Review of Deca-Dence

Deca-dence is a show that on one hand has many good ideas and on the other hand has a very lukewarm presentation. Many dropped it in the first episode because they weren’t interested in a post apocalyptic dieselpunk setting, and many more dropped it in the second episode because they didn’t like the sci-fi twist. It’s hard for the average viewer to get into what it’s about, in the same way shows like Brigadoon, and Shinsekai Yori are hard to get into. It’s also what makes them stand out and in case you manage to get used to their unorthodox presentation, you will get someof the most ambitious series of the years they came out. But that mostly means they are trying to be different far more than they are trying to be entertaining, thus they are not shows for the casuals and they don’t stand a chance next to whatever is made for mass consumption. This means Deca-dence is worth watching mostly for its ideas and ambition, rather than its presentation and execution.

As someone who feels nothing when he watches something that was made for mass consumption, such anime are far more captivating than by the numbers fighting shonen ala Black Clover and My Hero Academia. The setting is partly a post apocalyptic wasteland where people have to constantly fend off monster attacks and get their fuel and food from the corpses of said monsters, and partly an advanced sci-fi society where everyone’s consciousness has been placed inside a robot and works for keeping the system free of bugs. There is tension and there are stakes, since people are constantly killed on both sides, and initially the situation appears to be hopeless and quite depressing. Despite all that, the tone is light. The characters are not behaving in a grumpy and shroud manner as a result of a world where most of them are dead and they are being constantly attacked by monsters. The heroine in specific is one step away from a silly comic relief. She makes a joke out of almost everything and tends to ridicule the grim situations. It’s like you are watching Attack on Titan, but the main character is Potato Girl.

The male robot mentor is by far the best character, as he serious in his line of work and questions the system he is part of without coming off as a clown. Up to the point he befriends a bug, refuses to obey his superiors, and gets punished for not following the program, he brings a very pragmatic side to a show that is full of silly looking robots inside human avatars that are playing a game. Once he gets to the prison and he has to do some hacking shenanigans, the realism is mostly lost, because of how easily it happens. And basically, once the prison arc begins, the show is also revealing its weaknesses, since it constantly finds excuses to plot armor him in situations anyone else would have died, as well as to give him hax abilities that can overrun the safety measures of the system despite being within the confines of a gulag. In essence, he got more powerful than ever before by being suppressed by the very system that doesn’t want him to do more. That was so immersion-breaking.

The concept remains cool and it kinda explores themes regarding reality, existentialism, and free will. But, it’s hard to take it seriously when the heroine is a comic relief, the robots are silly looking, and most of what is going on gets infodumped to the viewer. There are a lot of forced explanations coming from chibi robots that are plugging liquid shit in their ass, which leave you thinking ‘What am I watching?’ So yeah, as intriguing as it was with its cool ideas, it presents them in such a silly way to the point of becoming a detractor for most. It eventually manages to tell a full story, but the tone remains light and despite the global threat both civilizations are facing, the problems are solved way too easily and the finale leaves you with an almost fairy tale ending. I had fun with how it stood out from everything else at the time it came out, but it is definitely not for everyone and the levity surrounding the conflict doesn’t let it be more than just okay as a whole.

And by the way, just being okay, is still more than being bad. Deca-dence is still one of the very few shows I liked in 2020, which was supposed to be a new era for anime thanks to Korean webcomic adaptations. I have far more respect for a show that tried to do things differently and which nobody was hyping, than for cashgrabs that Crunchyroll was constantly promoting as a new era for anime, when they were rushjobs based on overrated trash, made solely for selling subscriptions.