Sometimes you walk into an episode of a show and you have expectations. When the first thing the show tells you is one of the people they’re judging is a murderer, your first response is to roll your eyes and think “They’re going to make me think it’s the rough looking guy but have a turn around where it’s the unassuming, kind of nervous looking dude.”
Sometimes you assume these kinds of things and sometimes you’re right or, sometimes you’re watching this weeks episode of Death Parade.
Which took everything I expected out of it and flipped it on it’s head and then spat on it for good measure. First off, they don’t even try to hide that the meek looking guy murdered someone. I mean hell, they flat out show you the bloody knife in his backpack. So much for making me assume it was the rough looking guy.
So these two go through the usual look around Quindecim for an exit, see there isn’t one, go back and agree to play the game. Todays game? Air Hockey. Oh good, something that i’m sure everyone will know this time. Seriously, Twister…still can’t get over that. So right, Air Hockey. Simple enough, though the pucks are inscribed with a part of their body….
Oh dear lord this is going to end up being Darts all over again isn’t it? Well, not right away anyway. They play a few normal rounds, they chat, they get some of their memories back. Overall a pretty standard episode of Death Parade….
Till right before and after the credits.
Let me back peddle just a bit to tell you about our two dead people this week.
Tatsumi, hard boiled detective with a dead wife. When I say dead wife, I mean she was murdered and he became one of those cops on the edge obsessed with revenge and finding the man who murdered his wife. Seriously, it’s like straight out of some cop drama.
Shimada, working man with an abused sister to look after. His entire story is their parents died when him and his sister were young. He started working right out of High School so he could support his sister. He comes home one day to see her all beaten, apparently someone had been stalking her and the police had been no help at all.
Near the end, they take too long to go through the game so the stakes are raised to where it does become like the dart game. Each point scored will affect the part of the body depicted on the puck.
What makes this episode different than any of the others? Well first off, it’s a two parter. Second off, during the episode Kuro makes a request that she wants to see their memories and Decim says that he’ll put in a request for her. After the credits, we see him on the phone requesting for her to be able to see the memories. This is another point where the episode spat on my expectations for it.
I was expecting them to brush off her request to see their memories, I mean, why let a human see what only Arbiters are allowed to see? Well, screw my expectations they give them to her like it’s no bloody F-ing problem. The rules around here are strange and I don’t profess to understand them. So anyway, she gets all of their memories given to her and she collapses to the ground in the realizations that….
They’re both murderers!
ARE YOU KIDDING ME? Both of them? Well that’s just great, it was bad enough thinking they had to deal with one murderer but two of them? Well, jugement continues into the next episode and I’m a little scared for how this is going to turn out. Good thing Kuro is already dead and Decim isn’t even alive to begin with otherwise having two murderers there could be kind of dangerous.
They’ll be fine, I’m just curious on why Nona had them routed to Decim. What is she trying to prove? What is she doing? How will Decim handle this? AH THIS IS GETTING SO INTERESTING!
Great episode, can’t wait to see how part 2 of it pans out.
~Midnight
I totally thought the murderer (when I thought there’d only be one) would be the younger guy, just because that would be the “unexpected” thing to happen, since he looks so innocent. But then when he was genuinely horrified at the knife in his bag, I thought maybe he actually was too innocent to kill anyone. But then I wondered if a detective, of all people, would really kill someone… and son on and so forth.
I was pretty surprised to discover that they were both murderers. What surprised me even more was my own reaction–relief. “Oh thank goodness, they were able to avenge their loved ones’ killers before dying.” Murder is never right, objectively speaking, but I’m still so happy that these two were able to get revenge. I understand what they did, and now I’m questioning what I’d do in their stead. (That’s what I love about this show and others like it though; it makes me question my own actions!)