Dead Account

Episode 8

I hate it when shows feel the need to insert flashbacks in the middle of big fights. It's such a cheap way to pad things out, and it gives off the illusion of depth without actually providing it. Not that any of the fights in this week's Dead Account are nailbiters, but the flashbacks just don't add anything. Nothing, nada, zip. I didn't need to know the one opponent was once some blogger who tried to give life advice to an audience he resented; he's a bad guy, just let him be a bad guy! I also didn't need Renri's origin story explained at this very moment. That could have been the plot thread of a good chunk of a slower, less action-packed episode, and probably a bit more effective if left in the right hands. But this is Dead Account we're talking about here, and buddy, there are no good options here.

Remember when I said in the last review that this battle played out like the worst game of Fortnite ever played? Now we're getting some bastardized Super Mario 64, too. Renri's cybernetic power allows him to teleport people to different parts of the map through photos he took on his phone. It's like jumping through the castle portraits to get to Bob-omb Battlefield. That is, if you replaced portraits with selfies, and cool platformer worlds with lame fights where characters taunt each other with stale insults. It's a weak excuse for the episode to divide the giant fight between classes into one-on-one melees that are supposed to provide dramatic character moments.

Kasubata has to fight the spectacled swordsman Minoru after the latter unsuccessfully tried to corner the former's class. It was here that I realized that Kasubata's mighty hammer weapon is called a “Banhammer,” because of course it would. It's an appropriate moniker for this type of show, but it's such an obvious one. Maybe I'm being too online for my own good here, but I cannot emphasize this enough: these are the types of jokes that an out-of-touch person who only just found out about Internet memes just last month would make. Soji is left to fight with Dei, and nothing interesting happens between the two of them.

The end of the episode reveals that Renri was raised in a strict exorcist household where he was forced to train and withstand torture, Killua Zoldyck-style. He also had a little brother, too, and guess what? He died. Oh, goodie, now we're saddled with TWO characters whose relatives are lazily killed off-screen, all in an attempt to force the audience into caring about them. Never mind that, though, because Renri later meets Kasubata, and after being a bit of a bad boy for a while as a means of coping, he decides to take photos and join the academy. Because Henri and Kasubata are not just friends, but they're F-A-M-I-L-Y. And the academy is family, too! Yep, everything Renri does here is through the power of the friends and family made along the way. He even gives a talk about “being a family” before he Super Mario 64's his classmates. Good to know that ripping off Fairy Tail has finally been checked off the list.

So the show rips off Fortnite, Super Mario 64, and Fairy Tail, at least in my mind. But wait! For one last dull surprise, how about we rip off Pokémon Go as well? Yep, we have an opponent exorcist whose cybernetic ability is summoning monsters he caught in a mobile game. Somewhere in the dark recesses of my mind, I can faintly hear the shout of “Pokémon Go to the polls.” And lemme tell ya something, folks, I'm simply not having it.

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Dead Account is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.