Roll Over and Die

Episode 4

The first half of this episode is, frankly, a disaster. Messy plotting turns it into a loose concatenation of scenes in which things happen to Flum and Sara with scant explicability. This is also apparent in the environmental design, as no two parts of this top secret lab look like they belong to the same facility. The spooky cave, sci-fi vats filled with green goo, corpse disposal pit, and sterile white room have no connective tissue. Moreover, this is a bizarre shortcoming for me to notice. I rarely think to bring up the cohesiveness of the setting in these reviews, so that is all the more proof that this looks wrong.

Certainly, an anime could utilize disparate aesthetic textures towards an unsettling effect, and I would guess that Roll Over and Die's adaptation attempts to do that here. It wants the audience to look at that big, blank room and ask, “what's going on here?” Instead, I was asking, “did they have time to finish rendering the background?” This anime just doesn't have the juice (or sophistication) to pull off a big swing like that, and it's worsened by other laughable aspects. When the narrator cuts in to describe the vortex on the girl's face, i.e. a thing the audience can observe for themselves at that very moment, I had to laugh. That's a special kind of incompetence—telling while showing—yet it is one-upped immediately by the ogre sliding out from behind a too-small pillar like a cartoon gag. I expect to see that in a Newgrounds Flash animation, not a professional and televised product.

I'm not angry, though. These are fun shortcomings for the most part. This underground detour initially kills the narrative's momentum, so I'm happy the show gives me other details to focus on. But it does make me wonder about the intended tone. While I won't begrudge Roll Over and Die for playing around with the abandoned lab trope, I will consider the missed opportunities. For example, take the gore/body horror angle. The sequence with the faceless woman sucking Flum's hand into her spiral could have been legitimately tense with a more patient and grounded approach. Likewise, using a pile of decaying bodies to break their fall could have been a macabre spectacle of flesh and rot, but the adaptation edits it like a slapstick bit. However, when Flum pitches the line “I can't ask a nun to rob corpses” straight down the middle of the plate, I have to conclude that some of the goofiness is intentional.

Regardless, the second half of the episode picks up the pace and pulls the narrative back into compelling territory. I like that Flum's memories of her old comrades come to her aid when she needs them. It's a convenient narrative device, but it also adds appreciated dimensions to the “kicked out of the party” story structure. As betrayed as Flum feels, she can't forget the bonds she forged with these people over the course of their journey. Even her old foe lends her a hand. While Flum might want an unambiguous demarcation between her past and present adventures, her life is continuous. She is the accumulation of all her experiences, good and bad, helpful and hurtful.

It's also great that her invocation of Milkit gives Flum the strength to finally fell the cursed ogre. I have not forgotten that I was promised yuri, and this is a step back in the sapphic direction. Note, too, how the full localized subtitle specifies that Flum fights with her love. Her affection for her partner pushes her power into overdrive. I just hope Milkit herself becomes more of a presence, because she is in desperate need of an arc. Elsewhere, I could not have been more stoked to see the series ship Sara with Neigass so quickly and so blatantly. A nun and a demon. Enemies to lovers. A tall lady and a short lady. All good yuri stories need a secondary pairing that is not-so-secretly more compelling than the main couple, and Sara and Neigass may have what it takes to fill those shoes.

On the subject of demons, I must retract my speculation from last week. Neigass, at the very least, does not appear to be in cahoots with the Church, and the episode forces us to conclude that the demons may in fact be the good guys here. They're the ones with the code that stops them from killing humans. Meanwhile, the Church has accumulated at least one entire pit's worth of bodies in pursuit of a ritual that, when successful, turns the person/creature into an eldritch monstrosity who explicitly wants to kill Flum for some reason. I know who I'd rather have on my side, and I'm sure Flum is inclined to agree.

In the end, the episode balances itself sufficiently. Intentionally or not, it injects its boring bits with comedy, and the stagnant first half gives way to a second half with narrative and character momentum (alongside a blushing demon girl). Perhaps that is the fundamental duality of the Roll Over and Die anime—never entirely good, and never entirely bad. I can live with that as long as the girls don't stop exchanging furtive glances.

Rating:

Roll Over and Die is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.

Sylvia is on Bluesky for all of your posting needs. You are not allowed to ask her to roll over. You can also catch her chatting about trash and treasure alike on This Week in Anime.