Now wait a second, I’m being completely serious here. I’m not trying to coerce you into reading my review by starting off with a lame sarcastic statement. Just bear with me for a bit. Now Death March has a typical isekai plot that is generic in every sense of the word. The visuals and soundtrack are plain, and the protagonist is yet another incomprehensibly dull Kirito knockoff. But this anime is truly unique in that out of the entire lead female cast, none of them have BIG BOOBS. That’s right, all of the important girls in this show either have modest chests or are lolis. Now I don’t know about you, but I’ve seen a plethora of harem/eiichi/isekai/anime with a bunch of girls in them, and these shows always showcase at least one main female character with large breasts who usually ends up at the butt of at least one boob joke. Not Death March. I was honestly in shock when I discovered this, and I can say without a doubt that the lack of boobs is incredibly original for this type of anime. So if you’re an avid supporter of voluptuous breast, then you’d best find something else to watch. However, if you just so happen to be a lolicon, then you might actually enjoy this anime.
Of course, that's only if you found anything else about Death March to be good, which I unfortunately didn’t.
I really didn’t want to dislike this anime. I actually don’t go into isekai anime and think, “Ugh, I just know I’m going to hate this because its unoriginal. I’m definitely going to give it a low score!” before I even watch the show. However, Death March unfortunately ended up being not only generic, but poorly executed as well. One of the biggest issues that I have with this anime is the fact that it doesn’t go anywhere. As far as I can tell, there are no goals or objectives that the main character is trying to achieve, and all Death March does is showcase this dude living in a fantasy town with his loli slaves and occasionally fighting weak monsters whenever they appear. And even the enemies who are built up to be potent forces are completely owned by the protagonist, thus completely removing any sense of excitement or tension in these actions sequences, resulting in some unbelievably dull moments.
Now before I continue to discuss the failings with the general plot execution and story elements of Death March, I’d first like to address what I found to be the most monumental error of the anime, which would be the main character.
Our protagonist is named Kazuto Kirigaya Knockoff, or KKK for short, and he is a dude who inexplicably gets transported to a fantasy world after falling asleep at work. Wow, Death March didn’t even come up with any reason at all, much less a tangible one, as to why this guy got teleported to this world. Anyway, KKK is, wait for it…completely overpowered from the get-go! How exciting! This guy can literally just max out any ability instantly whenever he feels like it and seems to be invulnerable to everything. Because why would anyone want to watch a character work hard to get strong when you can just start off invincible like KKK? But he’s too modest to show off his immense power, so he usually lets others fight and die during battles while he puts in minimal effort. How heroic! He also purchased all but one of the main girls as slaves but decides not to free them because in his opinion, they’re all happy as slaves because he’s a good master. How noble! Finally, KKK’s personality is, from what I could discern, nonexistent. Seriously, his mediocrity as a character is astounding.
None of the female characters receive substantial development and only succeed at looking cute. If written correctly, I believe that several of these characters had the opportunity to be interesting, but their lack of growth decimated the chances of this actually happening. Let’s start off by analyzing Tama, Pochi, and Liza. The anime mentions how this trio is discriminated against by the general populous for being animal girls. Now the anime could have delved into illuminating the deleterious effects that this torment had on the mentality of these girls and their outlooks on society, but of course it doesn’t. The girls’ only character traits are that they’re nice and like to eat a lot. At least the latter ties into the fact that the girls were malnourished under their previous master. The majority of the other girls in the anime receive similar treatment from the writers, which is unfortunate.
The girl who stood out to me the most was Arisa, whose gimmicks were kind of cute and amusing, however the comedic value of her actions, such as her sexual advancements towards KKK, were lessened due to KKK’s lack of reaction towards them. In order for comedy between two individuals to truly shine, both of them have to play their part. So although Arisa’s flirtatious behavior was fun, since KKK didn’t actually respond to it in any way, the scenes between them lost value in my eyes. Leave it to KKK to suck the joy out of everything.
I believe I mentioned how the slave girls love food. Well, apparently the show’s creator does as well, to the point where he decided it would be a fantastic idea to insert a plethora of random showcases of a variety of exquisite dishes into the show. What basically happens is that whenever KKK sits down to eat a meal, he goes off on an unnecessary explanation of the food’s properties while the anime presents viewers with an image of the food that is more intricately animated than anything else in the anime. And this happens in literally every episode. Its like I’m watching a cringy, mediocre version of Shokugeki no Soma, except this anime is supposed to be about a fantasy world, not food, so these scenes that last several minutes are completely worthless. Plus, I thought that this was a medieval setting, so where the heck did all of these exotic dishes from across the globe come from? Shouldn’t they just be eating hard bread or something? I had to dedicate a paragraph to this because it just seems so absurd and out of place to me for an anime that isn’t about food at all to dedicate so much time to characters eating.
Well, it seems like I ran out of things to talk about. I know I said earlier in this review that I would eventually get to discussing the plot elements of the show and why they fail, but between you and me, that was just an excuse for me to move on and talk about something else. The truth is, Death March’s so called “plot elements” are basically nonexistent, so there’s practically nothing to actually discuss. This show is simply about a guy living in a fantasy world going about his day to day life with his loli slaves. Nothing noteworthy happens, and there is zero development in the story and characters. I have to give some credit to the show though, because although it was terribly boring to watch, for some reason I stuck with it, so I guess that’s something. Maybe I was just waiting to see if KKK would eventually develop an actual personality and stop being a horribly boring and annoying character.
…It never happened.
Oh well. I honestly couldn’t find anything that appealed to me in this anime, but I’m sure there are some isekai fans out there who enjoyed it. Maybe even you. Now that this chapter in the great bibliography of isekai anime has concluded, its time to set our sights to the future of the genre. Hopefully upcoming installations will tell a more compelling tale than Death March.
