Review: Death Parade
- abbyeste
- Mar 29, 2016
- 7 min read
Death Parade, or as I like to call it "A Series of Existential Crises", is an anime that explores the human desire to understand other humans. Without further ado, let's get started.
Death Parade originated from a short film called Death Billiards back in 2013. In 2015, Death Parade was released. (You can catch this on Funimation or Kissanime, etc.) There is no second season.
(Before you read any further, I would advise that you do not read the synopsis. As someone who watched it without prior knowledge of what is was about, I found this series much more enjoyable going into it blind. If you're not like me, then feel free to proceed. If you are, just skip down to the ratings.)
SYNOPSIS: This 12 episode series takes place in the world between "heaven" or "hell" called Quindecim. When two people die at the same time, they are brought to Quindecim to play a game. At the end of the game, people called "arbiters" must decide which person goes to heaven or hell.
GENRE: Psychological, Philosophical, Thriller, Elements of mystery, Elements of Fantasy/Supernatural
SPOILER-FREE REVIEW:
Plot: Death Parade is an episodic story. I'm someone who tends to prefer overarching story lines that are carried throughout the entire series, and longer story arches, but I found myself entertained with the idea of Death Parade. Each episode you meet new characters and learn more about the games. Some stories overflow into a second episode, but on the most part they're one episode long. That's not to say there wasn't enough time to create a strong, unpredictable plot. In regards to the format, I found the games to be very effective way to build up enough tension for the climax of each story.
Characters: The series doesn't necessarily follow one character through each episodic story like Mushishi. It follows a cast of characters; mainly an arbiter, Decim, and his assistant, who is unnamed. I can't say much about the characters, in fear of giving away too much, but I will say that I thought the creators did a great job of developing the main cast of characters through the interactions between them and the players of the game. They also pack a whole lot of punch in a very little amount of time; you get to learn so much about each new character that you're sad to see them go afterwards.
Animation: The one thing that I noticed, particularly with Death Parade, was colour. The creators do an excellent job of differentiating the various locations in and around Quindecim, specifically with their use of colour. The unique character and game design was a joy to watch come to life on screen and satisfied the eye. I found the animation, along with the games, was the main reason I kept watching. I'll elaborate on the details more in my spoiler review.
Main Points of Criticism: Ambiguity and Lost Potential
There are a handful of characters in the main cast that are underdeveloped. It was disappointing to watch characters that had so much potential barely have any screen time. On the other hand, there are characters that did have screen time but I couldn't understand why. In my opinion, their presence went completely unexplained and was total waste of screen time. Their motivations and personalities were ambiguous, and as a viewer, you need to know that information. There's no point in caring about a character if you know nothing about them.
The other reason I was left feeling disappointed was the lack of world building. Or rather, the fact that the world that is, like I said above, ambiguous. During the 12 episodes you can catch glimpses of different levels of Quindecim. (Imagine Quindecim like an office building with different levels and sectors.) Most of the scenes take place in the lower level, inside Decim's "bar room area". There is only a small handful of scenes or moments in scenes that we see other levels and rooms. Since so much of the show takes place in one room, it's hard to get a good idea of what and where Quindecim is. I couldn't quite grasp what life is like in Quindecim outside of being an arbiter, like Decim. The show has glimmers of moments where the world could be explored, but doesn't expand on them.
IN SHORT, if you like psychological anime this is perfect for you. If you're the kind of person that likes to theorize what will happen next, this will be a fun anime for you to watch because you get to do that for every episode. Those of you sensitive to violence or abuse, or are looking for action and romance-- this is not for you. There are a lot of animes that explore the theme of "what it means to be human" (ex. Attack on Titan, Tokyo Ghoul, etc.), so if you like that: watch this. Most of the larger philosophical content and commentary comes nearer to the end.
The last thing I will say is that Death Parade has one of the best openings I have seen but, more importantly, it has a strong ending. If you find yourself getting bored halfway through, at the very least skip to last 2 or 3 episodes. Prepared to be amazed.
I would rate Death Parade an 8.5/10. Cool concept, strong ending, and vivid, lively animation. Unfortunately, I found that it left too many ends untied.
REVIEW & DISCUSSION:
The first episode of Death Parade was good but, I hope you can agree with me when I say the second episode is what really got me hooked. Here's why:
The theme of Death Parade was human understanding. In anime, I don't find this to be a very mainstream theme, which was why I found it so interesting. The show explores the different levels of understanding: some people understand each other right off the bat, some grow to understand each other, and some never do. More importantly it goes to show that we may even trust our understanding of a person too much, and judgements based on this understanding can, in fact, be wrong.
This is especially prevalent in the second episode, Decim makes a judgement on a couple and his judgement is questioned afterwards. He's asked whether it occurred to him that the wife may be lying about having an affair in order to save the husband the guilt of killing their unborn child, and Decim says no. Personally, it wasn't the idea of the wife lying that made the second episode stand out, but the fact that Decim didn't consider it as an option. This is because he is only judging from what he can understand in the duration of the game and the characters' memories.
He knows that this judgment could be wrong, but it's his job to trust his own understanding of the people and of the situation. (And he doesn't go on a long angst soliloquy about how guilty he feels that he may have sent the wrong person to heaven or hell because the Lord knows I've heard my fair share of angst soliloquies.)
I'm just going to quickly touch on the criticisms I had before going into the animation. I was super disappointed that we didn't get to see more of Nona or Ginti. I felt almost as if they had forgotten about them until the very end. I also found myself confused every time Occulus appeared on screen. I didn't understand him as a character at all, and in the end he hardly served any purpose. Speaking of random characters that served no purpose, who is Castra? The only reason I knew her name was because I searched it up on MyAnimeList. Apparently she showed up 2 times. And what about Quin? They kind of just left her in the memory department to rot. If the ending between Decim and Chiyuki had not been as good as it was, I would have been given this show such a trashy review because of how underdeveloped those parts of the show were.
Animation! First off, I loved the colour palette of everything. To stained glass windows to the character design of Occulus to the jellyfish aquarium- I found it all really aesthetically pleasing.
Secondly, like Erased, Death Parade does some pretty cool stuff with visual story telling. Not as much as Erased, but a fair amount. For example, the flashbacks. You never really got the whole picture until the very end, so you were really piecing the memories together just like the guests were. As well, they don't really tell you where each person is going which I liked. They show it through a single shot with the masks and such. I also, in particular, remember in the end they showed a shot of Ginti's dolls and they resembled his past guests. That one shot of the dolls lined up in a row held so much power. We think Ginti is some heartless judgment-making machine, but in that shot it's revealing an entirely different side of him to us.
My favourite scene is actually an animation sequence with no dialogue. It's the scene in the last few episodes where Chiyuki is skating on the rink in Quindecim, and that's it. It's beautiful and smooth, and the music just helps it right along. What's striking is that it's so simple. No symbolism, no angst monologue, no elaborate fighting sequence- just skating.
There's so much we can do with animation these days, with CGI and what not, that there's this constant need to wow the viewers with epic action or epic plots. I think amongst all that, there should be moments that are stripped down to the core, moments like this scene in Death Parade. Each episode of Death Parade consists mostly of crazy characters and crazy situations seeking to shock the audience. There's a large abundance of that for me to choose from, but the fact that I grew attached to this skating scene goes to show how important the moments of normality, moments everything is brought down to earth, are to creating a balanced show.
IN SHORT, Death Parade is a very unique show and while I wouldn't re-watch it, I would highly recommend to a friend. Also check out it's AMAZING OP. Super catchy. Super fun. If you've watched Death Parade, let me know if you agree in the comments below.
Let me know what you'd like me to review next!
