Dead Account

Episode 12

I had a more epic review in my head before watching this. Because, see, this show is a trash fire, and I expected it to end that way. My inner sado-masochist wanted a hot episode, flaming garbage, something that would become a towering inferno and engulf everything in smoke and fire. A wyvern, an atrocity exhibition, a refuse of mastodonian proportions. This season finale of Dead Account doesn't even have the grace to do that. Going out with not a bang but a whimper leaves us with something that's just plain ol' mediocre.

This fight with Ban Ashina is still boring. Why is it taking so long to defeat this pezzonovante? He's still just standing there and barely puts up a fight. The fact that Soji's team (and now Dai's as well, since being defeated has them teaming up with Soji's to defeat the greater evil) has to struggle a little and strategize their attacks is baffling. How could anybody not strike this guy through the chest and fight for maybe five minutes, tops? Are you telling me they can only hit Ban Ashina's wing? It's only when Hiyori comes out of hiding and controls the giant ice statue that Ban made to please himself that Soji can finally lunge from left field and kick this Ban Ashina guy right in the face. It begs the question: why didn't anybody bring giant statues to the fight for Hiyori to control so they could smash every little corner of the battlefield, and also the rival classmates? It'd be the ultimate checkmate.

I hate the tone of this episode. Because even though these guys struggled in battle for episode upon episode upon episode, there's no glorious afterglow once Soji's team finally achieves victory. No neat directional cues, the art style isn't upped, and the party that occurs at the end of the episode sucks. If you're going to drag the audience into watching such an overdrawn battle, at least reward us with something. Make the audience feel good about our heroes' victory, so the audience can feel good as well. It's also the end of your arc. Mirror the beginning of the arc so you can show how much change everyone's gone through. It'd make the audience feel like they went on one heck of a ride. Nope. Dai's class calls a truce, and they go hot tubbing with Soji's class to do awkward hot spring comedy that just doesn't work. It's lame, boring, and tonally speaking feels like something you could have placed in the middle of the cour if you arranged the plot points around. They also remind me of the hot spring scenes that concluded Demon Lord, Retry!'s first season, which, sad to say, might be a better show here.

For one final cliffhanger, we get a quick scene of Sad Boy K in hiding, watching everybody from a distance. Now it's revealed that Sad Boy K is trying to create a new nation of ghost accounts, somehow? Okay. But he's so incompetent that it's hard for me to take this seriously. For being the show's main villain, he has little to no presence, and even though we're told he's powerful, most of what we've seen him do begs to differ. He fights a dude in the Best Buy, and then the moment things get rough, he disappears into some internet void and stays there. When he's scheming things at the end here, he has the aura of a lame Saturday morning cartoon villain. I almost expected him to say, “I'll get you, Gadget. Next time.” Assuming there will be a next time for this anime.

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Dead Account is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.