YMMV / Death Parade

• Abandon Shipping: This has rapidly happened to Ginti and Mayu shippers after he sends her and Harada to the Void in episode 11.
• Alternative Character Interpretation: This is a major theme of the show. After every judgment, the viewers are left judging the characters themselves and wondering if the players truly deserved their fates or not. It seems the only players who are safe from this trope are the ones from episode 3, and Chiyuki herself.
  • In the very first episode. Is Machiko a conniving, manipulative Gold Digger who coldly cheated on her husband and used him for his money? Was she impregnated by another man? Or does she put up a facade because she can't stand to see him so distraught over the fact that he inadvertently caused the death of the unborn baby he wanted so badly to protect, and wants him to rest peacefully? Turns out it was probably the last one. Unfortunately, the guy supervising her case wasn't a very good judge of character.
  • Episode 4 with Misaki. People seem to be torn between viewing her as an Asshole Victim who deserves to go to the Void or a Jerkass Woobie who should have been reincarnated. Further, whether she truly loves her children or is just putting them to good use has been debated; while her last wish is to be sent back to see them again, she does call them "utterly weak" when they are of no help to her in the game. However even that has an alternate meaning, considering one of her flashbacks shows her hanging around in a arcade. The children are utterly weak for a super attack.
  • Whether Mayu is a shallow fangirl who's perfectly willing to toss some random guy into the void despite knowing how terrible it is down there, or whether she's a sympathetic portrayal of someone who devoted her life to something regardless of how shallow she seems, and then embraces those feelings and accepts herself, yet remorsefully casts that man into the void to save her beloved.
  • Ginti gets the most of this due to being a recurring character. Does he do Mayu a service by casting both her and Harada into the void together and (seemingly) allowing their souls to merge so that they'd never be alone? And if that's the case, does he do it knowing that would happen? Or is he just a Jerk with a Heart of Jerk through and through, manipulating her and then mocking her perceived weakness, and deceiving her by lying that she can replace Harada's soul with some stranger's if she pushes the red button... only to send her into the void anyway, which is a place of eternal suffering? Or did he do it out of desperation, not knowing how to handle not being able to judge as easily as before and took a rushed decision to bring the darkness from her and at the end, despite what happened he keeps the memory of her in one of his dolls as possibly shown in the ending much as Decim keeps his puppets.
• Angst Aversion: Some people avoid this show because its very premise is depressing. Plenty of Japanese fans over on 2ch report dropping it after the first episode over just how depressing it was.
• Applicability:
  • Given that Yuzuru Tachikawa's other original work, Deca-Dence, was pointedly critical of oppressive systems and exploitative labor, some viewers started finding connective tissue between these two shows. Many theorized that the rigid demands and the overworked Celestial Bureaucracy in this show were meant to be a reflection of Japanese work environments, particularly in the animation industry, with characters lamenting that they cannot produce their best work at the stressful pace they're forced to labor under.
  • Many viewers have pointed out the show's overlap with the justice system as a whole, including how it punishes disadvantaged people more harshly, such as victims of Domestic Abuse or stalking. This is further reinforced in episodes 8 and 9, which feature a Knight Templar Dirty Cop taking advantage of a broken system to justify his acts of murder.
• Awesome Music:
  • The infectious, toe-tappingly catchy OP, "Flyers."
  • The Leitmotif moonlit night, which we hear bits and pieces of throughout the series, finally plays in full during a figure staking sequence in episode 11, and it's hauntingly beautiful.
• Crosses the Line Twice: For a minority of viewers, the slapstick comedy and Played for Laughs Ignore the Fanservice moments were a touch too overboard for an episode that involved the Accidental Suicide of a teenage girl dying by slipping on soap in the shower and hitting her head. For most viewers, it was hilarious.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Mayu, for being an absolute barrel of laughs and a complete joy to watch despite only having focus in one episode other than her judgment one.
  • Also Clavis, for his adorkable demeanor and innocent personality. He gets even less focus than Mayu, but it's adored nonetheless.
• Fandom-Specific Plot:
  • This is an incredibly popular series for the Crossover fic. Two characters from one or more series will be picked to be guests at the Quindecim. Expect plenty of Angst and Hurt/Comfort.
  • Alternate universes where Decim becomes human (or always has been) are also very popular.
  • There are a handful of fanfics that include Decim working with a new assistant after Chiyuki leaves, while retaining all of his character development.
  • It's not as popular as Decim becoming human, but many fanfics explore the black-haired woman becoming a full-fledged arbiter as well.
