English Dub Review: Darwin’s Game; “Ignition”

 

 

Overview (Spoilers Below)

Thrust into the treasure hunt event, Kaname wastes no time securing his objectives, as well as finding a new foe. 

Our Take

For the first big event in this death game, this treasure hunt is fairly compelling on paper. Having a big group of players fight for a limited number of items is standard, but there are a few twists in the execution. 

All of the vital information for this event is relayed through an AR camera on the game app, which displays the simple ring items as jeweled bracelets, and the modern Tokyo environs re-envisioned as a ruined city. These touches in the smaller details add a little more flavor to the atmosphere of opulent despair of this game. 

Moreover, through the camera, you cannot see the specific locations of players, but rather the specific locations of the rings. In theory, these would allow for a wide variety of mix up strategies in the game, adding tension to the encounters. 

However, at least in this first episode of the arc, a lot of that potential goes underutilized. 

Kaname fortuitously finds a valuable ring right off the bat in the room that he starts in. But his luck immediately turns as a man in juggernaut armor with an LMG appears to ruin his day. The confrontation is your typical game of cat-and-mouse until Kaname is cornered by the juggernaut. He immediately hands over his ring in exchange for his life, and just when the juggernaut is going to shoot him anyways his gun jams, and Kaname gains the upper hand. 

It isn’t really the upper hand, though, as a pistol wouldn’t do too much damage against the juggernaut armor, and the man within the armor realizes this. Still, this would be Kaname’s opening to try to think of a way out of his predicament like he has done before. Instead, his fear completely consumes him and the juggernaut takes pity on him and lets him go. A lot of time was spent beforehand showing Kaname bolstering his resolve to fight in this death game, and just in this one moment, it all crumbles. It’s not technically a bad thing since Kaname can’t truly be blamed for being afraid of this man, but at the same time, it feels like we’re back to square one with Kaname’s confidence. 

But here to return some of that confidence is Rein, who was the analyst we saw skulking in her room up until now. They waste no time introducing her as the cliche anime little girl genius but don’t give her too many other character details. In addition to helping Kaname out in this event, she’s here to lay some hard facts on him; this is a life or death game and running away is always a valid option. You can’t be afraid of being interpreted as a coward if cowardice is how you live to see another day. Kaname also remembers that this game is full of psychopaths like Shuka who enjoy killing people, so he feels even less guilty about it. I don’t know why he forgot that gravity of that detail. I hope him constantly forgetting and needing to be reminded of his situation isn’t a recurring theme. 

Up until now, Kaname’s exits out of the tower were blocked by unnatural, enormous, overgrown tree branches. He and Rein also discover that most of the people in the tower were killed by these murderous plants. Rein puts two and four together and realizes that these plants are somebody’s Sigil, belonging to a man known as “The Florist”. When they both also realize that the people who were killed haven’t been teleported yet, they find them reanimated by the tree branches in the thrall of The Florist and are attacked by them. The Florist might be the least-threatening villain name ever, but he packs a deadly punch.

Being able to control massive plants like this, let alone using them to animate corpses to do your bidding, is by far the most elemental and sinister Sigil power we’ve seen yet. All of the powers up until now were very specific and required careful and creative implementation to be effective in battle. Just when it seemed like these were going to be subtle, tricky, cerebral abilities, here comes a man who can just turn everything into trees. I guess we can expect other people wielding more primordial powers like this in the future. 

What’s also weird is how angry Kaname gets with The Florist. What specifically triggers him is the fact that The Florist is using his powers to have others fight in his stead, while he sits back in the comfort of his monitor room. I can understand frustration or despair, but outright anger and derision? This seems to have struck an oddly philosophical nerve with Kaname. Maybe he has a past of him or a friend being used and abused against their will? It just seems like a strange thing to be upset with out of the blue. 

But if just that upsets Kaname, he’ll probably be fuming mad when he finds out that Darwin’s Game is also a spectator sport. We see an affluent audience watching the event unfold on screens during a party. This is a tried-and-tired cliche in the death game genre: obscenely rich people setting up these games for their own amusement and profit. The subsequent cliche is that all of the players band together to find a way to stop the dastardly organizers of the game. The manager of this event even seems to hint towards the possibility of this sort of thing happening. She comments on how, deep down, people love to look down on others, an ideology that runs counter to Kaname’s. Perhaps this is why Kaname’s ire was highlighted, and where it is destined to be directed.

One more little note: before Kaname left the elevator with the juggernaut man, he touched his LMG with his hand, which activated his sigil. This seems like a soft confirmation that he has to touch an item in order to materialize it out of thin air. This will undoubtedly be an important detail going forward. 

This wasn’t a particularly action-packed first episode of a big battle arc, which is a bit of a shame. There was a lot of effort put into developing Kaname’s character, even if some of it involved a couple of steps backward in the process. More set-up will hopefully beget a more potent story.