Dead Account

Episode 10

I rewatched Once Upon A Time In America last night, and wow, what a movie. Everything you heard about it is true. It's an opus of a swan song for Sergio Leone, and he absolutely made the right move spending over a decade to make this film instead of doing The Godfather just four years shy of Once Upon A Time In The West. The casting is perfect, the cinematography is breathtaking, Ennio Morricone's score has the man at his best, and Leone does an impeccable job detailing the elegant, decadent, and violent chapter of a past long buried by the sands of time. Here's the best part: Once Upon A Time In America is made up of mostly flashbacks taking place during Prohibition, and they're sequenced amazingly. Everything feels so flowing, so natural, and it's done in a way that never once interrupts the movie's portrayal of the late 1960's. Imagine that! Having flashbacks that work! You know, the very thing that Dead Account just cannot do?

So...Welcome. Back. My. Friends. To. The. Fight. Scene. That. Never. Seems. To. Freakin'. End. And because nobody asked for it, here we are with another round of unnecessary flashbacks. It's filler of the most vulgar degree, taking up a good 75% of the first half of the episode, all to hide the fact that the few minutes of fighting in between are so lame and paltry in their delivery. We continue delving into Kasubata's and Henri's past, living their life as street thugs, and Azaki comes into the frame as an exorcist, only to be forced into the recurring joke of busty women teaming up on him.

And now, ladies and germs, it's now time to play everybody's favorite game of “Who Has A Relative Randomly Killed Off-Screen Today?” And guess what?! It's none other than good ol' Kasubata! Apparently, he once threw a tantrum at a restaurant that went so viral that his mom saw it and died of cringe. Damn, and I thought my Liz and the Blue Bird video on my dead YouTube channel was bad. But never mind that. The point is that the death of his mother is the reason why Kasubata hates flamebaiters, because for a moment, he was one. I guess I'm spoiling things here, but honestly, are you surprised that Dead Account would continue pulling this “dead relative” card on us? Lazy writing like this has always been in the cards for Dead Account, and now it seems like its story is being made up as it goes along. Again, this show had the perfect opportunity right before the big brawl to better develop these characters' personalities, but they threw it all away in favor of a montage of frozen images.

The one bit of good news here is that the fight between Dei and Soji concludes, and has Dei whimper in defeat while Soji threatens to murder him if he becomes even more of an asshole. But the fight is STILL NOT OVER (groan) because Soji has a few more baddies to whack. Specifically, there's the narcissistic selfie-taker from a few episodes ago, whose icy cyberkinesis originates from online mods constantly freezing his account due to taking too many lewd photos. I guess “fuck ICE” also applies to this guy, apparently.

Soji's fight against this icy jabronie is as still as ever. Of course it is. Making it stiller is that this guy was the supposed ghost account detected in an earlier episode. Meaning that he does what Sad Boy K did best: stand around and become such an obvious, non-moving target to your opponent, that somehow he still can't just manage an immediate KO on you. It's just another way to pad out the fight, because remember, we still have another two episodes left to fill 'er up. The show must go on somehow. To my absolute chagrin.

Rating:

---

Dead Account is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.