Quite late in covering this one though out of the three shows I covered for the fall season my level of interest in this series has more or less evaporated. Truth be told, while this is a episode review of ten and eleven, i honestly cannot even remember what happened in episode ten. I think it was mainly a action episode and in regards to that I regret complaining about Apocryphas animation. Because Dies Iraes animation shows just how low animation can go for action scenes. There was some novelty in the episode where Ren took on Reinhard but it looks like they blew all their effort on that one scene. After that fight scenes were just lifeless and I find my eyes glaze over as characters talk confidently to each about things I can’t really care about anymore. I rather liked the giant gold skeleton before but they are a anime only addition that the author decided to add for rather odd reason. I don’t see how he thought it was a good idea to invent a brand new power for the anime that would require even more animation for a already stretched to breaking point anime. Also creating some brand new level that exists somewhere between your previously established level is just rather poor writing considering it makes your previous infodump about levels flawed.
So I will mainly talk about episode eleven here as this was actually a part of the story I remember thinking would be great animated. When reading the visual Novel this part was pretty excellent and does a good job of establishing just how brutal and broken Sherbeir is. Not to mention that SHirou ripping his way out of Rusalka’s body was pretty awesome. Yet these events are shown here and somehow are drained of all the impact they had in the VN. Part of this is missing context but mainly this shows just how much presentation can affect a scene. But lets recap, Shirou after getting eaten by Rusalka manages to rip his way out of her while stealing some of her power. It’s worth noting that Ellie came along as well and her soul resides within Shirou. So Rusalka, a character who is obsessed with gaining immortality is dying on the church floor, scared out of her mind. When Schreiber shows up she attempts to get him to help her by saying she loves him. Mainly because Schreiber is completely insane and she thought that by becoming his loved one, he would then go out of his way to save her despite being indifferent at first. She has some special magic circle that can heal her if she is just placed within it. Thing is that she largely underestimated just how insane Schreiber is. For you see Schreiber is really excited over being able to kill for revenge for a loved one and the big problem is that Rusalka recovered from her injury, he couldn’t avenge her death. So Schreiber carries half of her to the battlefield claiming he will avenge her by killing Shirou, all the while ignoring her pleas for him to help her. Cause Rusalka has to die in order for Schreiber to avenge her, duh. At least that’s his logic. It really established just how messed up this kid really is and boy his history sure is something. I would say it is grimdark to the degree of being ridiculous.
Willhelm has an equally messed up childhood as you may have noticed by the appearance of his Sister/Mother. And yes, his sister is his mother. Basically he’s the product of incest between his father and sister. Obviously consent was not part of the equation and this is indeed the reason why WIllhelm killed his family. But one thing about Wilhelm that’s interesting is the matter Mercurious mentioned, that each person has a kind of curse attached to them. Indeed the characters of Dies Irae all have some curse when it comes to Fate. Kasumi is forever destined to be kept out of Shirou and Rens matters no matter how much she wants to be involved. Willhelm will always have the thing he wants most be taken by someone else. Lisa trying to save children by killing more children. Ren will constantly be pushed away from a normal life, despite his desire to be nothing but normal. As well as Shirou constantly seeking to break his deja vu, only to reaffirm it with all his efforts. Every character of Dies Irae is cursed by fate and in Dies Irae, fate has a face. Though how much of a role he will play is still up for debate.
