English Dub Review: Dead Dead Demon’s Dededede Destruction “Episode 8”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Kadode officially moves onto college, just in time for some new students to transfer in from another city, Futaba and Makoto. But as their plane enters Tokyo, a new alien ship suddenly appears, prompting the government to fire their weapon, destroying the ship and sending dozens of aliens plummeting to earth.

OUR TAKE

As we approach the halfway point of the series, we reach what seems to be a new story arc, or at least would if this show operated like an ongoing or was long enough that it mattered which arcs it was split into. But yeah, high school is officially over and Kadode and friends are going into college, so it makes sense that we’d get some new characters out of this. Notably, Futaba is coming to Tokyo because she believes the “invaders” are actually misunderstood and may need protection, which is an understandable stance that would emerge in a world where first contact with alien life is occurring in the way it is here. From what we’ve seen so far, public opinion on the aliens has varied between awe, apathy, and sometimes outright hostility (like shooting a giant laser at them), but we had yet to see anyone decide that they needed human advocacy. Or rather, I think we saw some hintings of it in Episode 0, but it’s been like two months since I watched that and I’m not going back to rewatch it until the show is over. Point is, with this new character, we also bring another side to the conversation about how to handle the increasing presence of the aliens.

Futaba’s friend, Makoto, is also interesting in that he may be Transgender. I say “may” because the character blurb on the Wikipedia article uses “he” as a pronoun, but I’m sure we’ll get further clarification on that as Makoto gets further appearances. The more whiny members of the audience may question why they would even have a character like this in the story, but it seems likely to be part of showing how normal life is continuing on even as more aliens appear, just like we’re seeing the main characters continue their schooling. That said, it doesn’t seem like the school year will be very long, as the episode ends by saying that The End of Humanity will occur in just six months. As mentioned, we are just about halfway through the series, so with this latest big attack upon an Invader craft, this could escalate hostilities to the point that the invaders actually start to…well, invade. Or things could continue on like barely anything happened, which is what happened last time I thought things were really about to get going. We shall see in the ninth episode of…this show.