Death March To The Parallel World Rhapsody Is Boring Garbage

It's no secret that the Isekai genre, primarily defined by having a protagonist transported to a fantasy world, has become an extremely popular trend in anime this decade. I blame the popularity of Sword Art Online, personally, since these Isekai shows also tend to have a video game twist to them. For such a popular trend, Isekai shows sadly feel like they're single-handedly lowering the average quality of the entire medium. With very few exceptions.

Now, I'm not going to claim that the entire genre is contemptible. In fact, in concept, it should be one of my favourite types of stories. I'd love the idea of living out the fantasy this genre presents us with, and I love fantasy stories weather they're Isekai or not. Rather, my problem is that recent shows have been doing almost everything lazily and badly, for reasons I am about to outline using Death March as an example.

I should also preface this by saying that if you like Death March or any other anime that I may criticise, you should not take that as a criticism of you specifically. Since I don't know you specifically. I've never even met you in all likelihood, so I don't know what you're like. When I refer to 'the audience' in this post, I mean that in a broad sense- what I think the audience for the show is, and what the show thinks its audience is. You're not a bad person for liking Death March, and I don't think you necessarily have bad taste either.
I will say, however, that if you do like Death March, I would personally claim that there are plenty of other better anime you could be spending your time on, both older anime and anime from the current season. Death March may not be the worst show ever made, but our time on this Earth is finite. There's no way we'll ever be able to consume all the media we want to during our lifetimes, especially as more and more gets produced. If there's nothing else you want to watch this season, I almost feel like it would be a better decision to forgo watching anime entirely, to take a break and do something else with your life until something better comes out, at least if you haven't resolved yourself to blog about anime like I have. So I ask you to think about if the time you're spending watching and potentially defending this show is really worthwhile.

Without further delay, let us begin.

The first issue I have with Isekai shows is how little it matters that the main character once existed in the real world, as well as how little they care about leaving their old life behind, even if they were video game or fantasy fans previously. To Death March's credit, episode 1 depicts how our protagonist, Satou, is living an extremely miserable existence running himself ragged working in the video game industry. He doesn't have time to bathe, his co-workers and clients are piling last minute tasks on top of him, and he has to sleep in his own office. You can imagine that any game developer would have to have an innate love for games to start working in the industry in the first place, but I could imagine Satou not only hating his job, but games as well, seeing as he works on them all day. In a sense, being suddenly transported inside the very game he was working on could have very easily served as an effective metaphor for being trapped inside his own job. That would certainly make the title 'Death March' make more sense.

However, he seems to treat this new world as a refreshing break from his job- which it is, in a sense, since other than being able to exploit a few bugs, this new world seems to be a completely alien place to Satou. Satou was also a 28 year old when he was living in Japan, but in the game, he's back to being a 15 year old. So, in a sense, Satou's prior history as a game developer doesn't matter in the slightest when considering his new identity in this parallel world. Of course, he didn't need to be intricately knowledgeable about the game world or a physical Adult for the story to be interesting, but the story doesn't replace those potentially interesting character traits with anything remarkable. All of Satou's potentially interesting and distinguishable traits are stripped away to the point where his new identity doesn't really appear to be all that different from the likes of Kirito.

It begs the question- why even make the show an Isekai at all? While the levels and stats and UI popups make the world feel distinctly video gamey, everything else about the premise would have probably been better off if the protagonist had just been born in this fantasy world without any prior baggage from the real world, since none of that baggage really matters anyway. The fact that he comes from the real world only really matters in so far as it makes Satou seem more like the show's assumed audience. We can relate to his desire to want to live in this world, sure, we can relate to how stressed he was at work. But it's very easy for even the most unsympathetic of audiences to find enjoyment in watching the stories of characters whose own experiences don't fully line up with theirs. The fact that this show tries to get us to care about slave girls- and I would hope no one watching Death March has had any firsthand experiences with slavery- should be proof of that. Somewhat.

It also doesn't help that during the first episode, his internal monologue doesn't shut up- it would have been nice to let the visuals do the storytelling in this case, but as is his dialogue seems like it was taken straight from the novels, where his narration would have obviously been necessary. Hell, the visuals actually do take on some of the storytelling, but Satou still feels the need to explain what should be blindingly obvious to the viewer anyway.

