10 Second Anime - Death Parade - Episode 1

Death Parade - Episode 1

A mysterious bar's staff helps to judge the fate of two people who died at the same time by having them compete in a bar game. Themes of morality, the afterlife, and the consequences of choices factor heavily in the storytelling.

First Thoughts.

An anime without any kids in school, dealing with adult themes and situations? And the characters dance and drink their hearts out in the opening credit sequence? Sign me up! This is a high concept story, but the episode moves us quickly into what the stakes are for the first two guests we see. Because it's a first episode, I'm not sure what the rest of the episodes will be like. The opening credits focused entirely on the staff of this waystation to the afterlife, so it's not a stretch to think that the larger story won't even focus on each couple who shows up to be judged, but used as starting points to the stories behind the staff and how the bar actually works. I'm intrigued and I hope the next episode establishes the true tone of this show before I become too invested.

Heh.

I wonder how those masks work above each of the elevators. When the couple first arrived, the husband had a Noh demon mask above his door, but when he was sent off to reincarnation, the mask was a Noh divinity one, while the wife as switched from divinity to demon and was sent off to the void. Do the masks serve to show who was ostensibly responsible for the pair's deaths as they enter, and then show their destinations after their judgment? I'd like to see more of how this works.

 

Japanese culture depicts emotions through people's eyes, which is why hidden or ambiguous emotions on a person's face is always shown as having their eyes covered or shaded. Here, after the wife won the game, the frame showed a hard smile, and Quin Decim the bartender paid special attention to her after that. Did she finally let her mask slip and revel in hurting her husband with her admission that she had been unfaithful? Or did she regret her unfaithfulness, but in a moment of weakness wanted to hurt her husband's feelings after all of his emotional outbursts? That ambiguity is pretty good storytelling. That moment of her hard smile was what probably decided her fate.

 

Hmm.

Depending on what the actual show is like, this might be a nice thought-provoking story. The use of the game, where it didn't matter who won or lost, but in what was revealed during the course of it, reminded me a lot of xxxHolic, and how a person's wish wasn't the issue, but the stray evil spirit that caused the wish was what Yuuko needed to target. We might have a similar device here where the duo who comes to play for their lives is only a catalyst for the people working at this bar to tell their stories. We saw in the epilogue that there was a new employee, so it will be interesting to explain how things work through this new person's eyes. But that's if the show goes this way. It might end up being like Golgo 13 where each episode had a new target for assassination, but the morality issues were only confined to the targets and their circumstances and never included Golgo at all. We'll have to see how the show plays out.