English Dub Review: Dies Irae”The Dawning Days”

I am… so lost.

Overview (Spoilers)

The year is 1939. The first World War has come to a close, and Germany is hurting but bad. Having lost such a massive campaign, and now having to pay heavy reparations to their victims, national pride is at an all-time low. This is the time when a lowly soldier/artist would rise to power in National Socialist German Worker’s Party, and push its pseudo-scientific/pseudo-superstitious racist theories to become the order of the day for Germany. Of course, we’re talking about Adolf Hitler, but he doesn’t show up in this anime. Instead, we focus on a different soldier, Reinhard Heydrich, as he discusses the future with a “mage” named Karl Kraft. This man seems to have prophetic knowledge, and Reinhard plans to use that prophecy to the advantage of the newly forming Reich. A few years later, and the World War II is well underway. The brass are in love with Reinhard, as he is the Nazi party’s distillation of the Übermensch. He schmoozes with bigwigs at a party, but is interrupted by some disturbing news. It seems there are two people engaging in an all-out fight in the streets, and the two of them are supernaturally powerful. A trio of ladies appear before him, volunteering to be his swords in fighting them. The Valkyries, as they are called, rush out to do battle. As Reinhard gets closer to the war zone, Kraft discusses with him that his visions are about to culminate. Reinhard, it seems, has been holding back his full power. If he were to truly apply himself, he could destroy the world. Kraft pushes him to stop holding back, as one can love something, and still destroy it. It is eventually enough, and Reinhard shows his true power. He pimp slaps the Valkyries for trying to protect him, then curb-stomps the two enemy combatants without effort. Fast forward to the modern day, and Reinhard is still alive. His eyes are golden now, and he’s in desperate need of a haircut, but he has a fancy, flying, golden fortress and a thirst for the end of the world. But who is this blue-eyed boy who stands in his way?

Dies Irae (Latin for “Day of Wrath”) began its life as a visual novel. It was first developed during the 2000’s PC boom in Japan, but its long, complex story tree led to it being released unfinished. Users were upset by this, and two more versions were later released, along with 200-page fan books for those who bought the prior versions. It is now available for Windows, PSP, Android, and iOS, though not in English, and was extremely popular in its heyday. Now, it is an anime. Huzzah.

Our Take

So, I have a question: What the heck is going on here? I’m certain this is all going to make sense soon. I really am. After all, this is not episode one, but episode zero. It’s a prologue to the main story, but I feel like it was so discombobulated that it might be doing the rest of the series a disservice. The writing was everywhere, jumping from flashforwards and flashbacks and switching to a different place here and introducing new characters next and… It was everywhere. It seems I’m not alone, as others left similar comments on the episode in Funimation’s site. However, simply because it was a confusing way to start the show does not mean that it lacks potential. The show gives me vibes of Hellsing and the Fate franchise, especially as we got to the rainbow-vomit spray of bad hombres at the end. One of them gave me flashbacks to Integra Hellsing. They all seem like tough customers, and I’m looking forward to whatever main character we get turning them into bloody smears.

The animation isn’t really all that much to write home about. The style of the art is mainstream, and there’s a bunch of obvious movement shortcuts designed to keep this lower budget. Fortunately, they remembered that this was the pilot and they needed to impress people, so the animators put some effort into the fidelity of their drawings to the character designs. No visible errors, but the battles, which should have been exciting, were stale and a bit boring. I hope that the show will work to fix that.

The voice acting and translation of the anime wasn’t bad. However, when the entire cast is portraying Nazi bad guys, you probably aren’t going to get a massive amount of depth out of them. Just brooding. The exception is the Valkyries, who show us at least a couple of faces before they get backhanded ruthlessly for no reason. Actual German words are woven into the dialogue (“dummkopf” being a notable one), which lent some credibility to the setting. What did not help that credibility was the accents. I appreciate these voice actors are trying very hard to portray accurate German accents. They are better than most. Certainly better than The Reflection. However, it is still obviously fake, and at some points, sounds like they have a mouth full of cotton balls and drool is leaking out the side of their mouths. It isn’t pleasant, and I hope they drop it in the next episode. I also did not feel like the characters were properly cast, as just about every voice sounded a bit too high for their faces.