Death Parade (Review)
I’ll Take the Macy’s Day Parade or Death Parade Any Day of the Week.
I love anime, but one of the most common problems I come across is when a series think they have something to say when they don’t. Death Parade starts off as in interesting premise, but it soon becomes clear that it’s just another series that thinks its a philosophical treasure when its spouting stuff we all learn in Philosophy 101. Death Parade doesn’t have the depth it thinks it has and because of that it’s nowhere near worthy of the level of self-indulgence it believes it is. That being said, this anime has plenty of interesting concepts that it plays around with. The pieces are there, but the execution leaves audiences wanting.
Death Parade is a series that takes place in the afterlife. In an odd sort of limbo, there are arbiters who are tasked with testing souls that are sitting on the fence between reincarnation and hell. Of course, anyone who knows their being tested would never reveal the faults that could condemn them to hell, so it’s all played off in the form of games between two souls. It’s definitely an interesting concept and one that could have been incredibly revealing about the true nature of humans. However, there’s nothing in here that we either haven’t seen before or haven’t thought of after a few too many drinks with friends. Writer/director Yuzuru Tachikawa tackles the series as though it were some sort of freshman paper on morality. It doesn’t have the heavy-handed references that series Psycho-Pass or Ghost in the Shell used in order to prove how well read they were, but this is one series where it could have worked beautifully. Talking more about the theories of philosophers would have created a sense that these immortal arbiters were trying to find the secret to humanity but couldn’t find all the answers in books.
One of my biggest problems with the anime though is how inconsistent it is. There are episodes where the games victims are forced to play are truly gut-wrenching to watch, such as a game of darts with organs on the board. Hit an organ and your opponent feels excruciating pain there. It borders on being absolutely nightmarish at parts. However, a lot of the episodes seem like they struggle to maintain this level of creativity. While the core concepts might suffer in a number of episodes, Madhouse produces some beautiful animation for the series that is incredibly detailed. While some of the designs might not be the most inspired, especially with a lot of the characters, the world they inhabit is filled with subtle detail. I can’t imagine the amount of time that went into the animation, but it’s a shame that it doesn’t pay off more in the end. A lot of the work could be taken for granted, but that’s because Death Parade is far from a flashy series.
It’s so bothersome that Death Parade doesn’t live up to what could have been. There are so many small elements that I would have loved for them to spend more time on. The majority of the series follows one arbiter named Decim (Alex Organ) but takes enough time to introduce another (much more interesting) arbiter in Ginti (Robert McCollum). The problem is once we meet this new character we can’t help but wonder about the others and the types of games they have. This is probably because Decim is the blandest character in the series. He lacks any sort of personality but is still brought to life brilliantly by Organ. This along with taking a different approach to the core themes and values of the anime could have created a series that would have been so much more enjoyable and memorable. That’s why I think Death Parade is a series that had so many of the right ingredients available to make it truly exceptional it’s just that they never manage to quite fit together.
Death Parade is a series that is unfulfilling, to say the least. I’m sure there’s probably an audience out there for it, but for me, it’s not even my favorite anime with the word “Death” in the title. It lacks the chemistry and energy to be appealing to new anime fans and seasoned ones will realize a lot of other series managed to succeed in all the ways that Death Parade has failed. Being a hardcore fan of anime, I’ve seen lots of series way worse than this. At the end of the day though, I’ll remember them because they made an impression. Death Parade is simply a series that is. Not awful, not good, but worse than that, unmemorable.
