Our episode starts in a way that’s to formula, much like the last episode, but also much like the last episode, effective. Natsume enters live combat for the first time, and despite not being the best of the best just yet, she manages to hold on and put on a good show, dispatching Gadoll in her search for Pipe. During the fight, she catches the attention of her hero, Kurenai, the strongest fighting Tanker, and makes a good impression.
Aside from Kurenai seeming to have a
long-time crush on Kaburagi, she also provides Natsume an
introduction to The Power, letting her join the fight on an official
basis. Everything seems about on track: at this point, we should
have a series of minor battles, possibly in montage form, allowing
Natsume to rise in rank and esteem before socking her with the next
major turn; possibly the System finding out she’s a bug (she’s fairly
free with the term after Kaburagi dropped it), perhaps something
else, right? Wrong.
Deca-dence instead throws us directly
at what can’t fail to be another major turning point in the show. As
the Tankers see it, the Gadoll core nest has been discovered on the
slopes of Everest, and everyone needs to gear up for the final battle
to destroy the alien menace at long last. As the robots see it, the
next big event in their live action MMO is a doozie, with an epic
setting and great battle promised. Both are decieved. Kaburagi is
approached by a fellow robot, presumably one in management, who wants
to recruit him to rejoin the fighting foces. Presumably, the terms
of Kaburagi’s parole don’t apply, but there’s a bigger reason: the
‘event’ is rigged to be unwinnable. The vast majority of the
fighters involved will die (forcing most of the Gears to start fresh,
since it’s basically a Roguelike for them), paving the way for the
emergence (or, in Kaburagi’s case, return) of top-ranked heroes to
lead everyone out of the darkness of despair. For the overall
pattern, Kaburagi doesn’t necessarily have a problem, but he is
absolutely troubled by the fact that Natsume is looking to deploy
into a mission that is custom-designed to kill her.
Kaburagi confronts Natsume at her home,
and they have a fairly intense argument about what she can or should
do that ends with Kaburagi critically damaging her fighting gear to
try to force her to stay behind. Feeling very low, Natsume talks
with Kurenai some, who asks a fairly armor-piercing question in the
face of Natsume’s withdrawal from the mission: why did she want to
fight in the first place?
As Natsume walks home, we’re treated to
a very well-done flashback sequence where she thinks about both how
her hopes and dreams were formed, talking with her archaeologist dad,
and how they were constantly dashed by people – friends, mentors,
authorities, basically everyone – telling her that she couldn’t,
shouldn’t follow through. All the while she gets angrier and
angrier, pacing faster and making fists, stewing on her situation.
Eventually, she can’t take it any longer, and hurries back to Kurenai
with her answer.
Natsume, it seems, isn’t all about
changing the world (as often came up previously) but also bears a
deep desire to better herself, and for that reason she’s going to
stand up and fight even if (or perhaps because) everyone else tells
her that she can’t. Kurenai is pleased, and we’re able to see as the
mission gets ready to roll that with her help, Natsume was able to
gear up and go
Kaburagi, watching the secretly doomed
event, sees it too, as he notices Natsume load up into one of the
transports. Though he’s horrified, what if anything he’s able to do
about it will have to, like the outcome of the mission, wait for next
week to be revealed.
In a lot of ways, I find that something
I’m appreciating about Deca-dence seems to be that it cuts out the
fat when it comes to “required” story beats. If this were based
on a Manga, I doubt that the reveal of the world’s nature would come
at essentially the start in episode two, and even if it did there
would absolutely be a honeymoon period between Natsume joining the
power and the beginning of the pivitol Everest event. But, being
made solely to be a show, Deca-dence correctly identifies that it
doesn’t have to putter around giving us the same plot notes we’ve
seen a million times before if it can still build strong characters
and relationships going right for the throat. And it does that. At
the very least I care about what’s going to become of Kaburagi,
Natsume, and Kurenai in the upcoming battle. On one side, you can be
concerned that they might not all make it out of the unwinnable
battle. Even if you expect that Natsume and Kaburagi must be safe,
Kurenai isn’t, and she’s made a pretty good impression in the episode
she’s had to do so.
On the other side, you might be worried
that our lead characters could win, and about what that would mean
for them. This battle is not indented to be one where the mission
can be accomplished, and the System doesn’t take kindly to things not
going as planned. In a sense, triumphing against the cosmically
calculated odds might be the most dangerous thing Natsume could do in
the long run, and it would certainly force us into a new act of the
show.
And, I wouldn’t call bullshit on them
being able to do it. We know Kaburagi was both #1 and capable of at
least one major cheat, so his personal contributions haven’t been
accounted for. Speaking of that cheat, it’s worth considering what
the limiter removal hack actually was: it allowed the Gears to
overcome caps on their performance by disabling the safeties that
would otherwise allow them to disconnect with nothing but phantom
pain. In a sense, the few Tankers that fight, such as Natsume and
Kurenai, are fighting with 100% Limiter Removal all the time, when
20% was enough to be powerfully meaningful for a ranking Gear. Most
Tankers don’t have the skills or abilities to fight like the Gears
do, but I would quite easily buy the idea that the absolute best
among them could be capable of feats that no non-cheating Gear could
manage. When the setup to “assure” a Total Party Kill on the
current event isn’t itself presented as a cheat, just an unfairly
difficult boss, I don’t think it would break immersion in the setting
to have any of the characters we’re really following manage that win.
Anybody who’s played or especially GM’d an RPG knows that moment
where a little outside the boss thinking and a lot of lucky die rolls
allow a “certain death” tier challenge to be destroyed.
All in all, Deca-dence is racing ahead
in a very strong manner. It’s clearly trying to do an awful lot, but
because of how it’s managing the pacing – remarkably without
feeling rushed or compressed – I actually think there’s more than
enough show to do basically whatever they want to with both the
characters and the setting.
And, naturally, I have to say that I
still don’t know if they will. Shows have lost safer paths from even
stronger openings than Deca-dence, and episode four is too early to
say that something absolutely will (or won’t; I’ve had some
worst-foot-forward gems) pan out. But, it is enough time, more often
than not, to get a sense of how the writing is and whether or not you
should probably be trusting the show. And there have been exceptions
on both sides, that were trustworthy and didn’t seem like it or that
betrayed that trust, but right now? I feel like I can trust
Deca-dence, so that if and when it does another something daring, my
main response will be more along the lines of “Ok, I’m game, where
are you going with this?” than “Oh no this looks like a dangerous
move.” It’s earned this in both its plot and its character
writing, which is a good place to be.
See you all next week!