English Dub Review: Deca Dence “Driveshaft”

Overview (Spoilers Below)

As Solid Quake continues its strategy of creating more battles with the Gadoll. This time, a group of Gadoll somehow breached into the Deca-Dence armor and attack the Tankers. Kaburagi (Under a different identity), Kurenai, Natsume, along with other fighters rush to their aid and manage to kill all the Gadoll. Later, Kaburagi questions one of the more secret people behind the scenes of Solid Quake’s bullshit named “Minato” who just admits that the frequent human deaths are just part of the game plan to reduce the expanding population of human Tankers which mildly angers Kaburagi but begrudgingly leaves since Minato is part of the reason he was spared and shoveling shit instead of facing execution.

Being the type who isn’t just going to let the Gadoll monsters have their gruesome way with her own people, Natsume tries to enlist the aid of the Tankers to repair Deca-dence. Although they are afraid of further Gadoll attacks, her persistence has a surprising outcome. And despite Kaburagi being in the body of a different avatar, he seeks out Natsume who understandably doesn’t recognize him in his false identity, but again she impresses him with her determination to achieve her goals. And despite the melodrama of the situation, The episode ends when Kaburagi makes a bold choice that he hopes will stop the endless cycle of human murder once and for all and the first step of this new goal is to ask his Prison Inmate Donatello for a favor…


Our Take

 From the emotional to the suspenseful, Natsume has truly grown and progressed as a character since the first episode and we’re seeing it in other ways as exemplified when she gathered everyone to try and help repair the wall and having the determination to enlist for help when most people would give up. At one point I was mildly annoyed when Fei dismissed Natsume’s pleas for help as my thoughts towards Fei were “Can you be any more goddamn selfish”?

The action was well-paced and had an excellent start with Natsume and the Gears fighting the Gadoll incursion. It gets progressively harder for the Solid Quake Corporation to just heartlessly think of this as a way to cull the expanding human population within Deca-Dence. You’d think they’d gain an outside perspective like Kaburagi did, but it can’t be sugar-coated that while death is a video game-like “do-over” to the players, it remains an unfortunate consequence for everyone else who knows nothing about the goings-on behind the scenes as many people lost their lives or suffered greatly.

With Kaburagi’s newfound motivation to help Natsume to some capacity despite his current situation, I’m curious to see how he’ll round out enough inmates to make his plan work and how it will help the other humans within Deca Dence but I’m both excited and curious to see him try.