Opening the Door: Death Parade Review

Spawning forth from an animated short called “Death Billiards”, Death Parade has quite a simple premise. When people die they are first sent to a limbo world where they must play games in the presence of arbiters, whose job it is to decide where their souls will ultimately end up. A pair who died around the same time are pitted against each other and so, knowing the person you’re playing against isn’t exactly uncommon and as their memories start to return after the shock of death wears away, you’ll find emotions start running high fast.
Still, that doesn’t particularly set up for the most interesting concept in the world. Survival games are way too common in today’s media. On the surface, Death Parade’s only switch from the trend comes from the games that the dead are forced to play are bar and arcade games…and twister.  It would be easy for Death Parade to be a simple show whose plot has been done many times before, but it isn’t. And that’s what is very interesting about it.

Loyal subjects, I’m the Keyblade King and let’s open the door on what is arguably this anime season’s greatest hit, Death Parade.

Having the word Death and Parade in your title really pulls in an audience, doesn’t it? From the start, Death Parade was getting a pretty high amount of views. The synopsis, whilst perhaps overdone, is still interesting. People of today love morbidity and the exploration of death and judgement will, I believe, be something that will always fascinate people. There’s a reason that it appears in so many religions. People, in general, have an innate sense of interest in good and evil. And not even necessarily seeing the good guy win and the evil guy lose. Rather, the interest of today is to see how far can the evil guy go and how long the good guy can keep fighting the good fight. Of course, within a show about judgement, the world of good and evil is explored but from a very different angle. Death Parade is certainly a very grey-area world but it takes that concept and stuffs it full of fireworks, intending for it all to blow up spectacularly.
Let’s get stuck in to the plot then, shall we? Our protagonist is the arbiter, Decim (pronounced Deck ‘em, like with cards). White hair, piercing blue eyes that seem to hold no emotion at all and a face that gives nothing away about what he’s really thinking. He’s definitely got the looks of what you would want in an arbiter. Someone who’s detached from the situation and can make a decision free of bias, right? There are certain rules that arbiters of this world need to follow. 1. Arbiters can never stop making judgements. 2. Arbiters can never die because that would make them too alike with humans. 3. Arbiters cannot feel emotions for they are dummies.

The first episode of this show is very clever in that, the pair we see being judged seems to be an open and shut case with an obvious solution but when you’re looking for something more, like I was, that’s when you start to read between the lines. By the second episode, we’re properly introduced to our 2nd protagonist, who for the most part is known to us as the black haired woman. A human who remembered that they were dead from the beginning and so Decim could not judge her. As a result, Nora, Decim’s boss and hinted at to also be his creator, assigns the black haired woman to be his assistant, before making sure her memories are supressed by force. We see the first episode again through her eyes and it becomes clearer that the first game may have more to it than meets the eye. Ultimately, we’re not led to believe that the human is right or that the arbiter is right. That’s left up to the viewer at home and that’s another good thing about this show.

Somehow, Death Parade manages to be a show about judgement, whilst not actually judging people very much at all. Very few types of people are actually portrayed as some type of inexcusable villain. Rapists and sadistic serial killers are pretty much the only ones that the show shakes its head at. It’s nice actually because it leaves a lot to the interpretation of the audience. Rather than being a show made to judge people, one of Death Parade’s main objectives seems to be about getting the audience to decide what their feelings are. Since the characters come in and go almost every episode, the show has a lot of time to explore a variety of well-explored, very natural characters who do well to teach a life lesson all on their own. While the character of Decim ultimately comes to a decision for all that walk into his bar, we’re never lead to believe that he’s perfect and always in the right. In fact, one of the major conflicts of the later episodes, comes in form of the black haired woman out rightly saying that the way Decim judges people is wrong. You see, all arbiters (and we do meet a couple more than just Decim, and also get the impression that there’s a fair amount of them) are told that the way to judge a person is to create a situation in which the darkness of their heart is revealed. This is partly why a game is played, since it hypes up tension and adrenaline, but also because it is easy to mess around with. Decim, like all the arbiters, has a button he can press at any time to change the stakes of the game. This ranges from the players’ organs and pain receptors becoming linked to the game or simply, that they suddenly start having very bad ‘luck’.

Okay, let’s take a break from plot and jump into animation and sound. Um…Madhouse and they’ve got a large budget. Yeah, Death Parade looks amazing. It somehow manages to be dark and have that kind of attitude whilst still being colourful. It’s not pastoral or anything, like, hell no. But the world isn’t drab and boring. There is a definite vibrancy in the world that’s presented and it comes solely from the animation. The different games in particular are animated with this incredible force and fluidity that I really have to question who was working on this and where they got the money from. It’s really excellent stuff. The music is good as well. It’s really nice sounding and well-suited. Apart from the opening and ending, which I’ll be surprised if you haven’t heard something about already, there’s probably only one song that has any particular emotional power put into it, but that’s pretty standard for anime and the soundtrack it has is good.

