English Dub Review: Deca Dence “Decadence”

Overview

It turns out that Jill’s solution is for Kaburagi’s mind to connect to the titular Deca Dence itself and succeeds in connecting with it in a valiant effort to take one final stand against the Kaiju-sized Gadoll threat, but finds that he is unable to move. To rectify this, Minato announces a final mission for the players to gather old parts of Deca-Dence while Kaburagi engages with the control system itself and when he asserts that he will change the world outside of it, the system does not resist…


Our Take

This finale pretty much goes to show that no matter what the odds, humanity won’t give in as Kaburagi and Natsume takes a stand against that monster Gadoll and by-extension the system that has both, directly and indirectly, made so many people’s lives miserable beyond measure. When you think about it, both the show’s title and episode’s title itself isn’t just a clever play on words, but has a dual meaning as the textbook definition of “Decadence” refers to a “moral or cultural decline as characterized by excessive indulgence in pleasure or luxury” and underneath the clever play on words, you kinda see that in terms of how the very system this “Solid Quake” company that’s put in place has made the lives of whatever humanity that’s still left on earth be reduced into a human zoo that heartlessly keeps putting them in constant life or death scenarios, while punishing its own cyborg citizens in strict & unforgiving ways.

I was also waiting through the whole series to see how the Humans and cyborgs would react once the truth was revealed as the notion that your entire existence was predetermined because a “higher life form” wanted some consequence-free fun was an interesting concept, but the ending didn’t really delve into that for the sake of a time skip. At the very least, it also excelled in terms of action scenes, suspense, and great character moments throughout even when it attempted to be ambitiously deep philosophical with its themes.

As a whole, this was a pretty decent 12 episode original anime that delivered in spades in terms of world-building, and the character’s motivations & experiences you see them gain overtime were complex and nuanced. It managed to be a simple straightforward story that didn’t trip over itself and that’s a huge accomplishment in anime these days. At the time of this review, there’s been rumored talks of a Season 2 which leaves me to wonder if this will go into “prequel” territory. It’d be interesting to see how they’d be any wiggle-room for a sequel at all considering the self-contained way this show ended. But whatever the case, I’d most certainly revisit this again at some point in the future.