The next biggest problem has to do with the baffling choice that a disturbing number of Isekai anime and novels seem to make- that being that they immediately make the main character extremely overpowered relative to his allies and even his enemies. While demon lords and wyverns in this world only seem to be around levels 30-60 or so, Satou himself immediately manages to accidentally trigger a meteor shower that ends up killing a bunch of lizards and apparently an off-screen dragon god, bumping his level to 310 right from episode 1 and giving him more skill points and loot than he could ever need.
Part of the fun of playing video games is being able to earn your strength and levels overtime. Being able to make difficult decisions on your skill tree, being able to improve and customise your equipment overtime, that sort of thing. Games usually tend to get boring when you become so powerful that none of the content is the least bit challenging. And being able to easily conquer all of the game's challenges before you've even really started the actual content seems antithetical to the entire appeal of video games to me, no matter the genre.
When Satou is this powerful, we know that there's never going to be any tension unless his opponents also happen to be at his level. Yes, most heroes win the fights they participate in, but good storytelling at least portrays some kind of intense struggle that can fool the audience. In fact, good writing might actually let the hero fail sometimes.

Unless your anime is named One Punch Man, there's no good reason to make your protagonist this powerful- it's just going to hamstring your ability to write interesting conflict if you're not writing a comedy, and Death March takes itself pretty seriously save for a few weak jokes. Konosuba this is not. You just have to ask yourself if any other work of fiction you've ever experienced would have been improved by making the protagonist functionally invincible. Even One Punch Man gave its hero Saitama tangible character flaws and challenges to overcome, even if physical obstacles posed no threat to him.

It also doesn't help that for as nice as the show wants us to think Satou is, he's kind of a dick.

The above image comes from a scene where Satou refuses to save a man from a monstrous spider's cocoon simply because that guy was cruel to some cute slave girls that Satou had taken a liking to. Just because that random guy was a asshole himself, he's still a human. The show wants us to think that Satou is condemning him for discriminating against slaves and demi-humans, but at the same time, Satou seems quite happy to take the slave girls under his wing rather than free them. Yes- the girls haven't really known any other life, and have grown used to following orders from cruel masters. So Satou buying them so he can treat them well until they can stand on their own feet sounds logical in theory. However at least two of the slave girls that have joined Satou so far had normal lives prior to being sold into slavery, so that argument doesn't really hold much water- at the very least, the normal Japanese woman reincarnated into a rich princess should be dying to live any other life, and should at the very least feel more human than yet another NPC fawning over the main character. And yet, they only seem to comprehend what Satou is telling them after he explicitly declares he's giving them orders, even though it should be clear to them at this point that he thinks they deserve better treatment than what they're used to. Satou seems pretty happy with the arrangement. If these characters and this world actually felt believable, there'd be no reason why Satou wouldn't be able to simply release them from slavery- after all, he has enough money to give them a leg up while they look for jobs, and if they're going to travel with him, there's no reason he can't insist that they treat him like an equal instead of a master. However the writer designed these girls so that being Satou's slaves would be the only option for them. Why? Just so Satou and the audience could enjoy the fantasy of having cute slave girls that obey your every order?

Now, I'm not going to claim that this is necessarily disgusting. (even though it somewhat is) Indulging in a slave girl fantasy should be fair enough provided it remains a fantasy. It's just harmless fiction after all. What I am going to claim, however, is why the slave girls even exist if they're not going to go all the way with it. I'll just come right out and say it- the fanservice in episode 5 is weak, even though the girls have cute designs and they're naked, they don't really show enough for long enough for it to really be titillating, and if you're going to conveniently cover up the girl's breasts with their hair in what is explicitly meant to be a fanservice scene, then you might as well not show them naked at all. And the fact that Satou repels the slave girl's sexual advances is kind of lame. Yes, the fact that they're underage is gross, even if they're 'legal' by japanese standards or weird fantasy world standards. And yes, the story would almost certainly be better if it used the slave girls to actually illustrate an insightful point about the cruelty of slavery and the unfairness of discrimination, which the series only pays the bare minimum of lip-service to for the sake of justifying their inclusion. But if you're going to bend the logic of the world and the characters to force Satou to have a harem of slave girls instead of writing an actually good (or at least 'better') story, why not take advantage of that?

What I'm saying is that they should have gone all out with it. Go all the way with the fantasy. Have him fuck all the girls he wants- His skeevy inner monologue clearly suggests that he's into girls, yet when it comes to actual intimacy suddenly he acts as if he's not interested at all. His character is roughly the same age as them, so unless he still thinks of himself a 28 year old, or he's not attracted to these girls (and again, he seems to be attracted to the girls in this world), the age shouldn't be an issue. Only the girl who is clearly traumatised by experiences with her former masters should be left well alone, I think.
The in-universe reasons don't really matter that much, however. What I'm talking about here relates to the core appeal of the series, and the fact that the writers could have written this however they wanted to. If the story isn't going to develop the characters or the story in any meaningful way, it might as well try to appeal to the most base animalistic urges at the heart of this style of power fantasy. And I'm not just referring to the harem and sex aspects, either. I mean the strength part of it as well. When his power level is scanned in episode 2, it claims he's only level 1, which by that point is outdated information. However, he doesn't reveal his true level to anyone throughout these episodes. But what reason does he have to hide his power level? It would make sense that he'd not want to appear crazy by claiming that he's from another world, and it makes sense that he doesn't want to use the meteor spell that he clearly doesn't know how to control. But Satou also doesn't seem like the type who would hate the attention. And again, if the writers are going to bend the universe to make him extremely powerful and give him a harem of girls, why not let him reap the benefits? Why not let him gloat over his victories and flaunt his power? If the world is going to treat him like he's a level 1 anyway, actually make him a real level 1 character. Or, give him a much more compelling reason to hide his level. This is a fantasy story, not a super hero narrative where he needs to keep a secret identity.

