English Dub Review: Death March to the Parallel World Rhapsody “A Trip to the Underworld That Started with a Death March”

You’re right. A trip to the underworld… of writing.

Overview (Spoilers)

Satou and the gang are looking to quash a political plot to take over the Forest of Illusions. To do so, they have to have 300 vials of the witch’s special potion by sundown. However, the bottles required to preserve the potions have all been bought out. Enlisting the aid of a local sculptor, the gang work together to make all the bottles and batches they need. Unfortunately, just as they’ve gotten the bottles in the kiln, nobleman Douchecanoe and his thugs appear to smash up the kiln. He claims that the sale of the bottles was illegal or… something… His explanation wasn’t clear, and obviously false. They not only destroy the kiln, but all the bottles they find within it. What they didn’t know was that Satou used his hammerspace inventory to swipe the bottles and substitute them for the broken pottery shards lying all over the place. With the bottles all made up, they take the delivery to the viscount. At first, he stalls, trying to wait until sundown when the deal is void. Just then, the actual count (who we’ve not seen ever before) arrives. He denounces the viscounts actions and prepares to execute him, but Satou just knocks the losers out. There are children present! Since he’s just save the forest, the witch grants him a magic lantern, and the title “Friend of Witches”.

Wait, we’ve still got the other third of the episode! What plot is still left to explore? Could it be that this is just the beginning of the journey? Nah, the writers just filled the rest of the episode with as much fanservice as they possibly could: Naked Nana straddling Satou and asking him to touch her boob (for maintenance purposes), Nana moaning in a sultry voice as he performs this maintenance from behind her, Pochi and Tama licking aloe vera sap off Satou’s hands, him waking up as the center of a giant mound of sleepy girls, and Mia waking Nana up with a boob grab. Nice to see the writers are using their time effectively.

Skills Learned: Reading Aloud

Titles Acquired: Friend of the Witches

Our Take

Let me start with what I liked about the episode. First, that horrible hat the Witch’s Apprentice is wearing turned out to be a bird. That reveal was kinda funny, and it makes the faux pas of a chapeau a bit more worthwhile. Second, the fact that there was a whole subsection of magic that derived its power from the city itself is kinda cool. It is as if the leader of an area can call on the genius loci of his city to pass judgment. I like the concept. I do like that they took a moment to use the hammerspace inventory with the magic box to cool down the bottles. It’s a nice educational moment, I guess. Then again, the end of the episode isn’t intended for anyone who would have actually needed this lesson, so I deny you points for that.

And that’s it. When you look below at the score, the two points this episode got was for those things. The rest of the episode, like the series, can be thrown away without remorse. Writing? There was no tension in the main plot, especially because they telegraphed every move Satou made. Then, just as the viscount was about to make the episode interesting, the deus ex machina arrives early. We barely have time for the possibility the viscount won’t sign to percolate before it’s nullified. Then, before we get any exciting action out of it, Satou rushes in and ends it all. We are denied every single bit of entertainment that this episode could have actually given us so that the writers could speed things along. Why do they want to speed it along? Pedophilia and lechery. Let’s also bring up that the whole plot was made meaningless by its end. The witch knew exactly where the count was the whole time. If all it took was phoning her up so she could get the count to deal with the situation, this two-episode arc of making potion bottles was pointless.

Ready for more illogicality? One: Satou never actually learned the pottery skill. Every skill he’s had, we’ve seen him acquire. Unless, of course, he off-screened it. In which case, the whole concept of showing us montages of him learning skills was pointless. Especially because most of those skills go unused. He has learned literally every element of magic, as well as its holy, draconic, and demonic variant. He only uses fire and wind. Second, he knocks out the baddies because there were “children present”. There are two actual children in the party, both of whom have killed and dissected more monsters than you can shake a stick at, and all of that at his request. Nice try at looking like a good guy, but you’re just a vanilla wannabe. And seriously? There’s a skill for Reading Aloud? This is ridiculous.

In addition to the writing going off the deep end of stupidity, the animation and art were so bad, it makes the modern foreign policy look like puppies and kittens. I couldn’t even recognize the viscount. Every character’s face was smashed in from the sides to make them tall and thin. Everyone was cross-eyed or derpy-eyed. They couldn’t agree on how big, thick, or long the nobleman’s mustache was. The hat-bird was never drawn the same way twice. The only thing that was visually up to par was the count and his half-second fight with the viscount. Despite the fact that they then tried to focus all their remaining energy on the animation of naked girls groping, I was already done with the episode. I no longer cared. The voice acting followed suit, with everyone so stiff and lifeless, I might as well have been listening to a Text to Speech engine.

Let em bring up my last beef with the episode. The title was “A Trip to the Underworld that Started with a Death March”. Beyond being a mouthful, THEY NEVER MAKE A TRIP TO THE UNDERWORLD! Not at all! Not even close. Nobody dies. Nobody gets reincarnated. The little story he reads doesn’t even mention it. There was NO underworld in this episode.

Idiots.