English Dub Review: Angels of Death “Don’t let me kill you just yet”

A cursed dollhouse.

Overview:

Cathy has more traps set, including some that open past trauma.

Our Take:

Here we have a more deliberate shift in Zack’s character. Unlike the person from before who was only using Rachel because it was convenient for him, here we see a change.

First, there’s the gas mask in the poisoned room: there’s only one working one, and Zack decides to give it to Rachel. He takes both doses of the unknown drug instead of passing one off to Rachel. In all of these instances, Zack usually brushes off his new form of kindness, casting it either as something necessary because Rachel is so weak and fragile. However, it seems to be more than that- Zack almost seems to be growing fond of Rachel, in his own way.

While previously the information about Zack had just been left out, here we are shown the full scope of Zack’s trauma. He was taken in as an orphan with a neglectful host family, who saw the children as purely disposable. In order to do as little work as possible, his host family would give him the task of digging the graves for the children that would routinely die. Zack has been routinely dehumanized from the very start of his life, first as an orphan, then as someone who was less than human. His host family only saw him as a tool and didn’t care for his wellbeing whatsoever. So Zack seeing a slasher film enjoyed by his host father, and being constantly embroiled in death as something part of his daily life desensitized him to it, and so killing his host parents is almost freeing to him. However, it doesn’t mean that it’s something he likes bringing up. Far from it.

Cathy also shows even more of her deviousness in this respect. The floor functions largely through solving puzzles made by her, and solving them while in life-threatening situations. The dollhouse puzzle is fairly tame- there’s no poisonous gas or electric chairs or bullets or anything beyond moving dolls in the dollhouse. However, Cathy is very well aware of who Zack is, and she knows what happened in his past. The dollhouse is shaped like the old orphanage, and positioning the dolls perfectly reenacts Zack’s trauma, riling him up. It’s the worst of the tortures so far because it manages to destabilize him. It’s really good and it works.