English Dub Review: Dies Irae “Valhalla Emanation”

Think you know crazy villain backstories? Well, you don’t know DICK!

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Well, we get to see that fight we missed out on at the end of the last episode. Turns out we didn’t miss much, as Shiro is separated to fight Wolfgang alone, and Kei is immediately burned to a crisp by Eleonore, opening the final swastika and ending the world…again? Hell of a first two minutes, that’s for sure. But because we have two more episodes after this, Heydrich decides now is not the time to get involved and throws Machina at the now enraged Ren. This gives him the chance to talk about that weird past life Ren apparently had as a German soldier, which he apparently remembers somehow! And while Machina wishes for Ren to kill him, he punches Ren through the chest, which gives Ren a vision of Marie, who seems to have made up her mind on taking over for Kraft.

But things aren’t all bad, because Kei isn’t dead! Seems that she made a contract with her brother’s old weapon and avoided death by taking his place. This means it will eventually take hold of her mind like him, but for now, Kei has a second chance to avenge her family and take down Eleonore.

That just leaves Shiro to face Wolfgang, which takes center stage in this episode. They don’t have a direct connection like the other two fights going on. In fact, they don’t really have anything in common. So, you can understand why Wolfgang decides to go on an unprompted monologue about his backstory. Shiro guesses it was being molested and…seems he’s not wrong! Turns out Wolfgang was born into a family of prostitutes, but they couldn’t use him for work because he was a boy. So, instead of like…I dunno, maybe just have him be the guy who passes out complimentary towels and bottled water when the deed is done, his parents decided that castration was the better option. Unfortunately, seems Wolfgang ended up becoming more popular than his mom and got a lot of beatings for it, even poking out one of his eyes for it.

So, while he rants to Shiro about breaking free from the gender binary, Shiro destroys his guns, forcing him into hand to hand combat and requiring him to touch Shiro in the fight. And to finish the fight off, Shiro summons…the ghost of Eri? Who apparently died off-screen? Ugh, I don’t even know anymore.

OUR TAKE

JESUS, that took a turn. Just when I thought this show could not get any more balls to the wall, it crushes the balls against the said wall, smears the contents evenly around, crushes the wall into chunks, and then sells those chunks as a breakfast cereal. But let’s break down the insanity of each individual fight:

The least nonsensical battle (for now) goes to Kei vs Eleonore by a landslide, but that doesn’t make it free from sin. I will grant that this showdown has the most established backstory behind it, considering Eleonore’s somewhat established previous relationship with Kei’s brother’s girlfriend, as well as Kei needing to take on the curse her brother held for so long just to survive this long in the final conflict, but it’s still incredibly hard to follow on its own. First off is the second apocalypse that I guess re-ended the world now that Kei has been sacrificed to unlock the final swastika. We apparently needed to see all of that again just to bring that point home, but now we get to see Kei roasted and then come back suddenly. Kei’s gotta be the most properly developed protagonist of the ones we have, but her stuff still gives me a headache.

In the middle of the crazy train cars, we have Ren facing off against Machina in a fight that has supposedly been decades in the making. Like virtually all of the things in this series, even my over a decade-long history of watching overly complicated anime malarkey cannot assist me in fathoming an ounce of this, but somehow, Ren is the reincarnation of one of Machina’s friends from World War 2, and so Machina’s main goal is to die by that person’s hand. In a way, I guess that is a bit endearing to be living this long to only gain a proper death, if not for the fact that he’s a friggin Nazi. I just think there’s a line between wanting a good death and what you do to get there, and that’s way past it. Still, he’s the way more sympathetic villain than our frontrunner.

Typing out Wolfgang’s gratuitously grimdark backstory was only a fraction of the discomfort I got from watching it, and I would not wish this feeling on anyone. I’ve sat through a lot of things like giant naked decomposing angel corpses and teenagers yanking it over their comatose friends (in the same movie, by the way), but this felt worse somehow. And that might even be a bit tolerably if I could tell what the crap was going on in the actual fight. However, between the random giant monster appearing and disappearing, and the sudden motorcycle chase, and the surprise ghost girlfriend twist, I cannot wait to put this behind me as one big fever dream.

Two more episodes of this?! TWO MORE?! Freaking rip my head off so that I might have something to divert my mind from the encroaching madness overtaking me.