Review of Death March to the Parallel World Rhapsody
Death March is the most pro-slavery tract of fiction produced since the end of the American Civil War. Death March's main character, Satou, is the most insidiously passive protagonist I think I have ever encountered. When thrown into a world with a legal and normalized institution of slavery, which includes the prostitution of children, Satou is apathetic at best – and eagerly complicit at worst. Satou is a fucking sociopath. Let’s explore this. Satou is thrust into a fantasy world (with inconsistent video game elements because there is no spark of originality to be found here) and, of course, he’s totally overpowered from the get-go. He soonenters a city where slavery is accepted, slaves are peddled alongside food items and clothing, and slaves are publicly beaten. The people of this city have no problems showcasing their vehement racism towards “inferior” races. This place is fantasy as imagined by Adolf Hitler, a setting even grimmer than Berserk. None of this phases our hero.
He may not care to watch abuse, and he may think the abusive slave owner is a jerk, but that’s where it ends. He questions nothing about this society or its morals. The problem with the abusive slave owner isn’t that he’s a slave owner – it’s that he’s not a nice slave owner.
Events conspire to give Satou his own cadre of slave girls (Pochi and Tama, who are 10 years old, and Liza). He adapts quickly to giving orders and having them at his mercy. When they reach the surface, he immediately purchases two more slave girls for his harem: Lulu, 14, and Arisa, 11. In for a penny, in for a pound, right?
I’ll be generous and concede that he needed to order Liza, Pochi, and Tama around because of extraordinary circumstances. Once the danger has passed, however, at no point does he ever consider setting them free. In fact, he seems to think that keeping them as slaves is the NICE thing to do.
Satou, delivering the very last line in Episode 5: "They don't deserve to be treated like slaves, but they feel more at ease that way."
Oh, well, that makes it so much better. It’s so comforting to know he’s considering the feelings of his human chattel.
When Liza, Pochi, and Toma are denied room and board because of their race/species, they are graciously given a spot in the stable – like animals. Satou callously leaves them to sleep in a sty while keeping the bed for himself and his two human slaves.
When Lulu and Arisa (again, 14 and 11 respectively) present themselves naked, he is utterly unfazed by the prospect of child prostitution. His only response: “Oh, they have that kind of slavery here, too.” There is no hint of disgust, or even discomfort. The only problem is that it’s just not his bag.
And you know, for as many times as Satou insists “I’m not a lolicon,” it’s a little suspicious how he keeps finding himself surrounded by naked and sexually available children. Maybe he just gets off on exerting his dominance over them – choosing what they do, what they eat, and dressing them up like dolls. Then again, he kisses a prepubescent dryad girl not once, but twice in Episode 8. The show tries to excuse this by having the little girl proclaim her need for MP – but our hero doesn’t even think of just handing over an MP potion, which was shown to be effective just one episode earlier. Perhaps Satou only feels emboldened to act on his pedophilic urges when he’s alone.
Moving from his moral transgressions, Satou is stupid in ways too stupid for stupid people. He is granted a basically unlimited pool of skill points, but instead of leveling every useful skill immediately, he only applies skill points the moment he needs them. For a computer programmer, he seems to lack any sense of long-term thinking.
Satou is solely out for his own self-gratification, unconcerned about the heinous state of the world or the evil that plagues it. All of his so-called “heroic” and “selfless” acts revolve around little girls or little girls that resemble house pets. To quote The Criminal Personality, by Samuel Yochelson and Stanton Samenow, “The criminal's sentimentality reveals itself in compassion for babies and pets.” Notice how little of a shit he seems to give about anyone not a girl or past puberty. His niceness is all a hollow, shallow front, a mask for the uncaring monster underneath.
Seriously, go look up the DSM-V guidelines for Antisocial Personality Disorder. These are the criteria professionals use to determine if someone is a sociopath – and Satou hits all the necessary marks. Satou is a less outwardly criminal, yet more unfeeling and callous take on Tony Soprano. Hell, I'd rather spend an evening with Hannibal Lecter - at least he has a personality and a voice that doesn't sound like nails on a chalkboard.
So why is Satou our protagonist? Does the show realize how monstrous he is? You can center a story on an antihero or even a villainous sociopath, but Death March seems totally unaware of how Satou comes across. Instead, it’s littered with scenes of Satou feeding, clothing, and bathing his slaves, as if that will make us like and admire him. I would hope that any morally sound person living in our time is going to see "doesn't treat slaves like shit" as the bare fucking minimum for goodness – but for the creators Death March, that’s all it takes.
This show is a moral trash fire, and it’s kind of fascinating in that regard. Otherwise, all you have is a sparsely animated, thinly written, and shamelessly lazy addition to the overstuffed isekai genre. I would hope people are only watching this kind of stuff ironically – but I’m not so optimistic. Thinking that this is marketed to children makes me want to throw up.
It doesn’t deserve any more analysis. It deserves to be buried and forgotten – the sooner, the better.
End of Series Update: Satou acquires two more harem slaves, a prepubescent elf child and Violet Evergarden. He heroically saves a horde of submissive, busty blondes and helps another prepubescent child. One of the last scenes of the entire show is two ten year old girls literally licking a clear, goopy liquid out of his palm.
It's pure garbage from start to finish.