English Dub Review: Deca Dence “Turbine”

Overview

After Kaburagi is left impressed by Natsume’s determination to achieve her goals. He resolves to stop the endless cycle of Gadoll battles and returns to prison where he convinces the other inmates including Donatello to help him destroy the Gadoll factory. Donatello and Kaburagi discuss potential ways to get into the Gadoll Factory and destroy it, but their options are limited. Their tech-expert, Jill explains that there is a field surrounding the factory that detects chips placed in avatars. Kaburagi suggests that they retrieve his former avatar which has no chip and has been kept in an archive by the Deca Dence leader, Minato, and decide to pull an elaborate Oceans 11-Style Heist to get it back…


Our Take

This is was quite a thrilling episode as anything could happen. By technical elements, there’s still more technological advancements we see within this show’s universe, with the machines and UI interfaces. Seeing how much cyborg people can behave like humans is fascinating. We also see Kaburagi as a character having to struggle with some big questions about the legitimacy of destroying the system. Especially considering that this Earth was starved/polluted to death due to humanity’s bad choices in the past. What would happen if he actually does destroy the system? Would the order they’ve all known be gone forever? Could they all actually live without restrictions? Minato while well-intentioned in keeping Kabuagi’s original avatar body in storage was a smart, move but in the end, he brought up some valid points about why the system is needed, but I still found myself siding with Kaburagi about how the system is broken in a plethora of ways. It almost parallels Natsume’s early beginnings from the first episode and how the system unfairly makes decisions for their future instead of letting them decide for themselves, even if it claims to provide order while doing so. Also, that gross reveal of what actually happens to the very Gadoll shit they’re forced to mine would easily piss any of them off too.

As for the infiltration & heist of the avatar within the storage area, It excelled in terms of tension and suspense with some really intense moments with them trying to catch Kaburagi’s avatar body and having to avoid the Solid Quake higher-up whose name is now revealed to be “Hugin” at the same time. This little crew they’ve got is nice with Kaburagi, Donatello, Jill, Turkey, and Sark. But of course, as soon as Hugin said he had a tip about them coming to the storage area I knew there was a snake among them, and I wasn’t surprised about who it turned out to be…

Overall an excellent setup for the upcoming episodes to follow. With new stakes being raised. I can’t wait to see where it goes from here.