I believe we can safely declare this anime a trainwreck of an adaption. Truly proof that having an anime for animes sake isn’t going to turn out well, nor that following source material alone makes an classic. This anime was crowdfunded by the fans to get an animated version of Dies Irae. Well they got it. However they didn’t think that with such a meager sum that they would get a good Dies Irae anime. Thus we have an anime that makes no real effort to include the anime only watcher while proving to be an inferior experience for the source fan. Much like how Tsukihime fans declare that the Tsukihime adaption of 2003 “does not exist”, it looks that the adaption of Dies Irae is on track to be denied of its existence as well. The sad thing for me is that this was more or less expected, I would have been very surprised if they managed to pull off an adaption of the Visual Novel. Especially when said visual novel depends of the writer’s prose to enhance the events of the story. Masada Takashi’s writing can be overbearing and heavily chunni-tasic but it nonetheless gave the story character. Dies Irae on a surface level is very much a style over substance story and if you can’t sell the style of the narrative then it truly all falls flat on it’s face.
So if you are an anime only watcher who just so happens to want to continue with this(Not sure what you would) then allow me to clue you in on just what the hell is going on. For the anime took the liberty of cutting out the scenes at the beginning of this episode which would have cleared things up. Why Kasumi killing people? Because Ren subconsciously made her a surrogate to the power he received from the Guillotine. And by subconsciously I mean he was manipulated by the vice commander of the Nazi’s to give her power so he would be pulled into this death game the Nazi’s are setting up. What the hell is a that swastika thing the priest was going on about? The nazi’s need to open these seals which have been placed around the city in order to summon their leader into the city. Swastika’s are unsealed either when a member of the nazi squad dies at the place or the seal is fed a certain number of human souls. Take note that in this world souls are essentially magical power. The more souls you absorb the more powerful you become, hence why they show the members of the Nazi group as a giant pile of red skulls sometimes.
So now Ren has taken his power back from Kasumi and now he’s in this game for real. The game is that he needs to kill all the members of the Obsidian round table before they can unseal all the swastika’s and summon their leader. Who will proceed to burn the world to hell should he ever descend. The opening scene of this anime pretty much spoiled how this will turn out for Ren but I suppose it was a given that the big bad would have to be fought. I really have to marvel at just how little this anime cares to clue it’s audience into what is even happening. We had several jarring scenes transitions such as the quick change from Kasumi and Ren to Mercurius and Marie or how abruptly they montage though the point which was to show Kasumi and Ren bonding right before everything goes south. To show how immensely Kasumi hates how Ren and Shirou keep her out of the loop and how she wishes she could at least help them with their problems instead of constantly getting pushed to the side. It’s part of her inherent destined tragic fate, one which each character in this story has. Kasumi is destined to forever be the bystander, to be oblivious and unable to help her dearest friends in their most dire time of need. That said, it doesn’t excuse her character being so dreadfully boring.
Haven’t finished reading this yet but I guess the only way such an over the top crazy stuff can work is when it gets the kind of adaptation Hellsing got with the Ultimate OVA in the end. This series would have never worked without the superb and insane animation, colors, music and acting it got there, same as TTGL doesn’t work without these either.
Kinda sad, but as you said, it was to be expected. The budget to animate such a thing would need to be immense.
Not to mention that VNs are almost impossible to adapt, it’s very differently from manga in that regard. I can’t even think of a good VN adaption (or one I personally consider as good) I ever saw aside from Steins;Gate.
Well even with a massive budget that wouldn’t mean this would be amazing. This kind of story needs to be executed just right to pull it off.
The number of good visual novel adaptions is actually surprisly small. Phantom, Clannad, Steins;gate, Shuffle(?), Fate UBW, EF, Higurashi(This is debated to be a bad adaption) and well…that’s about it.
*Oh *** and the Fate adaptions of course, how could I forget these. And probably one or two others I am currently forgetting. Not many though.