Review of Deca-Dence

This is a bit of a spoiler review, I'll only reveal a key element from the first few but some people say to go into those first few episodes blind so keep that in mind, it's kind of a surprise. Deca-Dence is an interesting concept but there's a bit of a twist, one that I'm not particularly fond of. It's a video game. Now, it technically takes place in the same world but I still feel like it's the same effect. I think it would've been fine on its own, without that element but it seems like most people don't agree and didn't like the first episodeand then changed their mind whenever that was introduced. I guess I'm just of a different type then. I've also seen people say that it's a bit too similar to other things without adding that in there but I'll argue that it's too similar to other things, ESPECIALLY with it. It ended up being episode 3 that finally brought me on board though. I figured that if I didn't like the outside stuff, I could just stay for the inside stuff.

And that's how it ended up being. When its in one state, I like it but when it's in the other, it's a drag. What do I like most? Natsume! I found that the scenes that she's in are the ones that I like. She's a charismatic and interesting character with a pretty good arc. In fact, I'd argue if she was the main like she was in that first episode instead of Kaburagi then it might've appealed to me more but I'm not going to try and dismantle this whole series, she's fine the way she is, she wasn't my problem.

The character designs and animation have a nice steampunk/junker esque vibe to them. The Deca-Dence itself is a fascinating machine, I liked seeing all the inner workings. The actual character work is passable but definitely favors some over others. Then you flip the coin into the real realm where they look more like video game characters than their counterparts (I suppose that might be intentional though) The whole plot is basically Blue Sky's Robots with Among Us and Garbage Pail Kids roaming around.

With all that said though, even with Natsume's arc, it just felt average, there was only about half an anime there that I liked so I'll be nice and give it a 6/10.