Dead Account

Episode 9

I'm mired in the second part of this fight between classes, and I'm seeing the anime do all of the same half-assed tricks it did last episode. The fights are still bad. The dialogue is mindless shouting. I couldn't care about these flashbacks if I tried. Music's pretty good, though; I can dig how rich some of those strings sound. Everything should be stale by now, and yet as things become dumber and dumber with each passing episode, I'm left with so many new ways to marvel at Dead Account's ineptitude. It's bad news bears for me, but if you're a sadist who's curious to see how laughably terrible things get, then whelp, more power to ya.

All right, so after ripping off Super Mario 64 last episode, we're left with an important question: just what are we ripping off today? Well, dear reader, have you ever wondered what Kill la Kill would be like if it were boring? Because it looks like we're getting a big, big dose of exactly that! Kiyomi is forced to fight a flirty counterpart by the name of Kusaba, and the end of the fight has them ripping off their clothes (Kusaba even holds up a pair of scissors). Flashbacks that add nothing are inserted into the fight, because of course they would, and the punching between the two girls looks and sounds awful. No joke, the punching sound effects coming out of the game I made in RPG Maker back in the day were more convincing, and that game had MIDified renditions of AFI songs as battle music.

The fights don't pick up in the second half. They get even dumber, if you can believe it. In the middle of fighting Dei, yet another flashback shows Soji asking Azaki how to channel cyberkinesis without a phone. The thing is, this flash backs to events that happened right before the big brawl with Dei's class. Here's an idea: how about instead of shoving this in as a flashback now, you could have shown this in episode seven, right when everyone was training, and exactly when this scene took place. It would have been leagues better than showing us that montage of frozen stills. It would have been substance! Slap me sideways, huh? Wait! It gets even worse! Soji is taught that he can channel his cyberkinesis outwards and then back inwards, so he can unleash it elsewhere. The result is that now he goes from shooting fire from one arm to both of his arms! Wow, talk about a world of difference! And then just as Soji is about to lay the final blow on Dei, another flashback (sigh) shows us that Dei gets off on people hating him. Cuz he's a freak, and that's just how he rolls, I suppose.

I can't emphasize enough how much I just. Hate. These. Flashbacks. I hate their sepia, grainy tone. I hate how they have to constantly interrupt everything. And I h-a-t-e how they just flashback to moments that we should have seen played out when they occur. A fight between Kasubata and Minoru is interrupted by a flashback featuring something Henri did five minutes before the fight. And because it has that sepia tone to it, the flashback is colorized to look as if this could have happened five months ago. The show has such a mighty need to render moments in the past tense; it's infuriating. I'm just waiting for this show to end so I can put it in the past tense too, if you know what I mean.

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Dead Account is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.