There may be those of you who ask why I would cover this series despite it’s rather disastrous prequel episode. Even I will not be attempting to defend this adaption as I sorely believe it will be rather poor indeed. But when you truly think about it, isn’t it the case that I would be the best to judge this series quality? This is clearly an adaptation made for the fans, considering that it was a crowdfunded adaption to begin with and as while i cannot consider myself a fan per say, I have read the original visual novel. As an anime this won’t be anything special but for someone just looking to see DIes Irae animated as a visual novel fan i think someone needs to step into evaluate this. Though truth be told upon hearing this will have an 18 episode run I find my feet getting cold. We shall see how this all turns out.
This is truly the first episode of the series and where the story truly starts as the previous 00 episode was a side story about how the villains came to be. The previous episode has cause quite a number of problems in that it makes for a poor introduction to the story and the animation is bound to scare off any potential watchers. But on top of all that, there may have been people who planned to keep up with this series solely because “At least it isn’t some edgy harem crap with teenagers in highschool.” and along comes this episode to introduce a harem, teenagers and high school. Indeed…I don’t think many people will be keeping up with this series. I might as well point out that the school has about as much significance as the school in Fate/Stay Night. Basically as the story continues it just becomes less and less featured until it’s not even relevant. I will also say this episode is an improvement over the last episode but sadly still in mediocre levels. Animation and storytelling has improved but now it has to deal with the thing that more or less all anime adaptions have to deal with, a slow start.
In visual novels it’s a rare thing for stories to start straight away. You may get a flash forward to future events but more often than not you will spend some slice of life segments with the characters first before the story gets going. The purpose of this is to form an attachment to the characters to that when the story gets down to business things hit a lot harder. It’s the kind of emotional investment that can make visual novels far more powerful experiences than anime but as well it’s very much a double edged sword. For if you don’t find these characters interesting then these parts make a story feel slow. Enter Kasumi, who makes this episode so much harder to watch. I never really liked this girl despite understanding the need for her role. It’s not that I have a prejudice against childhood friend genki girls but in terms of those kasumi is certainly the most annoying type. Loud, obnoxious and trying way too hard coupled with the fact that she’s supposed to be annoying. But intentional annoying is still annoying.. She’s certainly the thing that makes the start of Dies Irae harder to get through than it needs to be.
Time for some story context. If you are wondering just what in the hell the Nazi’s were talking about at the end of this episode, don’t worry because that’s normal. For the first while of this story these people are going to be talking with their own little code. Lets just give the cliff notes and say they are Nazi’s and they are coming to this town to kill a lot of people for some reason. Now despite the last episode putting a lot of time into adapting a side story, it did a poor job of adapting the actual prologue in the VN. If you want to check it out then here. But again for the cliff notes it’s a introduction to the villains and has a speech from Reinard about how this world is trapped in a loop with the same events playing over and over again. And while it is fate for Germany to lose the war, they can still have victory at a point far into the future if they hand over their souls. And there was much rejoicing. As for why our main protagonist and his friend Shirou were beating each other up on a rooftop, Shirou suggested that they should fight each other to the death for shits and giggles. This may sound strange to you but believe me, for Shirou this is well within character. Well I am gonna see how long I can stay on this train as I am surprised by just how much I had to write here. Let’s keep going and see what happens.
