Oh no – he’s begun combining episodes. Yes, trust me – when I live in a magic world where I don’t work over 50 hours a week, I promise this will happen much less.
Misaki and Yousuke’s story is quite a sad one. Often times in anime we are presented with two factions who are very much caricatures of real human beings – that is, an extreme personification of one facet of someone’s personality. Often there are characters labeled as the “funny guy”, “the serious one”, etc. However, anyone that has spent an iota of time in the real world can verify that there is considerably more overlap than what fiction presents to us. Death Parade has shown us that it hasn’t forgotten that.
What is Misaki? A mother, a worker, stubborn, arrogant, but trying to change. It’s amazing but I can’t even bring myself to hate someone who slammed the poor NEET’s face into the screen, effectively killing him. Is it wrong to feel sorry for her? For what it’s worth, she did not reincarnate. Yousuke’s story is less interesting – a NEET who committed suicide feeling he had nothing left to live for. Indeed sad but there is little more to discuss.
Episode 5 brings us much to discuss. So, who rules over these arbiters, and why must they judge? We meet Oculus, playing the role of god, who is playing a round of pool against Nona…and losing spectacularly. While initially proving to be a scatterbrained, senile old man, there is no doubt a ferocious spirit lying underneath his exterior (And we get small glimpses of that, actually. Chilling.)
In addition, it seems that our favorite unnamed heroine, hereby dubbed Onna (I have also seemed similarly generic “unnamed, black haired woman”, but you get the idea) is beginning to remember a bit of her humanity. According to our findings, she was once a human that Decim took a shine to for unknown reasons. Perhaps Decim is somehow related to the children’s storybook mentioned in the beginning? He seems to have some sort of communion with Onna, although it is difficult to discern what, exactly, that might be.
Oh, and we’ve also met Ginti – the hot headed arbiter who started alongside Decim, who, according to Nona, is far less capable. He seems to have quite the bad temper, but all things considered, I think he thinks highly of Decim.
Intriguing. More plot episode incoming, no doubt.