• Friendly Fandoms:
  • With Psycho-Pass, especially on Tumblr and Twitter. Both are fairly dark shows that deal with human psychology, have a male/female protagonist combo that complement one another well, and attractive male characters in suits. Death Parade started airing shortly after the second season of Psycho Pass ended, so it seems a lot of fans of the latter moved on to watch it.
  • With Mushi Shi, because Decim bares an uncanny resemblance to the main character from that series, Ginko, and the shows are both very atmospheric and have a character of the week narrative.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: Death Parade sold poorly in Japan and scored low in niconico's polls. However, outside Japan, it's received considerably more love, often being rated as among the best of the season.
• Jerkass Woobie: Misaki from episode 4, while definitely a rather unpleasant person, to the point that her agent snapped and killed her after what's been implied to have been a pattern of using her as a punching bag also clearly had a life that sucked. She's had 5 children by 3 different men, all of whom were abusive, and her life has only just begun turning around by the time of her death. What's more, while it's implied she's been neglectful to them as a result of pursuing her entertainment career her distress upon realizing she'll never see them again appears genuine.
• Launcher of a Thousand Ships: Decim gets paired with his assistant, Nona, Ginti, Quin, and even Clavis, as well as some fanmade guests in fanfics.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • Only days after its release and a handful of artists began taking poses from the opening theme and recreating them with characters from other shows. Even the band members themselves recreated the OP.
  • Decim's resemblance to Mushi Shi's Ginko has caused this, leading to jokes and references about the characters swapping roles or meeting in Quindecim.
• Narm: Some viewers believed some of Takashi's expressions in some rather tense moments from the first episode to be too hard to take seriously, namely the slow-motion crying, due to his hand motions.
• Stoic Woobie: Decim. It becomes increasingly apparent that he's struggling with the things he *should* do as an arbiter and the things he *wants* to do as an individual. His feelings for his assistant and his desire to understand humans better help to develop his character, but they also cause him a lot of pain and confusion, even though he doesn't know how to express it.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • Clavis and Castra are recurring characters but they contribute little to the plot and very little is known about them.
  • Oculus is the closest thing the antagonist has to a series and the closest thing to 'god'. However, he almost exclusively interacts with Nona only and doesn't take action until episode 10. Ultimately, despite his debate with Nona about the Arbiter system, he does nothing to Nona or Decim and the series ends with simply him keeping a closer eye on Nona and implementing a fourth rule to prevent the living from cooperating with judgements.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • While the implication of one being compared to heaven and the other to hell was always there, the ambiguity of what reincarnation and the void actually entail was a large part of "Death Billiards"'s intrigue. On top of no characters commenting exactly on what either judgment means, most of the people being judged are often very grey. Is the void true nonexistence, or just infinitely boring? Does Death Parade subscribe to Buddhism and argue that reincarnation is the choice that's closer to punishment? Or is neither really "good" or "bad", but just different? This all gets torpedoed in episode 11, where Ginti states that the void is a permanent state of falling into an abyss where you feel all your negative emotions at once. So it's definitely the "hell" option. That said, he could've been lying in order to push Mayu into a choice.
  • The Arbiter system and Nona's attempts to reform it get a lot of focus throughout the series. However, even when Oculus discovers what Nona is up to, nothing really comes of it. Aside from Decim's growth, the system remains largely the same with only the implication that Nona intends to keep trying.
  • There are a lot of details about the setting that are set up and ultimately unanswered. This ranges from the fact god hasn't been involved in things for a long time to questions of who set up the Arbiter system in the first place.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: Some viewers have a hard time sympathizing with Decim at the end of the series because of just how poorly he treated his assistant from the very start of the show and believe he was too Easily Forgiven for his mistakes, including manipulating her, functionally having her identity stolen without her consent, and emotionally torturing her with a fake illusion of her grieving mother, then lying to her about giving her the chance to be brought back to life. Considering she’s suddenly wearing a different outfit in the finale, it’s also implied that he stripped her at some point to enforce the illusion.
• Unreliable Narrator: Ginty may be this, when describing the void to Mayu. While we're given no reason to question what he says, there's no real reason to believe him, either; arbiters don't seem to really know anything beyond their own immediate situation and circumstances. Given the personality Ginty has displayed up to that point, it's entirely possible, even probable, he was just making the Void sound as awful as possible to see if he could get Mayu to abandon Harada. It's entirely possible he has no idea what either reincarnation or the void entails. It's interesting to note that, when, on the elevator to the Void, when Mayu and Harada's bodies revert to dummies and their souls compress to points of light, the points of light then circle each other and stay together.
  • To a greater extent, the whole arbitration establishment may be this, as none of them really have any good idea of why they're doing what they're doing.
• Visual Effects of Awesome: Chiyuki's figure skating scene.

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