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Comments
I've watched it subbed (i.e. Japanese voicework) before; but this time I'm watching it dubbed. I'm doing this so that I can check out the dub version, and enjoy the omakes because those only make sense when viewed after each of the main episodes.
My thoughts so far:
* at first: this dub is kinda bad; the Japanese voices seem to fit better
* (listens to Japanese voices again)
* well, okay, they do seem to fit better, but at the same time they also end up feeling more tropey. I don't remember our protagonists being quite this sassy, or otherwise more interesting. Their personalities seem to shine better in the dub, even if the voicework sometimes feels awkward.
* But maybe I just didn't notice? It's been a while since I watched this.
* later: Hmm, the dub actually doesn't seem that bad. Maybe the voices grew on me...which is something that could happen. Or maybe the voicework got better.
* I've been watching this with the subs displayed at the same time, and most of the lines match pretty well yet they still managed to make the dub interesting. There are a few times the lines differ substantially in meaning, though none of these are story-critical.
* Leviathan is the one who sounds kinda awkward, but she's like that in the Japanese voicework too; she's a bit air-headed and that's her thing.
* Also come to think of it the story started off with a little more weight on the side of assorted nonsense but then got vaguely more wholesome later on. Interesting. It's starting to feel like an actual fantasy adventure, rather than a fantasy misadventure, now.
If GMH is admitting this then it must be really painful.
I think this depends on if you listen to more dubs than subs.
I definitely disagree with those people who say that Japanese voicework puts more emotion into stuff. Rather, that emotion is expressed a little differently, which can cause subtle changes to the personalities of the characters -- for example, how Bahamut sounds a little snarkier in the English dub compared to the Japanese dub where she sounds more generically playfully bratty, even when the lines in question basically mean the same thing.
I haven't decided what I want to call this show yet.
14w Paper on DECA-DENCE
Abstract: A Study on a World Collapsing in on it's Own Overly Rigid Structure
TOC:
List of Terms and Abbreviations:
DECA-DENCE:
Refers to both the Mobile Fortress DECA-DENCE, in which the Gears and Humans reside, and the Genetically Modified Actual Reality Game DECA-DENCE, which is played by the Robits. These will be referred to as the MBF and the ARG from here on.
Humans:
Humans, they're people. A very small minority of humans are controlled by Robits as part of their ARG gameplay. It's understood that the humans inside the MBF are the last of their species, yet even so the System is concerned with their overpopulation to some extent.
Most humans stay inside the MBF for the majority of their lives, but a few are allowed out to participate in the Gadoll hunt alongside the Gears. The humans are wholly unaware that they are living inside a large game reserve.
Robits:
Officially referred to as Cyborgs, but that's a super dull name for the variety of colorful cartoon creations presented. The creatures that came to own the Earth under the rule of the System. They have various jobs all across the planet, but quite a number of them seem to spend the majority of their lives playing the ARG.
Gears:
Genetically modified humans, who are wholly controlled by Robits. Gears are a "warrior species", with varying skin colors that seem to start at soda-pop orange. These can be changed as part of the aesthetic gameplay experience. As Gears are biological creatures, when a Robit's Gear dies they are logged out of the ARG and unable to play until a new body is grown for them.
Gadoll:
Genetically modified monstrous freaks of nature that are full of a substance called "Oxyzone". The ARG's main feature is the constant fight against these creatures.
Chips:
All humans, Gadoll, and Gears contain "chips". These are not just biometric identification tags, but also a means of control. Sentient humans can be killed if their chip is deactivated, and Human avatars operated by Robits can be disabled in the same manner. Gear chips seem to operate in the same way.
Gadoll chips seem much more complex, as they convey exact instructions as to what a Gadoll should be doing.
Oxyzone:
The murky green substance that powers the MBF, which Gadoll just happen to be full of. A dam of Oxyzone surrounds the Human dwellings inside the belly of the MBF. Early on I'd assumed that Oxyzone was actually necessary for things outside the ARG but it appears that's not the case.
Bugs:
A designation usually given to a rogue Robit (Gear) or human. Rarely applied to Gadoll. A Bug is human or Robit that acts out of line that The System then deems to be a threat. Standard procedure is to eliminate all bugs.
