English Dub Review: Death Parade “Rolling Ballade”

Death Parade definitely doesn’t cease to amaze. The mix of psychological thriller and parlor games is proving to be a very entertaining mix. The new team of Decim and the Raven-Haired Woman also doesn’t disappoint, especially since the woman finally gets into her role of assistant to Decim. The two mesh pretty well, considering this is the first full episode they are working together. This will be something worth watching going down the line.

This week, we get a specialized case of bowling between Shigeru Miura and a girl he fell in love with almost instantly. Her name is forgotten right now, but that is a major key to the plot. The game was as close to innocent that you would get in Death Parade, and seeing this is a change of pace. With the first two episodes revolving around Takashi and Machiko, seeing a couple new people is great. That was part of hte problem with last week. Seeing the story once was enough, and fun. Two weeks in a row, it was grating, mainly because Takashi and Machiko’s outcome was somewhat easy to figure out. After the thorough fucked that Takashi got, I was fully expecting that to be the status quo. Thankfully, that wasn’t fully the case.

The tones of the story, especially with Shigeru and how he acted on the bus before the two participants died definitely screamed out that he was going to flip a shit. Pushing this, and playing it off was great, and felt genuine. It was something I would expect from a Hollywood film. The actor playing Shigeru was rather masterful in playing this swerve, because I bought it hook, line, and sinker. The writing has been superb so far, and only continued in “Rolling Ballade.”

Writing like this was why I got into anime in the first place. More often than not, you see plots being recycled, but with silly twists. For example, we had DBZ. Then Bleach was DBZ with swords. Yu-Yu Hakusho was DBZ with Spirit Weapons. Naruto was DBZ with ninjutsu. Get my point? A lot of anime prey on the “must train to defeat the more powerful evil” trope. Thankfully, Death Parade is nowhere near that trope. I am tempted to watch the rest of the episodes subbed, just so I can get more of Death Parade.I mean, to weave a love story into an episode about trying to get the upper hand on your opponent just to go to heaven is something to take note of.