TROLL OPENING Death Parade was hailed as the best title of winter 2015, partly because of the hype it had from the fanbase of its prequel, the single OVA Death Billiards, and partly because of DAT CATCHY OPENING SONG. It’s a nice sound alright, and the colors are pretty, because Madhouse, but come on, it’s not fitting at all. The cheery stuff it shows has nothing to do with the gloomy and depressing tone of the series. Just like the opening of Madoka Magica it is trolling the viewer into expecting a completely different show. MYSTERY BOX This expands to the whole anime, since it constantly wants to trick the viewer, by hiding pretty much everything that is going on, until it’s all revealed at once with a tsunami of emotions following it. You are supposed to be initially puzzled and eventually shocked with the revelation. So yeah, the trump cards the show uses are mystery boxes and shock effect, stuff that I consider tactless. The former means nothing once it’s revealed and the latter is just cheap jump scares. And even so, it’s not even that good at it, since the thrill dissolves if it is used in every episode. It worked in Death Billiards because it was a single ova with the viewer being unsuspected, but if you try to pull the same trick a dozen times in a row, it loses its meaning, since you feel nothing after the second time. BLAND PROTAGONISTS The problems continue with the very protagonists. Strip them down to essentials and what do you get? An emotionless dude with no background or objectives, which may look cool but is otherwise impossible to relate with in any way. And a woman with amnesia, thus again someone with no background or objective. She is even used as a lobotomized askman type of character, left blank and oblivious, so she needs everything being constantly explained. This turns her into a passive observer and alien to the setting, making it harder to be immersed in it. LAZY EXPOSITION This is done deliberately, since the show tries to puzzle the viewer by keeping everything a secret. It is supposed to reveal it one chunk at a time, through whatever she asks… and does a pitiful job even then, since the exposition is terrible. Despite having a lobotomized askman, many explanations are not replies to her questions, but rather people explaining stuff without anyone around. Meaning, most of everything is lazy infodumping monologues where people are talking to thin air. And even so, by the time the series ends, almost nothing is explored or explained concerning the setting of the afterlife, and the themes of guilt and regret. Everything remains a mystery, including all those people you see in the opening. They barely get ten minutes of total screen time each. NO PLOT So, what the hell were the characters doing for a dozen episodes if not gradually expositioning themselves and the setting? Well, they basically wasted most episodes on standalone cases. Some people will appear, they will play a game, and then the episode ends and are never seen again. The series is not completely episodic, since it does reveal a few things from time to time; but nothing really is explained or resolved by the end of it, so you might as well call it meaningless filler. Every arbiter has his own side story but it is never looked into and he/she ends up being defined only by a single personality trait. The two protagonists sort of have their issues resolved, but it’s not something that needed a dozen episodes to be taken care of. They just didn’t deal with the silly amnesia gimmick, up until the ending was close by. BULLSHIT JUDGEMENT Speaking of taking care of things, the show uses a really pretentious form of psychology, where people are not judged based on their actions but rather on how they feel about them. And apparently the best way to reveal that, is by brainwashing and driving them insane, without their knowledge or means to defend themselves. This means, motives are meaningless while emotional reactions are everything. This is further perplexed by how the arbiters who decide everything do not comprehend emotions, and yet they are supposed to reach a verdict based on those alone. And as if that wasn’t weird enough, they are not emotionless, since they clearly have emotions and express them all the time. In case you are paying attention, it won’t take long to figure out how the whole reincarnation system is fundamentally flawed and unfair, not to mention irrational. The show will try to distract you by not explaining anything, and by throwing at your face a completely irrelevant opening song, second only to Frozen’s Let It Go. And if you are still unable to grasp such an obvious flaw, ponder about this: why should good people be evaluated only when they are at their worst, along with bad people who are always at their worst? Imagine what will happen when a boy scout and an asymptomatic serial killer, like the ones you find in Psycho Pass are judged this way. The boy scout will lose its shit out of guilt for not saving a cat from a tree and will be sent to the void, while the asymptomatic killer won’t give a shit and be sent for reincarnation. And even then, the outcome is always meaningless. If you fail, your soul is lost. If you pass, you reincarnate, only until you die and be judged again, until you fail regardless of previous judgments. You won’t even remember anything that happened in the afterlife, thus you don’t learn anything. Plus, they make it seem like despite all this process of letting only “good people” to reincarnate, the world is still a shithole. TROLL ENDING Even the ending is a complete copout. The lead heroine has to be judged as well, after she conveniently regains her memories (something that was overlooked all this time by the arbiters for no real reason). Her test though is totally unfair compared to the other cases because, unlike the rest, she was given more than enough time and experience to make the right decision, a chance nobody else was given. So much for fair judgment! And it won’t matter anyways, since she won’t remember whatever happened there and can fail the next time she dies. MEANINGLESS SERIES So basically you waste your time watching a dozen episodes of people getting manipulated, driven insane, and then judged unfairly by a bogus system. You can claim that one of the themes of the series is about pointing out that the system is unfair. So what was the point of spending most of the series in those stand alone cases, full of overblown dramatization, if in the end they all get the middle finger? All these characters get no catharsis regardless of what you think or feel about them. TONAL SHIFTS And as if all that weren’t enough, the show is not even consistent with its own mood. Aside from the opening, there are whole episodes full of comedy and rule of cool, that feel completely out of place with the rest, and lessen its atmosphere. OVERRATED TRASH Down to it, this show is a total mess and yet another example of how easily anime fans are manipulated to like total nonsense because of pretty colors and nice sounds. If I was an arbiter, I would send to the void anyone who considers it anything more than average. And yes, I would still be fairer than the bogus system of this series.