Now, whether you will enjoy Death Parade’s structure is really whether you prefer continuative narratives, like most adventure shows, or mini-story narratives like Mushishi. This show definitely falls into the latter which, for me, is perfectly fine because the mini-stories we get to hear are excellent. They actually range from serene and playful to desperate and sick. Altogether, they really show off the many different aspects of life. Love, suffering, anger, calm. Death Parade manages to highlight all the different colours of life beautifully. However, and maybe it’s because the stories of our minor characters were so good, (in particular, episode 9 had me sobbing. It’s not even a sad story. It’s on the different side of the emotional spectrum but, yeah, definitely a really powerful episode) the main story, which mainly focuses on Decim and the black haired woman, fell kind of short for me.

This is kind of where we need to get into a bit of spoiler territory. There are only a couple really big twists in the show and what I’m about to say isn’t one of them, but if you want the whole spoiler-free experience, let me just recommend Death Parade right here. Even though the main story falls short for me, it’s still decent but the mini-stories alone are enough for me to recommend anyone to watch it. But for those who want to continue on, let me spoil one thing which is revealed pretty early on about Decim. He has the capacity to feel human emotions. I say it like that because, despite this, he really acts no different from any arbiter for the majority of the show and, to be honest, I feel like other characters actually show more emotion than him at times. This is kind of a problem I have with a lot of shows which display emotionless characters. Take like early Aegis from Persona 3. Usually, that kind of thing is either extremely obvious or it’s based completely on the audience being told the characters are emotionless. Kingdom Hearts is pretty much the only example I can think of which executes the latter quite intelligently.

So Decim’s arc revolves around him learning that the way his world works may actually be wrong. And this is all a ploy by his boss Nora, who has evaded the watchful eye of Oculus (do you see what they did there?) who is self-reportedly, the closest being to God. Now, on a thematic level, this is brilliant. Arbiters are presented as dummies and tools to achieve a higher purpose that most simply accept as having no actual significance. They are forced to pass judgement believing that humans have no ability to do so and yet, one has to come to the question what gives the arbiters the right to do so? And what will happen when they’re simply doing a job of judging people rather than considering the true value of their power. This is explored really well by a side-story with Ginti, another of the arbiters. Now Ginti’s story is amazing. I’m not going to say anything about it because it needs to be seen without knowing anything. But the reason it exceeds the main actual story, in my opinion, is that it is clear and concise. It explores a message and reaches a conclusion. It actually is so good, it gives the main story’s finale more points for just being linked to it.

Now, the main story has a major issue of simply lacking a proper why. It doesn’t actually feel complete and I don’t know if they’re planning a second season. They could be and then I’ll take this back but we’re never given a proper reason for why Nona gives Decim human emotions. She says she wants to test what arbiters can do but nothing actually comes of her efforts, even when she comes into conflict over it with Oculus. I can’t say the ending isn’t satisfying, it just feels a bit empty. It kind of feels like they were working on the one idea and themes of a dummy arbiter having human emotions and they kind of thinly wrapped a story around that. I mean, it’s a good theme. It’s about realising that emotions are very specific to every person, which can seem quite isolating. It’s like we’re not supposed to understand other people. But Death Parade shows us that emotions are what gives us the ability to understand others. We all feel pain, we all feel love. We’re all very different people, going through a different story in our lives but we all feel the same core emotions and that’s what really links us together as people. Having an arbiter gain emotions gives him that ability to understand humans and cross over to their world. That would be great, except it’s hardly ever actually utilised in the show.
Also, we never learn why the black haired woman could remember her death and what made her special. Again, it’s like they had a character and they needed an excuse for Decim to be in constant communication. On that note though, the chemistry between the two mains is really strong and definitely a highlight of the show. You will not get bored watching these two interact. It’s really natural and fun to watch.

So, where does that leave us?
Overall, Death Parade looks gorgeous and is animated spectacularly, with just the right music to accompany it, including that one emotional song that just ties the ribbon on the present. The themes of the show are great, especially for anyone interested in various religious prospects on the balance of life and death and where humans sort of fit in, in all of that. It just really explores why life should be significant. All human life pretty much. But I feel like it’s a better show to think about than it actually is as a proper narrative. It’s a massive shame because there’s obviously a lot of effort in this, from all angles, and that’s what makes it good but I feel like it needed an actual conclusion of some kind. Decim can kind of get away with it but we get hints of this masterplan by Nora and her friends and nothing really comes of it at any point. And maybe you can say that the whole point was just to convey a message to the audience. That’s what you can argue the whole show is about and that’s why I do genuinely really like the show because there are so many good life lessons to learn from this show, but it struggles for me because it doesn’t deliver with a great story on its own aside from its messages and themes.  

8.75/10