Review of Deca-Dence

Deca-Dence is a 2020 original anime from Nut. That's right, the Youjo Senki studio. I've only reviewed the one anime from them and it was decent. So, let's jump in and hope they maintained at least that level of quality. Story: Our tale is set in a dystopian future where humanity is stuck in a mobile fortress called deca-dence and fending off attacks from monstrous abominations called Gadoll. We swiftly learn that the whole deca-dence scenario is a game for cyborgs in a world run by an amoral mega corporation and interacting with the endangered humans is one of the features, though they don't knowthe truth. And that's not really a spoiler since you learn all that in the second episode. We follow a cyborg, Kaburagi, who works as a recovery agent to deal with those the system deems bugs and a human girl, Natsume, who wants to exterminate the Gadoll and save humanity.

The biggest problem with the series is the pacing. There are a lot of elements to the series and none of them are very well expounded upon and the world building relies heavily on exposition due to it simply being too short to naturally expand on it within the narrative. Another issue is the ending. This series has the same issue as the Fate franchise in that everything builds up for a bitter-sweet ending but then the writers can't woman up and follow through so in comes some complete bullshit to save the day.

There are a couple areas where I really give the writing credit. First of all, the series takes a lot of familiar dystopian elements but uses them in a unique way that keeps them compelling and fresh. I also give the series credit for being consistently interesting. There's never a point where it gets dull either from dragging or by delving too deeply into formulaic territory.

Characters:

The characters are semi-interesting. The major ones have some layers. The secondary ones are a bit dull. They tend to follow very common archetypes. The series really needed more time to develop their relationships and needed to do more to showcase how the corporate structure of their world impacted them. Honestly, the character dynamics are a weakness in the series as a whole. We know, for example, that Natsume is good friends with one of the girls she grew up around and has some issues with another but those relationships are very stagnant and rely on the friend/ rival archetypes rather than any actual writing effort.

Art:

The artwork is pretty nice. The cyborg and monster designs are fairly creative and interesting. The technology they use for Deca-dence and the world in general looks interesting enough. The regular human characters look a bit boring but they're decent enough. The action sequences are pretty nice with the floating tech, harpooning and such. It almost looks like something out of Shingeki no Kyojin when the characters are getting really floaty but it definitely also has a lot of cyberpunk qualities that give it its own distinct feel.

Sound:

The actors do a fine job. Kusunoki Tomori, Konishi Katsuyuki, Murase Michiyo and more deliver strong performances. I like the way the cyborgs have a quality to their voices that's slightly off, sounding almost auto-tuned while regular humans and the in-game avatars just sound normal. The music is fine.

Ho-yay:

There are some moments where Natsume seems to have a bit of a crush on Kurenai but not many. Though, in all fairness, there's not much romance in this series in general.

Areas of Improvement:

1. This series needs more natural world-building. Not exposition but some actual, legitimate world building.

2. If you set yourself up for a bitter-sweet ending, you need the ovarian fortitude to follow through. Don't give me a contrived happy ending pulled straight from your ass.

3. Give me some compelling side characters. You can get by with having fewer important side characters if you actually give some depth to the ones you have.

Final Thoughts:

I wanted to like this anime more. It has some compelling ideas and some legitimately different aesthetics and execution. But then you get the rubbish ending, largely bland characterisation and a shit tonne of exposition to replace actual world building. As such, I have to give it a 6/10. It's decent but that's it.