Category: Deadman Wonderland

This. Is one heck of a mind-screw. I mean, holy crap: this episode went even farther than this show already has in order to make the main characters’ life hell. Heck, this episode devolved into complete psychological torture! Even Shiro here proved that she isn’t god-moded as well, being captured like that.

This prison is completely crazy. Even the Number Pads on the security locks are scrambled up in order to confuse people. It’s so crazy that it has a badass violent inmate who is scared of breasts and an unregistered prisoner doesn’t even catch their attention.

These don’t have to be criticisms, of course: we have yet to learn of Shiro’s story. It’s already been established that something is really strange about her, and people hardly seem to notice her. Also the boob phobia is a neat quirk as long as it doesn’t overtake Crow’s character (which, in this episode, it didn’t do that at all).

Four episodes in, and the characterization has been pretty consistent: neither good nor bad, but it works. This series mostly makes its characters interesting by showing the way they react when confronted with everything that goes on in Deadman Wonderland. The cast in particular makes sure that the story just keeps going on: there’s always something interesting happening. The downside to this is that the characters never have the time to really sit back and do nothing, which is especially visible in the lead character. So far though, it’s got enough to make up for it, and I can’t say that for every series that has stiff acting this quickly.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Well, so this episode did have an amount of strange things that probably were explained in the manga again. Most notably the reason why the guards ended up deciding that the quickest way to kill off a fourteen year old boy with a giant mechanic robot called Necro Macro. I mean, all these prisoners have these things around their necks that inject poison, for goodness’ sake.

And yet, this episode once again was bloody intense. For the third episode in a row it continued to show hell on earth and there are still no signs of this slowing down or taking a step back. Especially Takami became more interesting in this episode as he reluctantly was forced to follow Ganta around.

Now, as for the acting, this series is obviously nowhere near the four classics that Manglobe pumped out (Samurai Champloo, Ergo Proxy, Michiko e Hatchin and Sarai-Ya Goyou), and it does have a few weaknesses here and there, but I’ve seen much worse. Ganta at times has difficulty at responding to the people around him, but at the same time I also like how he’s neither constantly sulking nor blindly running into everything. There’s balance to his character: he’s helpless, but not so helpless as that you’d want to punch him, but rather as what you’d expect when you completely torment a fourteen year old kid here. Shiro meanwhile is… really simple of a character, who probably would have sucked if the rest of the setting didn’t form such a sharp contrast with her. She’s out of place, but strangely enough she doesn’t break the mood, but rather adds to it.

The worst acting in this show was probably from that Olympic medallist in the previous episode, the other prisoners… weren’t as bad in this episode because they took more of a step back. The return of that masked guy in any case was more interesting than that whole race of death.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

This show is crazy. It’s complete purgatory. The creators here take a boy, give him convenient excuses not to die and then proceed to torment him completely, while also making sure that he doesn’t get insane. This is like taking candy from a little kid, only to repeatedly kick it in the groin afterwards.

The convicts are pretty much labelled as criminals and this gives the creators the excuse to pretty much toy with their lives, like a very persistent sadistic cat. This episode was just completely brutal: here the prison simply sends about sixty people on a obstacle course, and how many of them survive it? Five? And heck, if that wasn’t enough, convicts have to gather an ungodly amount of money every three days in order to be able to survive. If you just win one such race, then you’re only safe for three days. How many convicts are there in Deadman Wonderland anyway, for them to be able to kill off everyone so indiscriminately? Based on these rules you’d figure that 95% of the convicts just dies off in just three days.

So yeah, the balls of the storyline is the main reason I’m blogging this series. Sadistic prisons have been done before, but not this crazy. It doesn’t even matter that it doesn’t touch upon prison rape (at least not beyond threats), because there is more than enough wrong with this setting as it is. This kind of openly endorsed bloodbath.

And yet, this is a series in which a fourteen year old kid can knock out a former taekwondo Olympic medallist with a mere plastic ball. That’s one of the two main problems with this series: the creators needed to do something in order to prevent the main character to just die off after five minutes. Even IF he is special, he’s also weak, and yet some of the things he does are just meant to give the writers the excuse to remain on track. This total lack of build-up of suspense of disbelief is one of the two major pitfalls for this series.

The second pitfall? The length. Seriously, this needs a second season to really work.

As for Manglobe, I’m afraid to say that the animation still doesn’t live up to their usual standards. The animation is decent, but nothing like the standards they set for themselves, with a lot of still frames, uninspired character designs (for their standards of course) and the voice acting also could be better. It’s a show that can go anywhere at this point, sand I’m interested in where it’ll end up at.
Rating: * (Good)