I'm not saying that letting Satou flaunt his power and sexuality would make him a better character, or Death March a better show. But it would at least be an honest show- and a more entertaining one to boot. And it's that lack of honesty that really gets me, that desire for the writer to make it so Satou can have his cake and eat it too. He can't be a morally righteous underdog if he's also the most powerful person in the room who is comfortably employing slaves and building a sizeable harem. He may be kind to the NPCs, but he still treats them as NPCs- maxing out his various conversation skills and combat abilities to suit his needs. It gives the impression that Satou can just use numbers to overcome any situation, be it physical or social. And he doesn't really seem to be particuarly self-aware at how entitled that mentality is. As he says in episode 2, he thinks of the world as a nice break for him to enjoy until he's thrown back into the real world. But it isn't a 'real world' unto itself either, as such, neither are the people. He has this mentality, and yet he's living in it. If Death March is just a game to both Satou, the Writer, and the audience, then I'd rather just play an actual game.

For all the criticisms I've levelled against Death March, however, I don't think any of that are really the show's biggest sins. Not even close, really- for as harsh as they may seem, they're really nitpicks in the grand scheme of things. The real punchline here is that Death March didn't make me angry while I was watching it, I just felt mildly bored. I watched through each of the five episodes that have currently aired at the time of this writing with a blank expression on my face, just kind of passively consuming it and not really thinking about it until after the fact. The most I did was screen-cap the images I wanted for this review.
Because I readily admit that I only wrote this article because I was fairly certain I was going to dislike Death March going into it, because I wanted to switch things up and blog about something I didn't like for once- positivity is fine, and it's my preferred style of writing personally. But acknowledging the flaws with the medium we love so much, pointing them out, and figuring out how we can do better is also important.

But Death March wasn't a Sword Art Online calibre disaster, it wasn't a trainwreck such as the likes of Big Order, and not even the mildly sexist treatment of the female characters in Death March offended me that much. I was mainly just sick of how every episode seemed to lack impact, how the animation failed to convey tension in the fights, how the dialogue was all just purely functional, meant only to convey pure exposition or cliche half-jokes and observations. And most of all, how every episode following the second one had repeitive scenes focused on nothing but food and exploring this incredibly generic city. Food food food, describing the taste, showing how happy the protagonist and the girls are to be eating this apparently delicious food- I don't care about food in my anime. If I want food I'll go and eat some in real life. If I want to learn to cook food, I'll watch a cooking show, read a cookbook, or look up a recipe on the internet. If I specifically want to see food in anime, I'll watch Food Wars. That show has better fanservice, animaton, and narrative conflict, too.

Talking about the slave girls and how overpowered Satou was were the only interesting things I could talk about besides the constant consumption of food and half-hearted world building. Death March barely has a plot- It's almost nothing but fantasy exposition, food, and cute girls. And that's really the nail in the coffin, ultimately.

The worst part is, I don't even think Death March is a cynically produced piece of work. I truly think it was earnestly inspired by the current trends that the author truly enjoyed, and that he wanted to write a good story. The original light novel this anime was adapted from was initially a singular vision, after all. It was a story he wanted to tell, and I'm sure there's a lot of people who have read that light novel who see Death March as a more fleshed out work than what this anime presents it as. Unfortunately, the anime, not the light novel, is what I'm here to discuss, and I doubt even a more fleshed out version of Death March would really improve my opinion on this intellectual property as a whole. It's just a shame that this budding young author was inspired, along with many others, by the likes of Sword Art Online. When that show is the defining anime of a decade, you know that decade is going to have a problem. And no, I don't think this series is going to dramatically improve by the end of the final episode.

Now we can only hope that people eventually get sick of this genre and narrative structure in time, so that we can move on to the next terrible trend next decade and leave the Isekai genre to the truly talented people who have a unique story to tell.

I kind of liked the opening theme song I guess.