Death Parade – 04

2D fighters are serious business

Two episodes in a row, Death Parade as made me cry. It’s great how this show can do some pretty different scenarios (or you know, different stories in the same setting), but still manage to make things really emotional to watch.

The theme this episode seemed to be about living. Was someone who gave their all like Misaki the “better” one, or was it Yosuke, who didn’t even come close to living his life to the fullest, but didn’t physically harm anyone other than himself? Or at least, that’s the question the episode seemed to be asking. Though as for the judgement itself, it was more about inflicting harm on others.

Misaki seems to have gone to the void. It’s hard to say if this was entirely deserved or not though, since while she did show the most “darkness in her soul” as the Death Parade calls it, during the game, but her life circumstances were pretty terrible. Though they’re probably saying something about how even if people have wronged you, it doesn’t give you the right to wrong others. Misaki was abused by the men in her life, which was horrible. Unfortunately for her, she turned that into abusing her manager, she almost took out her temper on Yosuke in the second round (…and then did try to harm him in the last round), and her children didn’t look overly impressed at her in one of the flashbacks either.

But she wasn’t totally a bad person. All she wanted at the end was to see her children again, and she did seem to be worried about Yosuke after she was done attempting to murder him. That’s not a reason to try and injure anyone, but it’s not the worst reason to want to avoid death. Plus in life, maybe she had good intentions behind her outbursts. She seemed like she was angry at her manager because she couldn’t go see her kids, and it was maybe the stress of her life that made her seem angry all the time, but where she went wrong was that she took out that stress on others.

Meanwhile, Yosuke was reincarnated. Given how so many religions view suicide as being an extremely negative thing, this was maybe a bit surprising. Also, he seems to have wasted a lot of his life away, not really “living”. His circumstances in life weren’t the best (or at least his mother’s attitude towards him was not great), but that doesn’t excuse how he disregarded his stepmother’s affection towards him and how he took his own life for seemingly no reason. Going back to religion, a lot of them seem to be okay with the idea of dying on purpose for a noble sacrifice. Yosuke’s death was definitely not that. But seeing how Decim is supposed to judge the darkness of a person’s soul, Yosuke was pretty much in the clear. He never lashed out at Misaki like she did towards him. In the end, he also recognized that he wasted so much in killing himself, and felt remorse. Between him and Misaki, Yosuke seemed to have learned his lesson after the game better than she did.

There was also a little bit of focus on the staff this episode. Onna obviously had some reservations about pushing this episode’s contestants to their limits, but maybe Decim had some too. He knows his job and he performs it, but from little hints like him staring at the remote after the judgement, or clenching his hands at certain times, maybe he isn’t as heartless as he may first seem. He even comforted Misaki and Yosuke when they both started crying at the end. Sometimes people just need to hear a “you’ve done well”, and Decim saying that line to both of them was extremely touching.

But his actions of pushing people seem to be necessary for the judgement to take place as well. The people involved aren’t always going to be like Mai and Shigeru from the previous episode. And it seems reasonable to assume that people will fight viciously for their lives when their life is on the line. Especially if it’s between their life and a stranger’s.

Well they weren’t Shigeru and Mai from the last episode, but the two people shown this episode weren’t entirely awful. They obviously weren’t the best people either when they were alive, but they fell into kind of a grey area. Maybe I’m giving Misaki more credit than she’s due though. Having a terrible life may give a good explanation as to why someone has anger issues, but it’s no excuse to have them take that out that anger on others.

But as for the overall plot (that I’m still holding on to the hope that this has), this episode was good for the purpose of showing that maybe the arbiters don’t necessarily like what they have to do to people. Onna is a given (though she’s getting used to the job) and maybe I’m over-reading what Decim has been doing, but both seemed like they might have had reservations. Or maybe this won’t play into the plot, but was more about characterizing the arbiters. In any case, from the preview seems to have more arbiters in it, so maybe we’ll see even more points of view on this work.

More Nona next episode~ (plus a shota)

About Karakuri

University student and the one at Metanorn who's known for wearing glasses. Likes blood, insanity and plot twists, but also plays otome games and adores cute romance anime. It balances out... somehow.