Review: Gēmusetto: Death Beat(s) “Episode Five: Db6; Episode Six: D7#9”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Makasu and friends board a ferry across the River Tuoni to their next destination, captained by Tuonen Tytti, a short robed girl with antlers and a breast jutting out of her forehead (that is censored by mosaic, so don’t worry, FCC). Josie starts taking a liking to her, mostly because of the forehead boob, though Dr. Legs is suspicious of how easily they were let on, but first she must teach Makasu common courtesy in dealing with others. Soon, Makasu makes a new friend, only that friend turns out to be former serial killer. Whoops. And the ferry ends up crashing into an iceberg in Adlivun, the Inuit Underworld. Double whoops. And they have to fight Yama, Hindu god of death, and his harpsichord whale. Triple whoops. But Makasu and Josie team up to kill Yama, though it turns out that Captain Tytti was actually planning on capturing Makasu for herself. Dr. Legs convinces her of the importance of their mission and she instead decides to help them out.

OUR TAKE

Well, if there’s anything authentic to anime this show gets right, it’s having strangely androgynous character designs that surprise you with their actual gender. Captain Tytti seemed like she was going to be the main villain of the season, mainly based on how her outfit looks kinda like a villain outfit and how she seemed to be fighting everyone in the intro. And I mean, I was KINDA right! It’s just that she turns out to be one of those villains who gets turned over to the good guy side immediately after showing up. Also, side note, I kinda miss how each episode got its own special intro that gave little hints about what would happen and acted as parodies of different types of anime openings. The one they seem to be using for this whole season isn’t…BAD? But it is a little hard to follow. I guess it’s one of the many ways they were forced to rein things in with this season, much like the lower runtime. I’m not sure how I feel about all of these changes just yet and we’re only halfway through the season, but I’ll make a mental note to discuss that as things progress further.

Though one thing I think I can comment on is how the “fights” in this season differ from the tennis matches of the last one. Having the duels between Inca deities be about tennis felt like this perfect storm of anime bullshit nonsense, accompanied by questionable research about the deities and tennis terminology. Now that the battles have switched to just ambiguous and abstract battles between music themed fighting pets, it almost feels a bit TOO weird for its own good, ya know? Like yeah, it’s kinda Pokemon-y and the gods fighting with monsters is kinda dumb but it’s…on purpose dumb? I get the parodies of how drawn out and over-planned anime fights can be, but the joke doesn’t land as much as having it be tennis, which is just mundane enough to offset the weirdness of fighting Inca gods. Though that’s not to say that I’m not still having a good time with the show, just that it seems to be forcing itself to contort into box when before it felt like it was too strange for one. Either way, I’m looking forward to seeing where the second half takes us when we return to the show in two weeks.