go into the general plot + symbolism.
The plot in a whole is that afterlife has no existence, very obviously based on much indian culture such as hinduism and buddhism, the two realms of which are mentioned and explained in the series are reincarnation and basically emptiness for which metaphorically we can just call hell. Quindecim is the fifteenth floor of which most of the story is set, but just one of the floors of which humans who have died at the same time go to decide their fate in simple party games like darts, twister, air hockey, etc. while the game is mainly just a ploy to bring out the inner demons and regrets of the judged humans it still holds a value to the setting of a hotel bar atmosphere.
The hotel like atmosphere is set up with floors with the different floors being latin derived numericals and suggested in the series every human must go through this judgment for 2 people die every second. Arbiters are judgers of human fates neither dead nor alive they are practically puppets or dolls that have no emotion and this series focuses on Decim. Decim is said to be 5 years old and it's hinted very often by one of the apparent supervisors, Nona, that no abiter has ever felt emotion. However, she implies very many times how she questions if any emotional tie, despite being non-human, would change their look on judgments.
The biggest issue I have is with the rushed action in the series. It reminded me a lot of Jigoku Shōjo (Hell Girl) that I watched when I first got into anime. I really liked that series because it felt like every episode essentially had different stories with the intention of very minimual details of the main story. Until the end you don't really get that many main concepts and that's closest thing I can compare Death Parade too.
While Death Parade had a lot of story and character development compared to Jigoku Shōjo the biggest elements were just barely shoved into the last few episodes of the show. Leaving it as almost 12 episodes wasn't enough or the production was rushed. The story still was good but by the end you get very minimum sense of who anyone is or what will happen next it was almost like they setting up for a second season.
However, from scouring the internet a second season od Death Parade seems questionable. Maybe but probably not and knowing how anime goes it's very hard to keep series going past the first season especially when it wasn't very well recieved in Japan, which it wasn't. I just hope that the western popularity will be enough to secure another season because with how Death Parade is right now I almost feel questionable on whether I just didn't get it or if it was just a let down.
Don't let that influence you though because if you want to see this I doubt you will be that let down especially if you saw Death Billards like me and really liked that sort of plot style. I think that it's a great slightly underrated anime for the beautiful art and sound and the characters weren't that much of a let down either. It just seemed a lot shorter than it was but the emotions will get you in the end so support it and hopefully there will be a season 2.