The All Knowing System:
Created by humans to some extent, this was a means of government built to help alleviate some sort of climate disaster* that involved air pollution by allocating resources accordingly.
After some tipping point when the system had enough Robits under it's control, it usurped total control from the humans -who were mostly dying of air pollution anyways*- and created a world that it controlled. Robits all obey the system, or are designated 'bugs' and 'scrapped', which involves removing their core for reuse (after a reboot, presumably) whilst destroying the core's host body.
*I think this whole thing is silly and quite too on the nose but eh, backstory.
Limiter:
Gear bodies are extremely powerful, but the chips within them limit the amount of power they can use -presumably for game balance reasons-. These limiters can be released if a Robit gets kiai-ed up enough/ie feels really really cool. It seems that the human bodies offered up to Robits also have enhanced abilities, as they too have limiters.
Introduction
Note: this section uses Western name order for academic-type-feels, so please don't take away my weeb card.
DECA-DENCE is an anime that aired in the Summer 2020 anime season. It features animation and production work by Studio NUT and is their first major original anime production. They came to prominence with their debut work Youjo Senki and also worked on the FLCL sequel
It stars veteran Katsuyuki Konishi and up and comer Tomori Kusunoki as it's two protagonists; Robit man of many, many faces Kaburagi and Human bug girl Natsume. It was directed by rising star Yuzuru Tachikawa of Mob-Psycho 100 fame and featured series composition by his partner on Mob-Psycho 100 Hiroshi Seko. The latter also worked on the Ajin anime.
Though Hiroshi Seko has worked many major projects, mostly serious seinen manga adaptations, this appears to be their first original anime.
Tellingly, considering what the story is, Hiroshi Seko has worked extensively on the Shingeki no Kyojin series, and was responsible for the whole Shingeki no Kyojin: Lost Girls project that spanned manga, light novel and OVA.
Intro to DECA-DENCE
The MBF DECA-DENCE is a roving landship that roams across a vast unknown expanse of desert, where humans live
alongsideunder the Warrior Race known as the Gear. Most humans spend their lives inside the MBF, working as builders, butchers, cleaners, or what have you.Humans and Gear have to live inside the MBF because dangerous monsters known as Gadoll roam the outside. The Gadoll kill every non-Gadoll organism they come into contact with, and it is widely believed that humans were driven to extinction by these creatures. Luckily, the Gears came along from... somewhere, and decided to let humans live in the belly of their MBF.
The MBF is powered by a liquid called Oxyzone, which conveniently enough is only available inside Gadoll. Therefore, most Gears -being of the warrior species and all- are part of a unit known as "The Power" that goes out to defeat "random" Gadoll by sticking spears into their bodies and flushing out their "blood" ie Oxyzone.
Some humans, the crazy sort that anime protagonists are, also try to join "The Power". Very few succeed (yet all seem to survive).
And this is pretty much the span of episode 1. Episode 2 very quickly dismisses almost all of these notions.
The ARG DECA-DENCE is an amusement venture created by the System for Robits, just because. As part of the game, Robits can transfer their consciousness into genetically modified super-humans known as "Gears", or even occupy the mind of a non-sentient human body.
In this massive, multi-player real-world game, the main goal is to clear "missions" as set out by Commander Minato, the commander of the MBF DECA-DENCE. The ARG is actually set on the desolated continent of Europe inside an oxygen bubble, the only space where humans can breathe and exist without succumbing to the severe environmental shifts in the rest of the world.
The MBF moves across the European continent, beaming the Robits minds logged-in from a large space ship high in the Earth's orbit.
Humans, however, remain none the wiser to any of this. If any get suspicious or learn too much, they are designated "bugs" and removed by a System agent.
DECA-DENCE tells the story of a grizzled veteran of the game named Kaburagi. He is traumatized by the scrapping of a young colleague after Kaburagi tells him how to remove the Limiter from his Gear. As a result, Kaburagi stopped really playing DECA-DENCE five years prior to the start of the series, and has opted for a human avatar that cleans the MBF's hull instead. It's implied that he fought a little when he started out as a human, which gained him a great reputation, but quit very quickly.
