Deca-Dence

Episodes 1-2

There's inherent value in surprise, in novelty. The pedigree of Deca-Dence was already storied before it premiered, with the acclaimed writer/director combo of Hiroshi Seko and Yuzuru Tachikawa, plus all the shown-off animation talent at Studio NuT. So even as its first episode unfurled what seemed to be an anime-typical post-apocalypse tale of human survival and monster-fighting, that sterling production worked to keep our attention in this story. But aside from that, it was the little glimpses of the imaginative that really caught my attention in Deca-Dence: The roving city's monster-hunting guardian corps, the Gears, were built up as so many aspirational armies that anime as a genre has seen, so their revelation as a bunch of multicolored, rambunctious, Mad-Max-esque yahoos was a welcome surprise. The giant mechanized city itself can transform into a final-phase monster-destroying weapon, but rather than any massive cannon or laser, it amounts to a giant boxing glove on a spring. Bits like that caught me off-guard, and after that first episode, I could only hope that Deca-Dence would offer similar amusing surprises sprinkled throughout its compelling but otherwise rote world.

Ha ha ha ha ha.

So if you were anywhere in the vicinity of the anime-fan Twitter-sphere when the second episode of Deca-Dence went live Wednesday morning, it was pretty inescapable that this built-up summer hit had somehow pulled the rug, the floorboards, and most of the dang house out from under those viewers it drew in with that first episode. It's not a post-credits or even late-episode twist either, no. It's dropped in after the first minute of that second episode and is made clear as a fundamental element of the show's setup: The world, and Deca-Dence itself are part of a massive gaming attraction for the Gears, who are in fact tiny robot-alien-things piloting human-shaped avatars, unknown from the real people living in the lower part of the fortress. It's whiplash not just in how it recontextualizes the tone of everything we've watched to this point, but also in the visuals, switching jarringly as we do from the stylized gritty dieselpunk textures of the city and its human inhabitants to what looks for all the world like a new season of notorious kids' show Heybot!.

It's absolutely a “Go back and watch the first episode to see what you missed” moment, and to its credit, they left plenty of bread-crumbs for us to follow. The little mecha-mascots themselves bookend that first episode, so even devoid of context the question of what they were drove viewing. But far from spacing pseudo-revelations until one dramatic moment late in the series, the show just dumps the explanation on us a couple minutes into that second episode, with even less attempt at grace than the infodump from the first episode that turned out to not be giving us half the story. It's a ballsy move that could only be carried out with the clout the project's creators had curried in the leadup to this. And so we are spoiled with this presentation's audacity, its garishness, its...Deca-Dence.

Honestly, my actual favorite thing about this absurd swerve is that it really doesn't change our core plot at all. We're still following Natsume as a main character, driven as she is by her desire to join the ranks of the Gears, but now we've refocused to really understand what an issue that would be. As Kaburagi remarks, there are a handful of Humans in the Gear ranks, but it's not just that Natsume could be killed while serving, it's that she can't respawn with a new avatar the way those crazy critters do. That reframes the question of her ambitions: Is there really a purpose to her desire beyond raw self-validation when her life would functionally be wasted amongst the video-game characters tailor-made for the job? Kaburagi, meanwhile, retains all the earmarks of the washed-out mentor with dark secrets we already knew he was in the first episode, except instead of the death of a loved one or a fatal mistake he made in a monster-fight, he's hiding something even more insidious: His past as a pro gamer!

It's amazing that Deca-Dence keeps the thematics of its story structure rolling near-seamlessly in the face of its now-dazzlingly-layered presentation. We're right on track in the second episode with Kaburagi taking it on himself to pass onto Natsume the monster-battling skills she so desires, and in the process teach him how to Live Again. The added wrinkle that mentor and student are literal worlds apart just spices up these characterizing interactions: My favorite example of this contrast was when Natsume confronted Kaburagi after seemingly witnessing one of his chip removals. She's the downtrodden human character stuck in a grimy post-apocalypse, but her part of the conversation becomes a hilarious misunderstanding in her thinking Kaburagi was picking pocket change off an unconscious person. Meanwhile, the guy who looks like Kamen Rider Ex-Aid's adorable mascot is struggling with the decision to affect a slow-motion suicide rather than continue serving his candy-coated capitalist hellscape. Small wonder that Natsume's efforts as a plucky doofus could convince him to try living life on his own terms again. It's a heartening turnaround, even as we know Kaburagi's will to live is symbolized in him jamming a cylinder full of monster-blood up his shiny metal ass.

As I've indicated in tying the presentation to what it's pulling off, all this imaginative ambition likely wouldn't work at all were Deca-Dence not succeeding pitch-perfectly on the visual front. The technical aspects are expectedly sterling, even when we're only seeing half the show in the first episode: Sure that big anti-gravity beastie-battle at the end is a money-shot, but there's also bits like a two-second clip in a montage with Natsume and Kaburagi animated walking across a CGI platform, tracking with it as it moves to the side. That's just showing off! When the adorable forms of the Gears make their full appearance in the second episode, they bring with them their own adorably distinct language of body expression and world design. They're even easy enough to tie to their humanoid avatars thanks to use of color, design cues, and character acting, before you recognize their voice actors. And that quality and attention to detail means we still grasp the all-too-familiar implications as things continue to head darker, and their overlords mete out vicious punishment for not acting like good little gears in their machine.

Deca-Dence's already-famous swerve isn't just a shock for its own sake or a desperate cry for hyped-up attention, it's a declaration of intent. It's making clear, after twenty-three minutes of laying low, that there are in fact wild ambitions to be found here, and inviting us to come along as it goes buck-wild covering all those angles. It's a shock to the system at first, to be sure, but the more I think on and write about it here, the more compelled I am by what it dared to pull off. I was already into this series based on its first episode as a generally strong, slickly-produced sci-fi epic, but concerned as I still had little idea where it was going. Now, well, I have even less idea where it's going, but my enthusiasm for it is significantly less cautious.

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Deca-Dence is currently streaming on FUNimation Entertainment.