Well this isn’t the best start. I must admit to being disappointed in this weeks Death Parade. Mainly because it was essentially a recap of the first episode. This episode was from the perspective of two characters who were watching the events of the first episode. With a white haired ponytail girl introducing another to how the game works. This bugs me in a number of ways. One for being a complete rehash of the first episode, even using the same animation. Two, for spelling everything out. The first episode needed no explanation. Anything the ponytailed girl mentions could have easily been figured from the first episode with a little thinking. Three, explaining the process. Some things are better left in the dark. When you start uncovering the process to how it works it loses it’s mysticism. And four, removing the ambiguity of the last episode. The last episode allowed you to make your own conclusion to what happened. That was great, as in most situations like this there is no clear answer. But then this episode goes and just gives you the answer on a silver plate. Here you go, no more wondering. It’s aggravating.
However there are good things here as well. I quite like that Decim aknowledged that he may have made a mistake in his judgement. Meaning that an arbitrator can potentially send the wrong person to hell.(or Void…sigh…I prefered Hell. Why can’t we keep that ambiguous?) That opens up great possibilities for later episodes. Onna(The girl that white ponytail was talking to) is going to be Decim’s assistant for future episodes which is perfect as she is showing herself to be the emotional compass to contrast Decim’s detached demeanor. Though that may be incorrect. Decim may not show much on his face but there are things about him that make him not quite indifferent. His reaction to his mistake was certainly telling. Plus I wonder what does he do with his doll hobby? Though while Onna and Decim are interesting I can’t say I am fond of the ponytailed girl, otherwise known as Nona. She mainly played the role of the exposition device in this episode but her overall personality is basically just being the boss of the group. If she’s going to be in future episodes then she will need more characteristics. That interest in the human mentality she briefly mentioned for example. It would be interesting to see her jump into future games and change the rules in order to make things more twisted for her own amusement. Well next week we have another death game and I personally am looking forward to it.
Yeah. I do hope it’s not like this every other episode. With such limited regular characters, a repetitive approach would soon become boring. Decim being able to make mistakes makes him a human, albeit a stoic one. I’m not sure how a human defining the fate of another human’s eternal future makes me feel…
I kind of liked it. The way I saw it they introduced us to the format they’ll be using (I could be wrong of course) and since it’s introducing us, that’s why it was so simple.
Yeah this episode really spelt out more things than it needed to (and most of it was obvious from the start), but if this is going to be the format: 1 episode death game then the next analysis, if the games get more complex or mysterious, it could lead to interesting episodes, where the 2nd analysis episode completely changes the narrative of the previous episode and gives a completely new perspective.
I’m sort of imagining it like 1 episode is a complete mystery (or has a ton of red herrings that lead to a false conclusion) as to what happened then the next ep sort of gives the solution.
I could be completely wrong though.
I highly doubt that. It’s would be hard to build an episode around simply presenting a solution. And I really don’t like that. As I said I prefer to make my own conclusions to the games. That’s what I loved about the original short.
I say it’s going to be this. Most of the episode will be about the death game and then the last few minute are going to be about the two of them talking about the death game. Because when you think about it you really can’t stretch an explanation for an entire episode.(Nor would I recommend it. What a pacing killer.) Most of this episode was talking about how the things work in the game and really only the last few minutes talked about the people in the game itself. My guess is that it’s going to be death game after death game after this but new character will be joining in to spectate. (That’s what I want anyway.)
Fair enough. I guess part of my “theory” was wishful thinking.
But I hope they are at least setting *something* up in this episode, other than very simply introducing us to characters.
We’ll see.
I actually 100% agree with you on this episode. After thinking the first episode was probably the best of the season, the second one was a huge letdown. The fact that they didn’t keep the end of the first episode somewhat ambiguous was really disheartening. Nonetheless, looking forward to the rest of this series.
+1 agreed.
Episode 1 was stellar. This was a letdown.