English Dub Review: Death March to the Parallel Word Rhapsody “Labyrinth Exploration That Started with a Death March”

Does the sacred sword make the hero, or does the hero using the sword make it sacred?

Overview (Spoilers)

Satou and his party of slave demi-human girls make their way through the demon’s labyrinth, and he notices that the ladies aren’t leveling up. Obviously, he never picked up XP Share. So, he instead uses a trick every Pokemon trainer knows: Have your weaker party members jump in, land a hit, then swap out and finish the enemy off. At first, Pochi is a little scared of the monsters, and runs away, but with some reassurance and experience the girls start taking the lead in offing the monsters. While Tama and Pochi have keen senses that let them notice enemies and hidden doors, Liza seems to have a good amount of knowledge on how to fight monsters, which is likely due to her higher level. She even knows to pierce the nucleus of the slime monsters for a quick kill. Satou also uses his new Trap Setting skill to toss a lv. 40 monster down a deep chute. They pick up new items, and Satou learns new skills. Along the way, they come upon a bunch of cocoons in a room. Satou’s AR vision highlights these cocoons as NPCs. The group frees the prisoners, but one of them is more than a little rude. It’s the racist jerk from two episodes ago, and he’s yelling at Pochi. Satou calls Pochi over, and tells the guy that he’s on his own. When he starts making a fuss, one of the other NPCs threatens to kill him. He’s making too much noise, and will draw the monsters.

Moving along, the group runs into the remaining survivors of the demon’s attack, all of them under assault by slimes. As a team, they eliminate the monsters and rescue the survivors, including Zena. The girls even manage to rescue the racist from before. He’s rethinking his prejudice right now. She’s more than a little insecure when Satou mentions Liza, but after an introduction to the three slaves, she comes to grips with it. Not much time to figure things out, though. One of the guards opens a chest, and the demon pops out! Using his Evil Eye spell, he confuses everyone in the room, sans Satou. Everyone is ready to gouge each other’s eyes out, and he isn’t much for the girls getting heavy consciences, so Satou knocks them out. Just as he’s ready to take on the demon, the lv. 40 monster from before returns! Satou thinks quick and tosses him down a chute again but… then he follows it. After beating it with one of the swords he picked up from Dragon Valley, he starts looking through his inventory. But what is he looking for?

Courtesy: Funimation

Suddenly, a blonde figure in a red cloak and white mask appears in the battle with the demon. He launches rocks to stun the demon, but it responds by summoning its master. A lv. 60+ Demon Lord is nothing to sneeze at, and while the cloaked figure (it’s Satou if you couldn’t figure out, wearing the Dragon Mask and Blonde Wig from episode 2) makes many attempts to take down the boss, nothing leaves lasting damage. Satou seems to have issues with the sword he used before. It seems to not want to work for him. Why is that? Well, you see, that there is the Sacred Sword we’ve been hearing about. Seeing as he doesn’t have the title of Hero, it damages him whenever he holds it. So, he switches to a different sword and finishes off the baddy. This nets him the much-needed title of Hero, since he did it in the defense of others. Afterwards, the survivors are regrouping outside the labyrinth. They run into the racist, who recants and apologizes for his treatment of the girls earlier. Well, ain’t that special. Satou takes the girls over to the local slave trader and has their connection to him made official. The trader also offers two more slaves. While Satou initially refuses, he recognizes one of them. That’s Arisa, The Exiled Witch, whom we saw in episode two. And she seems to know him… by name.

Skills Acquired: Trap Detection, Trap Disarming, Trap Setting, Excavate, Treasure Hunting, Treasure Box Unlocking, Fire Magic, Holy Magic: Palion Faith, Evil Eye Resistance, Throw, Dark Magic Resistance, Dark Magic: Demon, Wind Resistance, Wind Magic: Demon, Paralysis Resistance, Lightning Resistance, Lightning Magic: Demon, Decay Resistance, Disease Resistance, Poison Resistance, Petrification Resistance.

Spells Learned: Fire Shot

Titles Acquired:  Tamer, Merciless One, Labyrinth Conqueror, Dances with Demons, Demon Slayer [Greater], Hero

Our Take

The more we go through this series, the more I start to like it. There is a level of subtle connection throughout that builds the universe and story up as we go. You might wonder, if he had that Sacred Sword the whole time, why didn’t he ever use it or talk about it? Well, we actually saw it in his inventory in episode one. I went back and checked. Even though it wasn’t named, its icon was there. It looks as if he is trying hard to hide his status as a high-level character, and doesn’t want to go on about how powerful he is. Instead, he gathers information on the items he has that he doesn’t understand, like the Sacred Sword. That’s why we got so much about it in the last episode. We also saw him gather the elements of his hero wardrobe, we just didn’t realize it. Suddenly, all the portions of episode two that seemed superfluous fall into place in this episode. Nothing is wasted, but instead is a subtle Chekhov’s Gun. I like that they brought back the racist, and redeemed him. Even if it was an awfully quick conversion.

That being said, I’m a bit wary of the game’s skill granularity. I know, this isn’t a game review, it’s an anime review. However, the game and its mechanics are a vital part of this show. As such, I pay attention to them as elements of the writing. So, when I see just how many skills this game has, and how so many of them overlap, I wonder about its balance. It seems to have elemental, holy, and dark magic, and to further set them apart as belonging to particular races or religious groups. So, you have Holy magic, as well as Holy magic for the Palion Faith. Wind and lightning magic with a demon subtype in addition to normal. Its a huge number of skills that should be merged, and that is an issue in a video game. It is an important part of the game balance to have the right number of skills. Too many, and you have players wasting their points for no effect. You may have maxed out a skill, but it is a single type of action, and you can’t use it everywhere. Too few, and they can quickly an easily max them all out. Players get bored if they don’t feel like their character is advancing. Also, it looks as if the writers haven’t kept track of what abilities he’s learned. Here, it says he learned the Throw skill, but he used it in episode one to drive off the wyvern. This could be a one-off issue, but with this many skills, it may be a problem later. If they decide something he’s done something that is a skill but forgets he did it once before, we’ll be right back here.

The animation here is great. They continue to blend traditional and CG animation, and do so well. Anytime we see a soldier that isn’t talking, he tends to be done in CG. This allows them to put a bunch of them in a scene without wasting a bunch of time withdrawing them. The minor demon we’ve been dealing with had been done in CG, so they could turn him all over and make him do movements that may have been too much to plan out. In the previous episode, that model wasn’t so well done. Its edges and shading were fuzzy, so it looked like it was out of an old GameCube game. In this episode, they must have tweaked the filters a bit, because he looked more like a cel-shaded character. The action had power and gravitas to it, which is important as this is a seminal episode. He finally has the Hero tag and can use the Sacred Sword for whatever purpose we have coming. My only complaint on this front is how basic and unnatural the posing is for the girls throughout the episode, especially Pochi and Tama. They move in blocky, awkward ways when not running around to take shelter under Shirou’s wing.

The voice acting was fine. I found Arisa’s voice at the end rather striking. I haven’t seen who her voice actress is, yet, but I love the sound she built for the girl. I was less impressed with the Demon Lord’s voice. It isn’t all that intimidating and has a simple reverb filter on it to sound bigger.

Score

Summary

Beyond a few continuity and animation hiccups, this is an entertaining series. It seems to have weathered the "episode three curse" with aplomb, and continues to make good use of its prior assets to reduce the drain on the budget. As such, we've kept a high level of quality. I give this episode eight Sacred Swords out of ten.

8.0/10