It is also the story -to a limited extent- of a Gear girl named Natsume. Natsume lost her arm during a Gadoll attack on her father's research team. We later learn was organized by Robit scientist lady Jill, because he was getting too close to an area where Robit pieces had been left lying around because if there's one principal DECA-DENCE operates on, it's drama and twists over internal consistency.
It turned out that Natsume's chip was inside her arm, because the neurologically inclined chips that should probably be in the spinal cord can be placed anywhere, and that after that she could no longer be traced by the system. This is despite the fact that Gears (and robit controlled humans) regularly interact with humans and are constantly seeing the data the chips relay information.
This is also despite the fact that later on in the series, Kaburagi and Natsume need to enter an area where only non-chipped bodies can enter. Somehow, DECA-DENCE has no means to stop non-chipped bodies from being detected when they enter or exit it's premises, which sounds dumb and dangerous.
It's also hinted that one of Jill's many crimes was letting Natsume live on without a chip, but this somehow wasn't detected even as
This section is dwells Natsume's status in the game because she doesn't do much in the grand scheme of things. Her main feature appears to be inspiring Kaburagi to do stuff.
Anyways, Natsume has a prosthetic arm with three fingers, and also has no idea how to fight, so her application to The Power is rejected (once again, nobody at The Power even bothers to run the applicants via the database of chipped people to notice that Natsume is not chipped). She is instead assigned cleaner duty alongside Kaburagi.
But when Natsume gets herself into trouble, Kaburagi is forced to take up his fighting mantle. She then begs him to train her, and one arm upgrade later she's taken into The Power to fight alongside them.
Literature review
I watched DECA-DENCE!
Also my own previous notes on DECA-DENCE.
Methodology
I gots the thoughts.
Discussion
After of the first episode of DECA-DENCE, we are introduced to the rigid, unbreakable, oppressive, all knowing System. The characters who are aware of the system obey it with no question, including Kaburagi, who secretly moonlights as a Bug "Fixer" ie Killer in addition to his duties as a hull cleaner.
Meanwhile, Natsume is also being beaten down by the world in her own way. Being rejected from The Power, her friends (who surprisingly enough basically never appear again) not believing in her, and then being beaten by literal child-level Gadoll.
The first few episodes operate a lot in flashbacks to Kaburagi's various adventures as both a Gear and a Robit. The Robit world is cruel, but in another odd decision by the all-knowing system, the Robits are allowed private chats in private rooms where they can plot dumb things away from the system.
This is exemplified by Kaburagi allowing a young colleague of his on the league tables to break his limiter, actions that lead to the scrapping of not just his colleague, but several of his Top Ranking league table friends. He's also almost scrapped, but is given the Bug Killer role instead.
So, at this point, though the system isn't as absolutely infallible as you could believe, you do believe in it's ruthlessness.
Problems start to arise when DECA-DENCE's themes start to interfere with the events in the story. This world, by definition, is hopeless. However, the themes are full of hope and coolness and actionable Guts!!
Kaburagi's main motivation is to help Natsume grow after he finds out she's a bug (a search that The System also doesn't flag as strange, or flag at all -in fact it didn't flag her nonexistence when she was assigned to work next to a literal Bug Killer either-!).
So he trains her, and then the big mission comes up. In the ARG, this is meant to be a 'plot reset' event, where the players will inevitably fail and then a 'renewal' period will take place in the story. Naturally, where Gears from The Power die in battle, so do humans. Kaburagi implores Natsume not to participate in the Final Battle-but-actually-Renewal Event, though he doesn't tell her why.
Natsume, of the MBF, unable to know the details, truly believes this is the 'Gadoll Nest' and that once they defeat 'Gadoll Alpha', all the Gadoll will disappear.
A belief that, a few episodes later, becomes much less farfetched for implausible reasons.
So, in episode 5, Natsume and her troupe go out to fight Gadoll Alpha. For unknown reasons, they send Natsume's B-Troupe to deal with Alpha rather than human The Power leader Kurenai and her squad. Either way, Alpha starts to raze through their miniscule forces.
