English Dub Review: Deca Dence “Steering”

Overview (Spoilers Below)

The dystopian world of Deca-Dence isn’t what it seems… Due to some bad environmental choices caused by humanity during the 25th Century, the world has consequently become a dystopian shit-hole which resulted humanity’s near-extinction with a large portion of humanity having survived by exchanging their real bodies for an artificial cyborg ones under the condition of them becoming company property, while whatever humanity is left and still on earth remain blissfully unaware that they’re under the thumb of a Mega Corporation called “Solid Quake” to the point that every human is literally chipped and treated as a proverbial cog in the machine by the Corporation themselves and the “habitat” they live within Eurasia, while still a polluted wasteland is infested with these weird-ass colorful monstrosities called the “Gadoll”, that’s also hinted to be a creation and the fights between Humanity and these creatures are secretly a manufactured and used as an MMORPG experience as entertainment for that very same cybernetic race of people who are owned by Solid Quake where they can secretly inhabit this world amongst them by using passable human-looking robot avatar bodies they can customize and level-up. Kaburagi a small-time cyborg who at one point was a top-tier leaderboard player of this very game and was part of a circle of friends. Despite never being directly involved with his friend’s personal choices to take short-cuts by cheating & breaking the rules to enhance their abilities within the game, He was unfairly punished by association to no longer be a Gear/Warrior and instead was reduced to the Tanker/maintenance job while also seeking out bugs/glitched people as “community service” of sorts to the company.

In an effort avoid repeating the same mistakes that screwed up their own planet to begin with, the remaining untouched humans are completely unaware that they’re part of the very same deadly game these robots play and see it as an everyday part of survival, While Solid Quake primarily treats them as both cannon fodder and NPC’s within the “gaming world” that they partake in. That is until Kaburagi (and by extension the audience) meets Natsume. An aspiring teenage girl with a serious Gung-Ho “fuck the haters” attitude who desires to be a Gear/Warrior even in the face of adversity and discouragement from her peers. However, unlike every other discouraging shit-stain who’s told Natsume “No”, Kaburagi sees something special in her. After researching Natsume’s supposed “death” in the online gaming records, Kaburagi discovers that the near-death experience she had as a child caused her chip to malfunction making her an overlooked “bug” or an anomaly.

Out of curiosity, Kaburagi decides to help Natsume achieve her dream by teaching her the bare basics of combating the Gadol and like most MMO games, you always start at the bottom against low-level enemies and this case they encounter a “spoonwormer” where Kaburagi shows her some of the more fascinating things about the Gadoll defense system and ways to counteract it. Of course, nobody is an expert overnight, and predictably Natsume has a sloppy start, but still aspires to be a great Tanker fighter like her hero, known as “Kurenai”, which only hardens her resolve to train more. Later on, Kaburagi then modifies Natsume’s mechanical hand to become a more effective weapon against the Gadoll. One day, while Kaburagi and Natsume are out training, the Deca-dence fortress once more comes to a grinding halt from a subterranean attack from a horde of Gadoll. And to add an bigger sense of urgency, The episode ends when Kaburagi’s secret Gadoll pet, named “Pipe” faces possible danger…




Our Take

After last week’s twist-heavy episode, this felt more down-to-earth with Natsume doing her best her learn how to fight against the Gadoll, and still remained compelling enough to further establish the world-building on the outside walls of the Deca-Dence. Luckily, instead of doing more info dumps and overloading us, we got a nice training episode with some Natsume and Kaburagi bonding. I’m glad Natsume now has a proper prosthetic upgrade for combat, that worm-like three fingers design left more to be desired. In terms of both the design & mechanics behind it, it’s are pretty damn clever and extremely practical. As for Natsume’s sloppy start, It can’t be sugar-coated that if you want something that badly you have to work your ass hard for the job when it requires the most skill & experience.

The more you think about it, the more it comes across as super fucked-up that Kaburagi knows the truth about the very world Natsume actually lives in yet has been just watching everything. And it’s crazy how all these people simply have no clue. Sure the “game” is fun for the paying customers, but the system has such an invisible stranglehold over them and seemingly doesn’t care about anyone’s lives. Cyborg, Gadoll, or regular human, misbehave and you’re done for. The company seems to be rather non-discriminatory in that regard which gives a legit sense of unease with their “bug-free” mantra that they frequently want everyone to just blindly follow. Maybe is fun for the cyborg people but not for the humans on the lower level that actually have to deal with the physical & psychological aspects of their species possibly dwindling and seeing family members or loved ones massacred right before their eyes by some grotesque creature because “It’s part of the game”.

As a whole, this episode was surprisingly deep and complex while having the proper balance of some much-needed levity such as a decent “flashback” scene involving Pipe, along with the fun student/mentor slice-of-life moments. I’d love to see what direction this show takes next!