Review of Death March to the Parallel World Rhapsody

Death March, as what I would prefer to call it (I mean no other series has this 2 words lining up together, so why bother memorizing the other 4 words, eh?) starts it’s story by actually giving us about the main protagonist, Satou lives his live before ending up in another world. This, to be honest is such a great start to make us—the viewer a sense of humanity or at least Satou’s reasoning later in the story. Other Isekai adaptation tends to start with the protagonist already in another world, or sometimes near the teleportation so we don’t actually bother his real live. This, iswhat I believed as the main foundation of the genre, which is an escape for developing audience from high-school to much complicated part of life such as college life, or work. Most of the times, it’s heavily implied that the audience is one of them so they don’t need this kind of prologue, which can be done as an advantage of the series, but most of the time I would call it, lazy production, and lazy writer.
Even if we are either a college student or a worker, we don’t need for a series to passively told us that. What we need is a a glimpse of the main protagonist’s life so that we can relate more to him.
Death March starts strong with Satou as a game developer that needs to work overtime for days, which can be seen as slave for the company. Heck, even Satou himself said it, and we can see that he don’t want to search for a lover because of it. This is a usual thing in Japan, which us as outsider probably cant relate to, but for me, I haven’t got this relatable Isekai series since Re:Zero, that is a fucking 2 year ago, so that tells much.
Satou then wake up to find himself in a deserted land with UI that follows his face movement BUT DO NOT NEED TO BE TOUCH BECAUSE THAT MAKES SENSE. But really, this is already 10 points ahead of any SAO UI. He then, like probably every new JRPG gamers, start to uses his skills, levels up, and move around the map.
Satou then safe a girl—ahem. I mean BEST GIRL. Walking around town with… Date with BEST GIRL. Free some slaves. Level them up in dungeon. Clear the Dungeon, Buy some more slaves, walk around town again, and solve some more problems along the way.
We know that Satou—Satu, wtf ill go with Satou. Satou is a former slave-like employee to his company. It’s natural for him to mostly just walk around to enjoy life, even if he still hardly belief that this is his new reality.
If I must say, Death March is dumb, in a good way, we can see much make sense detail such the UI, levelling up the slave, the need of title to use some weapon, just these ground-base MMORPG logic and system, that actually shows how much the writer think for the series.
Probably it’s just small things and you prefer over-arcing heavy story which is fine. All that I can say is that every Isekai will most likely suffer things such as: Devil King, How to get back, or just some waifu wars. I can say that Death March suffer over arcing story heavily, and the chance of going to have multiple wives, but all of it is in the LN, so it’s kinda solve to some extent. Even if harem is the canon thing, at least she is the first one. He-em.
Having said that, Death March is a series that’s build from the foundation, the first floor, and so on. Probably this kind of approach is old for many people, but I must say I kinda weak for this kind of thing. Because, as an audience, we are developing both with the story and the writer.
Adding real quick for the animation, I know that it’s fit to the series IF, it’s only a slice of life story. When battle scene kicks in, it just doesn’t feel good enough. It’s lack of fluidity on character movements, consistency of the characters’s body proportion, and the obvious one is the lack of fps. The opening feels kinda cheap, like any other isekai-action-harem formula, but I admit that the ending feels just fit to the series tone.
In the end, as far as the anime goes is a very basic start of a story, and it’s a light-toned ones. Having this kinda life in Another World is what I believed as most of us would do, kinda naïve, but acts smart, and just let it flow. Probably you’re making a harem in your way, probably you become a hero in your way, heck probably you slept in a love hotel, and purpose one of your noble girl friend in your way, then what’s happen just happened, that’s life, and I guess that’s also a life in another world.
Answering the title of this video, I don’t think that Death March is a 6.88 anime, I personally will give this show a solid 8/10. 7/10 is what I wanted to give but hey, I enjoyed it much more than what I expected so there you go.