But have no fear, because Kamuragi Limit Break ver. is here to completely decimate Gadoll Alpha. Once he does, Minato and the others freak out, wondering what play to make.
And this, I think, is when things start to implode. The System decides to set it's latest In Development Almighty Gadoll into battle, but a big stink is made about it being complete. In an action sequence that barely makes any sense, Kaburagi almost singlehandedly takes the thing out.
This is forgetting that not only did they have the Almighty Gadoll to play around with, they also had the option of sending out a thousand miniature Gadoll. The System did not do that.
In addition, Kaburagi is a Robit who has been logged in to DECA-DENCE. He could have forcibly been logged out of the ARG at any point, but they chose not to do that for reasons unknown. It's strange how Hugin only chooses to do this later on.
Episodes 6-11; The Bends Break It
Now we come to the part of the show where things just keep pushing and pushing until you either just accept it or shut it off.
So at this point, Hugin has zapped Kaburagi with a mysterious laser and I think to myself; woah; Kaburagi's dead!. I guess it's Natsume's time to take the reins as protagonist.
How naive!
Instead, it turns out that not only is Kaburagi not dead, he has merely been logged out of the ARG. Now, before this point, there was no means of dealing with a Bug aside from it being scrapped or killed.
Suddenly, since Kaburagi the protagonist cannot die, there's a communist gulag style underground prison where certain bugs are sent for 'rehabilitation'. Considering no bug has ever been rehabilitated in the 200+ year span of robot rule, nor was the possibility ever presented, something must be seriously up. This includes Kaburagi's fellow Top Rankers Donatello and Turkey, as well as mysterious scientist Jill.
Absolutely unworried about how an insurrection of the most capable Bugs could completely dismantle The System, the System allows this space to be examined by Hugin-type robots that can't even detect secret areas of their own prison, let alone an old log-in device for the ARG.
In addition; nobody has ever used this to log in to the ARG and tell any Gear or Humans about the real setting of DECA-DENCE, or the true meaninglessness of the 'Bug' system when most who aren't the centrepiece of the protagonist's back story are actually just sent to jail.
Even moreso, apparently the ultra-complex future Reality Game can't track where people log-in from, especially when that place is not the ship where they're meant to be logging in from. In addition, this system quietly spits out the vital Gear bodies for free to people with no credentials without alerting anybody.
This ties directly to the next main plot point, where Kaburagi, Jill, Donatello, Turkey and the craft alchohol guy all log-in at once, bypass a major security gate, all in order to steal back Kaburagi's old human body.
This plan is set into motion because only Kaburagi and Natsume, lacking chips in their bodies, can enter the area in Central Europe where the Gadoll Factory is located.
The Gadoll Factory is conveniently exactly the same as the Gadoll Nest. You bomb the place and the Gadoll stop existing.
However, to log Kaburagi out permanently, Hugin destroyed his chip. Minato has stored Kaburagi's body in the body bank (that happens to be inside the MDF... somewhere?) in hopes that he'll be released from prison (which nobody has ever been, considering how strong Kaburagi's fear of being scrapped is prior to episode 6).
So how does Kaburagi re-log-in to a body with no chip so he can enter a facility where no chips can enter? Who knows!
Now, Kaburagi and Natsume, as well as Jill and the rest, succeed in destroying the Gadoll Factory. This is as easy as pressing a self-destruct button and then two separate levers. The levers interact with the chips inside the Gadoll, telling them to self-destruct, and that's that.
During this sequence, we learn that Pipe, the secret Gadoll that Kaburagi was holding on to as a pet, has a chip in him (unlike Gadoll Pre-Omega, who we'll discuss in a moment). The chips quite obviously allow Gadoll to be tracked, and so Kaburagi should have been identified as a Bug long before he'd ever met Natsume for harboring a stray Gadoll.
In addition, during a scuffle with Hugin, Jill manages to create a hundred Kaburagi holograms to divert him in the middle of a facility she has no control over, a skill that nobody ever displays again.
The sheer incompetence of a System that we're supposed to fear basically kills all tension the series has up to that point. No matter what the protagonists seem to believe about the System, either the System itself gives them a giant, obvious out, or it just has absolutely no surveillance or forethought abilities that let them plot and carry out various ridiculous missions.
