So, Deca-dence went and explained most of the mysteries from last episode by going and catapulting itself into a whole new genre of weird. Because, it turns out, the world that Natsume knows is only one (part of?) the world. Her boss, Kaburagi, is part of the other side.
The kind of entity he is seems to be a
sort of robotic existence, said to be property of the company that
runs Deca-dence, and powered by the green substance that’s extracted
from defeated Gadoll. For recreation, these beings can play a game –
Deca-dence! They use physical avatars, the Gears, to experience the
battles against the Gadoll for fun. And, suddenly, it all makes
sense. The weird color-world scenelets? That’s their dimension.
Why are the Gears so strange-looking? Why don’t (the “endangered
species”) human Tankers usually join them?, why are they so crazy
and gung-ho about fighting? They’re literally just gamers, playing
with the life or death of humanity. If their avatars die, they can
just start the game over.
And among those gamers, Kaburagi was
once a pro, the top ranked player, making his living in the game
along with his team. The team rookie, though, started asking after
“Limit removal”, which is revealed to be a hack that would allow
him to become more powerful in exchange for taking real carry-over
damage if his avatar would be wounded. Eventually, he begs Kaburagi
enough that Kaburagi, who knew how to perform the cheat (whether or
not he actually used it), teaches him how to do it on the condition
that he won’t go over a level that would allow him to still survive.
The rookie is, however, caught
cheating, and since he and his team were the top of the ranks, it’s
quite the scandal. The punishment for the same lands Kaburagi in his
current situation: “Playing” as an armor repairman by day, and by
night hunting down Bugs – humans that are problematic to the powers
that be for one reason or another – and eliminating them, returning
the chips that mark them for the system while also having the task of
identifying and reporting more than the targeted bugs.
Kaburagi has been… in a bad way.
Though his expected service life until he’s due to be scrapped runs
175 more years, he hasn’t been taking his energy, and is effectively
suiciding by inaction to escape his place as a bloody-handed pawn of
the powers.
This changes when Natsume, eager to
learn how to fight in a way that echoes the rookie from Kaburagi’s
past, discovers him at his latest mark. He expects this to be
immediately reported as a bug and the kill order on her to be given,
but no report is filed. She mistakes the assassination for petty
theft and her argument with the bewildered Kaburagi is not nearly as
broken as you’d expect if she knew the truth, but even with that
mistake seeing as much as she saw should have signed her death
warrant. It turns out, as Kaburagi investigates, that she’s a Bug of
a much more technical nature. The system believes she’s dead, and
can’t track her.
Seeing perhaps the beauty in a free
life and perhaps a new and more active way to fight back against the
forces that control him, Kaburagi aborts his intended suicide by
starvation in order to teach Natsume how to fight the Gadoll, a turn
that she’s confused but entirely excited by.
Most of the episode is concerned with
Kaburagi’s past, seeing some of how his world of weird and colorful
robots (which is done in a dramatically different style from the
intricate and rusted Deca-dence main world) works, and building up
and breaking down the cheating scandal that brought him to where he
is now, contrasted with occasional scenes of what this ‘game’ means
for humans. And… I can’t say it’s not a little jarring, in terms
of the visuals and the different story (especially Natsume being
somewhat out of focus). But it’s also a huge move for the show as a
whole, and needs the time and focus to do it right.
Deca-dence had my viewership, based
just on the pitch of some Waterworld-esque intricacy paired with
fighting giant monsters, but now it has my high interest. The show
is doing something, in blending genres the way that it is, which we
haven’t really seen before. It’s a survivalist “humanity on the
brink” story, AND has a cyberpunk-esque “Resist the all-powerful
megacorp” theme AND acts as a story of “Aliens among us” AND is
about the meeting of two worlds with vastly different scopes… and
there’s still some questions to be asked. We understand more what
the wrecked robot that Natsume’s dad found on his archaeological dig
may have meant, but did he die in the fight with the Gadoll or was he
rubbed out by the robots for having seen too much? Why is Natsume
believed to be dead by the system and left untraceable for it? Is it
just a happy accident after she was maimed, or is there a deeper
conspiracy at work? What’s the true relationship between the robots,
humans, and Gadoll? Right now we don’t even know enough to ask the
best, most precise questions about what’s going to happen and what
the truth of the world is, and that’s an amazing feeling.
With episode 2, Deca-dence has jumped
dramatically from looking like a fun little action show, to looking
like it might be something truly original and worthwhile, and I am
absolutely eager for next week’s episode.