DECA-DENCE – A New Dystopia

Production

I still think the actual animation of DECA-DENCE is just wonderful. Studio NUT only has four anime under its belt but I notice that all of them feature a lot of action and often aerial choreography. Now that’s an interesting niche for an animation studio and I dig it. I’m not sure how good of a business move it is to be so highly specialized but I do at least think studios should have departments with really granular specializations. In any case the action looks great.

The rest is going to be up to personal taste. There are two main art styles used throughout the series. This in itself is an unusual and in my opinion visually interesting ploy. Natsume and her side of the story are illustrated in a very traditional and somewhat realistic style while Kaburagi’s side uses more cartoonish images with a lot of rounded shapes and thicker linework with more vibrant but flat colours. The visual contrast is of course meant to separate the narrative and I think it works. Some people could get annoyed with it though.

In any case, it’s a well done anime that looks good in just about any episode. And the fact that it is trying to inject some storytelling into the production elements is appreciated!

Story & Characters

It’s no secret that I have a soft spot for main characters called Natsume. I also happen to have an affection for father daugther narratives and DECA-DENCE is a prime example of both. So already, I probably start by giving this series 5 extra points over the average viewer. So maybe keep that in mind when I say, I think this is a great anime that you should watch.

It’s a bit difficult to go into the story without giving away a few of the twists since one comes fairly early on. But I actually think the experience is better if you figure out what’s going on for yourself. Those of you who have been reading my blog for a while may be a bit surprised by this post. I usually am not that worried about spoilers. I will put in a disclaimer but otherwise, I generally think most good stories stand on their own and won’t be ruined by having a single surprise disclosed. In fact, I think that if a show is ruined just because you find out a twist, then it wasn’t that great a show. There has to be more to it than just one clever idea, you know?

And just to be clear, I don’t think DECA_DENCE would be ruined by spoilers either. But I do think the surprises it injects into the narrative actually serve to flesh out the themes and messages it’s going for rather than to simply be a cool thing for the audience. And as such, it works best as an integral part of the viewing experience.

In other words, the story is good but you have to take my word for it…

I will say this though. DECA-DENCE does explore two classic dystopian models and in Kaburagi’s case, it uses what can at first glance look like a mild subversion to essential rewrite and upend a lot of traditional views about human nature. When you think about it, it’s doing something that has very rarely been done before but dressed up in a familiar way. I was pretty impressed by that and it leads to a lot of interesting thought experiments I’m not going to tell you about!

From my viewing, the main theme that the series dealt with, other than a very touching exploration of father-daughter relationships both biological and found, is the conflict of risking a comfortable but deeply flawed status quo for a chance at something better that could also end up much worse. Both sides of this argument are touched on in both little and huge ways. The series clearly sides on the side of taking a chance at something more but there is an attempt at arguing for the uniformity and safety of the known.

To put it simply, DECA-DENCE is a classic dystopian science fiction anime with a very strong production. Like most titles in the genre, it has some pretty obvious plot holes, especially if you start to focus on the details a bit too much. There are also some grey motivations here and there. While I was watching it, I thought of the Matrix a whole lot. There are more than a few parallels to be drawn. And I also thought that the central concept of DECA-DENCE was way better than the using humans as batteries stuff. So you can make of that what you wish.

Personally, I enjoyed it a lot and I think a lot of sci fi fans would as well.

You might like this anime if:

You are a fan of old school science fiction or of wholesome father-daughter relationships.

I save all my screencaps on my Pinterest and you can find more there if you are interested. But I still like to show you a few in the post. If you’re like me, screencaps are something that really helps you decide to watch an anime or not.