First Impression – Dance with Devils
Have you ever danced with the devil(s) in the pale moonlight?
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Wow, two singing student councils in one season. I hope this picks up and becomes a trend in the future. Singing student councils for everyone! |
Ritsuka is a pretty good heroine so far. Normally with otome games turned anime (not that Dance with Devils is a game yet), they try to remove the heroine’s personality as much as possible. Here, Ritsuka has a ton of personality and even better, she’s not one to just let a bunch of pushy guys tell her what to do. It’s nice that she got angry for being accused instead of just shrinking into a corner. Hopefully this kind of attitude from her sticks around for the rest of the anime. Especially since form the how the anime started, she has a lot of involvement with the whole grimoire thing.
The family seems to know something since Ritsuka’s mother had her wear a charm (plus whatever symbol was there on her gate obviously served a purpose), and her older brother seems to be involved in some religion. There was the mention of how Ritsuka’s grandfather also looked into various supernatural beings, so the one who seems most out of the loop is Ritsuka. It’s unfortunate that her mother disappeared at such a crucial time, but from the images in the ending, it seems like her brother is coming home soon.
And since Ritsuka seems to have an older brother and this is coming from Rejet, there’s a 50/50 chance on incest or not. …Actually, maybe tilt that slightly more towards the “incest” side, since all of the Rejet games (and even drama CD series) I can think of with an older brother in them had a romantic route regardless that they were all undeniably blood related. But I guess we’ll see about that in the future though.
The student council being demons seems pretty fitting, since I’ve learned from many anime …mostly H ones if I’m going to be honest here, that if there’s a rich, prestigious-looking school, there’s probably some demonic activity going on behind the scenes. Though I guess partaking in demonic rituals is against school rules if the council is to be believed, so that’s kind of ironic. Why Ritsuka is attending such a school is a mystery, since her family seemed pretty protective. But maybe they aren’t aware. Or maybe Rem’s group is made up of “good demons” if such a thing exists in this world.
Man, don’t you just hate it when male strippers break into your house?
But for now, Ritsuka just has two mysterious forces trying to get information out of her that she doesn’t seem to know. Between Rem’s group and Jek’s, neither seems like it’s a great choice since they both seem pretty shady. Though in Rem’s defence, despite withholding information about how much he knows and trying to use some magic to force an answer out of Ritsuka, he was rather nice after Jek attacked. He explained the situation, and seemed to try to help her (or at the very least, he was civil). Meanwhile Jek ruined Ritsuka’s house, maybe kidnapped her mother, almost seemed to kidnap Ritsuka, and also appears to wear a garter belt over his eyes. All of that seems more suspicious than Rem’s group. Though we have yet to get to know the student council’s real intentions, so maybe in getting to know them better their practices might not be so great either.
Though Rem also owns an adorable fluffy dog, so he can’t be THAT bad. I have a fluffy dog bias.
The sound track is pretty interesting so far and of course, I love the song inserts that were in the episode. Plus Ritsuka sang! Sure, it was just exposition on how average her life was, but maybe this means we’ll hear more from her in the future. Even Utapri only had the heroine sing once in 3 seasons. Since Ritsuka has a more active role, this opens up the possibility for duets maybe. They seem like they went out of their way to cast someone who could sing, so hopefully that means that there are plans to actually let her sing. The English narration with the dramatic choir piece at the beginning of the episode was pretty good too. It’s great that the stylistic things that they added in worked so well.
Well, so far this wasn’t close to Dialovers in terms of characters or story telling. Yay!!! Maybe some questionable treatment will come from Shiki later on since he was the one who talked about “breaking” the most (he’s also voiced by Hirakawa Daisuke, and the only one of the student council cast who also played a character in Diabolik Lovers), or maybe even other characters might turn out to be jerks, but for now Rem was a lot nicer to Ritsuka than any character has ever been to Yui. If the romance is sweet (or as sweet as one can get with demons without crossing over too much into abuse territory), that would be good too. The insert songs were great, and I’ve come to the conclusion that I like having them in place of regular exposition. It should be interesting to see how they manage to incorporate the music into the game when that comes out in March, since it seems to be a big part of the anime. But as for the episode overall, this was way better than I was expecting with the characters and the plot. It’s not anything to think over too deeply and kind of cliche, but it’s way less trashy than I thought it would be.
Though demon or not, I’m really worried about Rem’s teeth after this episode.
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.
POWUH: Meta Resident and LN Informant with 1529 comments
Normally with otome games turned anime (not that Dance with Devils is a game yet).
Devils is getting a game version this 24 March 2016, for the PSVita. Relationships can be started with 6 of the main male characters.
http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2015-10-08/dance-with-devils-gets-ps-vita-game-in-march/.93910