English Dub Review: Dies Irae “Gladsheim”

The hillllllls are aliiiiiiive with the sound of deeeeaaad kiiiiids.

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Rea awakens from odd visions to find herself in the gathering room with Eleonore. She tells Rea about her true heritage and that Rea’s role in this will overtake her old life, so she should resolve things as soon as possible.

Valerian remembers his time as a priest and caretaker as Heydrich and his battalion leaders arrived and killed children under his care to punish him for a previous crime he committed. He was then tasked with becoming Heydrich’s body double. In the present, as he carries Kasumi’s body somewhere, Kei confronts him about what happened to her brother Kai. He tells her that he killed him and his lover because their plans against Heydrich conflicted with his own plans and then had Kei become a member of their group. Kei is outraged and fights him, so he takes on a golden armored form similar to the fortress floating overhead. He professes his reasons for taking things this far: atoning for the children he got killed. Rea arrives and tells him to stop, but this is actually what Valerian wanted. Now he can properly save her by using Kasumi in Rea’s place as the link to Issac (something something next in line, something something it’ll disrupt the ritual). Just when he is able to nearly make this work, Eleonore and Machina arrive to stop him.

Ren races to the battle, but is stopped by Wolfgang. Machina is giving Valerian a run for his money. Eleonore explains to Rea and Kei about his power actually coming FROM Heydrich, and defeating him here will release that power. But Kei realizes this means her goal of resurrecting her brother won’t happen. Kai’s Tubal Cain erupts from his destroyed armor but is vaporized by Eleonore, who is more than content with simply being Heydrich’s servant in a greater goal. Enraged, Kei attacks her but is no match. Heydrich smiles as he watches all of this and his fortress begins to gain power.

OUR TAKE

Our protagonists take a back seat this week as we get in the head of one of the more enigmatic anti-villains of the story. In my overdose-like haze of watching the first twelve episodes, he was always a figure whose presence offered more questions than answers every time we saw him. He had a connection to Lisa and a fondness for Rea along with his duties and knowledge of all that was going on under the surface. Here, we finally learn what is driving him to not only carry these things out but also his main goal of vengeance against Heydrich. Sadly, as both a kind of mentor figure and having just explained his clever plan, he is likely doomed to die by next week.

We also get a little insight into the mindset of Eleonore and Machina, two of our main minibosses before the end. This is more important than you might think since it’s more than easy to just make any given antagonist a one-note obstacle that proves to be no more than a brief physical threat to the protagonists. Kinda like Wolfgang, actually. Eleonore at least has a bit of a philosophy behind her allegiance that’s related to her powers, and Machina seems to have a connection to Ren’s past life that we’ll probably get into pretty soon. We have four episodes left, so we might as well look forward to as much as we reasonably can.

Of course, that still doesn’t keep us away from the madness of this series, especially in regards to even attempting at an explanation for Valerian’s plan. Even growing up with anime, I cannot take this much esoteric Germanic and Nazi specific lore trying to be cool in a bog standard visual novel setting. We already have dozens of superfluous characters just talking about our Kingdom Hearts Organization XIII knockoffs and ALL of their own personal trauma and backstories, but then they bring in all the Fate/Stay Night rip off stuff regarding Holy Grails and sacrifices and all this crap that I can’t imagine anyone being interested in. Or at least, anyone who started with this version. Checking around, it seems this is already derided as a pretty piss poor adaptation (tough luck if you put money into the Kickstarter that funded it), so maybe, JUST MAYBE all of this is more compelling and more digestible in visual novel form. But this is what we have, and it is not good.