So now we come to the point at which Kaburagi has returned to Natsume after he and Jill manage to break out of their gulag with Donatello and a few other Robit pals. How does he log in, a random old DECA-DENCE panel! Yes, the system is yet to try and detect where people log in from, this old panel that has been in the sun and whatever other weather still works perfectly, and Jill is able to repair it in under an hour.
Though it doesn't matter, because Hugin immediately shows up and stabs Kaburagi through the heart, destroying his body.
But who cares! Kaburagi has a space Gear body, and he uses that to save Natsume and lead us right into the ending.
Meanwhile, Gadoll Pre-Omega has impregnated a male gear scientist and birthed itself without a chip, which means it's a Gadoll without limits! After eating about 12 Gear bodies, it grows from pet size like Pipe was to a monster at least the size of the MDF itself and becomes Gadoll Omega! Now, it's shot a laser the MDF, evolved quickly to counter a sky laser, and is generally just about to win.
But this is DECA-DENCE, and if there's one thing you need to know it's that the villain is actually secretly always more bark than bite.
Episode 12; Inconsistent Tonalities of the Climax, Ending, and Epilogue
Climax
Okay, so I'll divide the final episode into the three most important segments.
Kaburagi finds out that he is able to log directly into the Mobile Defense Fortress DECA-DENCE, because why not. He does this, and encounters the system directly.
The system cleverly informs him that all of it's mistakes and errors were part of collecting data for it's next update, and it neener-neneers about him because he won't be around to see it. Forgetting that if Kaburagi didn't magically log into a Fortress that doubles as an RV, Gadoll Omega would have destroyed all of the Robit's spaceships.
Forgetting that Kaburagi and basically everybody inside the DECA-DENCE have an undying hatred of the System and wish to destroy it.
Forgetting that allowing errors that should be easily fixable by a copy of Avast Security from 2007 merely means it will never truly develop into anything even halfway decent.
So Kaburagi logs into the MDF and manages to fix it up using some magical audio-jack hands straight out of LISTENERS, plus a bit of help from the suicidal Donatello (who survives since only his Gear body is destroyed), only to be informed that they're out of Oxyzone!
But no fear! Kaburagi merely breaks the MDF's Limiter, because for some reason it has one, and lances Gadoll Omega to death anyways.
Ending
Unfortunately, breaking a giant fortress Limiter kills Kaburagi, and so now Natsume and the other Robits are forced to look on his body in sadness. This part of the ending clashes with the previous bit, because at no point does Kaburagi truly acknowledge the tragedy of what he's doing. He's too Guts!!-d up to care, essentially, and so his sacrifice seems off.
Epilogue
So, after all of this, the Robits merely decide to tell the humans that they are the Robits' pets, and DECA-DENCE is rebooted once again as an entertainment center.
In addition, Jill finds an old rebooted copy of Kaburagi from before he logged in to DECA-DENCE and decides to create an all new Kaburagi.
It's all very trite.
Conclusion
It turns out, nobody needed freedom after all! The Robits and humans just needed the system to stop with all the Gadoll fighting. The humans are all cool with being Robit pets (most charitably, they are the Robits eternal wards who make none of their own decisions).
The Robits also accept their status as being under the system's complete command, and Minato accepts a role as a System Admin, just like Jill used to be and currently is.
The protagonist dies three or four times and is then reborn as a copy entirely so the ending doesn't feel jarring, yet it makes the ending even more jarring to know that the real Kaburagi is dead and that the rest of the characters think a copy is just as good.
Frankly, this is the most authority-obeying ending and overall philosophy I've seen since the original Yuuki Yuuna wa Yuusha de Aru, where any attempts to stop the maltreatment of minors for the egalitarian safety of the rest of humanity were treated as being in the wrong.
Aaaand done.
Come to think of it, Kanna is probably quite aware that she's able to manipulate Riko, and given that Kanna is a known prankster, some of what she does she's probably doing it for the hell of it.
