Ever wanted to see what would happen if you mixed Mad Max style post-apocalyptic scavenger punk with Kaiju battles? Apparently, someone in Japan did, because this season we’ve got the original anime Deca-dence, and after one episode that’s exactly what it looks like.
We start with our main character, a
girl named Natsume, and her father and father’s co-workers on a
salvage mission on the ruined surface of Earth. Archaeology turns to
horror, however, when one of the monsters responsible for the near
extinction of humanity, known as a Gadoll, appears and attacks.
Though warriors (called Gears) arrive to fend it off, Natsume loses
both her father and an arm in the process.
Years later, she graduates from
whatever passes for school in this universe, and is frustrated to be
denied entrance into the military, on account of her physical
handicap, badass prosthetic or no. Instead, she’s assigned to serve
as an armor repairer, living life as a non-combatant Tanker.
However, when a Gadoll attack occurs,
she and some of the other repairmen are swept off the side of the
titular mobile fortress. They’re saved from falling to their deaths
by landing in the anti-gravity bubble of a defeated Gear, only to
have Natsume’s boss take up the soldier’s equipment and dispatch the
smaller Gadoll in a massive display of ability. Meanwhile, the
fortress as a whole takes on the mountain-sized Gadoll, draining its
vital fluids for power to hit it with a rocket-powered piston punch
for lethal.
Alongside that basic plotline for the
episode, we get some exploration of the characters. Natsume is fiery
and unable to rest, ambitious and with a great need for purpose in
her life. She wants to be a soldier, because she sees such efforts
as contributing to actually changing the status quo in a meaningful
way. All the same, she’s fairly distinctly driven by hope rather
than hate, as she’s able to treat her boss’s pug-like Gadoll pet as,
well, a pet once she recognizes it’s not individually a danger.
Her boss, on the other hand, is
extremely stern and no nonsense. He believes in keeping your head
down and trying to live the life you can, and basically tells Natsume
to give up on her dreams. This is somewhat at odds with the fact
that he’s clearly more than he seems, between his combat performance
and his apparent night job hunting down “Bugs” (seemingly, as an
assassin for some sort of shadowy government force).
Speaking of that, the setting is
clearly a big part of what the creators wanted to show. A lot of
effort is put into going through the inner workings of the impossible
giant fortress of Deca-dence: how they live their lives harvesting
resources from the defeated Gadoll (including much of their food
being Gadoll-flesh, and the glowing green fluid that serves as their
main power source for special stuff), as well as the mechanics of a
lot of the machinery. It’s very reminiscent of Mad Max, Waterworld,
and other works in that bracket that love showing off the machinery
of their universe, both literal and figurative.
There’s something of a mystery as well.
Focus is given in the opening, before disaster strikes, to the
discovery of what looks to be a broken robot in the ruined city, such
that I can’t imagine that image was chosen except that it’s going to
be somehow relevant. We see a more digital and less analog world as
well in the command station of Deca-dence, and a bizarre ending scene
that seems to take place in a colorful world fairly unlike the rusted
and repurposed world of the Deca-dence we see. Similarly, it’s also
clear that many of the Gears aren’t exactly human, having wild green
and purple skin tones and being referred to as a different race from
the ordinary Takners. So as much as is on display, there’s clearly a
lot more going on in the background.
On the whole, I’d say the first episode
was quite promising. It has some notes of classical storytelling, so
that while many parts of the show are set up to be fairly
predictable, I can at least tell that it has a good grounding and a
firm grasp of the fundamentals. It also has some compelling notes,
that make me interested in seeing more, and really exploring this
universe. The characters, while nothing special so far, aren’t bad.
The second episode, however, is going
to be a big one. We don’t get to see yet how we’re going to come out
of the boss’s display. Will Natsume change her mind about anything?
Will the boss tell us why he’s a mysterious fighting ace? Will we
learn more about errors and what that means for the Deca-dence?
Episode one has set up a lot, and some of it has to pay off not just
some day but almost immediately. And, a big part of that payoff is
going to be, in the end, setting some expectation for the overall
story of Deca-dence. Because, right now, we don’t have one. The
door to fighting was closed in Natsume’s face and life as an armor
repairer is neither glamorous not one of particular agency.
Something has to get her involved with a scenario in which she can
have an impact on relevant outcomes. So there’s the challenge for
next week: you’ve got a nice setting here, Deca-dence. Please tell
us what you actually intend to do with it.