Death Parade - Jan. 9 premiere

[Lord Dalek]

So, yeah, I think it's safe to say this had the best premiere of the season by a mile.

Nope.

[LumRanmaYasha]

I watched that. I still stand by my opinion.

[goody2shoes]

My impressions of this reflect what I experienced watching the original short. I was actually a bit disappointed at first, because I thought it was a lesser version of the short. Then I realized that I was missing the finer details again, and it all came together (mostly) like a puzzle, especially with a second viewing... Actually, this storytelling style reminds me a lot of Ikuhara.

I'm not gonna give stuff away just yet, but who (if anyone) do you guys think was punished? And did they deserve it? What's the picture you've formed of the two?

[goody2shoes]

I'll crosspost this and hope it jumpstarts the conversation:

So far this show has been masterful at deceiving the audience. There's a lot going on in each "death game" that passes most people by, and the true fun of this show lies in picking apart each episode and forming your own theories about what's going on, the creators' intent and so on.

I count Billiards as the pilot episode pretty much, I say this even though it might not "fit" perfectly in the Death Parade continuity, because even if it's a prototype for the TV show it's probably the episode that stands alone the best.

The developments in DP, especially in episode 2 suggest a larger focus on the bartenders as flawed people, and world building. This is worrying, because it's quite a deviation from the Billiards short which focused almost entirely on the pair that came through the elevators. This, along with the way they laid everything on the table in ep2, makes the premise lose a bit of its original mystique.

However, if they handle this larger scope properly it could really pay off for the better. I'm just really unsure what to make of it so far. It's like going from The Hobbit to Lord of the Rings, if we're allowed to make poor analogies.

Did you guys catch what Onna brought to light in this episode when you watched ep1? Aside from Decim's judgement being flawed and void being undesirable, everything else was clear from the first episode. I needed to rewatch it a few times to catch on though. Kinda wish they executed this episode differently...

[LumRanmaYasha]

I wasn't big on how the second episode removed all the mystery behind how things worked, what things meant, and who was supposed to be in the wrong. Not to mention that the way it was executed just made it come across as a glorified recap of the first episode, for the most part. It's not like the first episode was hard to figure out at all, and nothing in this episode surprised me or was different than what I'd already concluded from it, but by spelling out everything like they did they removed much of the original charm and mystique of the show. Since the show is going to focus more on the bartenders than the games, though, I feel I'll need to wait and see where they are going with that, since there was only a small bit to their potential character arcs set up here.

[goody2shoes]

I was surprised by a few things (the system being flawed, and reincarnation being the absolutely "desirable" outcome). I just hope they don't leave the latter unexplained. But yeah, most of it was deducible from ep1.

I don't think the bartenders will get more focus than the games, since there are 9 games in total and 12 episodes. But yeah, each game/its characters will have less screentime than the overarching story/bartenders I suppose.

[The Shadow Gentleman]

Full OP is out