Though she also does seem to genuinely enjoy and value her friendship with Riko.
and this means i need to properly justify my information and this often means researching stuff and revisiting series i've watched long ago just to properly present information
so right now i'm being asked for further information to confirm that the dragon characters in Dragonaut should be tagged with "Dragon", because no one on the staff has seen it
Aside from introducing Portalcraft as the new class just before everything ramped up, there's these new Tree of Woe zombie-alters of opponents that the main cast have fought previously. I'm glad to see those characters back, because their first appearances tended to make a good impression and it was sad to see them go.
Another big deal is the fact that the main characters of the Shadowverse mobile game, the Leaders, have shown up at the end of the OP. I wonder how they'll be integrated into the story.
It seems our main characters will also each be getting a Kirifuda/Trump Card update with the Legendary cards. I wonder how that'll play out. Each of the main characters seems to be really attached to their signature followers, so I hope they give them a good sendoff.
I searched everywhere for the raws. Volumes 2, 3 and 4 were easy, but after several hours I couldn't find the first one. On the plus side, I learned that there's a manga titled Destroy All Humankind, They Can't Be Regenerated, and there's the title of one that doesn't exist but it should: Edit: Spelling.
I don't believe this title.
Oh it is not an isekai;
Sounds fun!
I should read this.
The first half was basically the start of a tabletop campaign where the GM gives you the basic story prompt and tells you your characters all know each other in-universe but are meeting again after a while as to allow for convenient exposition.
I was surprised to find that second half, the action-battle part of the episode, was so well animated. I didn't expect from an LN anime of this calibre.
For convenient story reasons the star-crossed protagonists can fight each other one day and then the next go to the opera in Neutral Town, enjoying each other's company without killing each other.
This is not considered fraternizing with the enemy, and none of their superiors seem to care (though Alice might not have any).
I mean earlier in the episode, Iska's best friend
I do like that even though Iska's main weapon is a sword, he limits it's use to cutting/blocking magical attacks, and only ever hits people with his fist in order to incapacitate them (never killing them). Similarly, his teammate goes around shooting people with a stun gun.
It's quite a ridiculous for a war setting, but personally I find it a welcome relief from KING'S RAID's intensely graphic, bloody (nowhere near as well animated) fight scenes.
I could make it even more unlikely and add in "who has not watched Z/X Ignition" but at that point I'm probably just reducing the set to just myself.
Z/X is only available as a Japan-exclusive, Japanese only trading card game, and a Japan-exclusive, Japanese only series of mobile trading card games.
I'm assuming not many English-speaking people who have seen either Z/X anime have had access to either.
I knew I wouldn't like Hypnosis Mic -Division Rap Battle- Rhyme Anima. I haven't liked anything about Hypnosis Mic at all since it started. Still, I decided to watch the first episode on a lark.
I lasted until right after the OP, which is something I didn't want to listen to the whole way through once, let alone 11 more times.
A lot of shows don't.
I have not.
I just end up kinda repeating the same opinions over and over again so I got tired of it.
Like just now I posted about how 1-cour series don't have the same potential that 2-cour series do. I've posted this before. There, and here too. And I got into arguments with fourteenwings and/or Naas when I did, I think. lol
While I still feel that "doing what you saw on TV" (or other media) just because certain things got brought up in fiction is a little weird, Yuru Camp is certainly one of the better shows to try to re-enact in real life, as the show portrays a real-life hobby in a pretty realistic manner.
Observations:
* This is a very mountainous region in Japan.
* Unsurprisingly, some of the campsites are nestled high atop hills.
* In real life, some of these locations may have far more visitors than the show suggests. But this probably depends on the season.
* Road signs in Japan apparently come with romaji/English text.
* It can be seen that the show paid a lot of attention to getting visual details faithful to their real-life counterparts.
* One of the locations is a YMCA. It really does have a "peace bell" outside its main building.
* At least some of these locations have definitely used the show as promotion, seeing as how they carry Yuru-Camp-themed merchandise and signage.
This time though they have a whole city to play with.
The show has it all;
Danganronpa-style transitions!
Monokuma Theater segments in between cliffhanger-style scenes!
Subtlety!
A mad idiotic muscle man!
Nagito but pre-deprogramming!
And so on.
@Stormtroper: ^