It's all too easy to judge people with a black-and-white mindset. This person's good, that person's evil, the whole shebang. In actuality, people are a lot more complicated than that, and you can't really judge a person by their cover. One person could be cruel and antagonistic while also genuinely wanting those she loves to have happy lives; another could aim to get vengeance for those who have been wronged while also letting a crime happen for the sake of "evidence". There is a number of stories that make us think about morality in ways like this, but few of them are quite like Death Parade. Okay, the 2013 anime short "Death Billiards" would have counted....if it wasn't where Death Parade even came from, that is. Nearly a decade after I watched Death Billiards myself, as well as nearly a decade after Death Parade's premiere, I've finally watched Death Parade for myself and am ready to give my own judgment to it.

The premise of Death Parade is rather simple. When two people die at the same time, their souls are sent to one of many bars inside of a mysterious tower in the afterlife. The bartenders may serve them a drink or two, but their true purpose is that of an arbiter - those who judge whether a person is reincarnated or has their soul sent into the void. (They are told that they are sent to either Heaven or Hell to make things easier to understand, though.) They make their judgments by having the two patrons of the bar play a game; however, these games have cruel twists to them designed to bring out each person's inner darkness and help with the decision-making process. The series primarily takes place in one such bar, Quindecim, run by the stoic Decim, who works alongside a mysterious, black-haired woman....

In the first few episodes, Death Parade's story is rather formulaic. Two people arrive at Quindecim, Decim gives them the same spiel of how things work around there, a game is chosen, the two people play the game, we learn about who they are, and they get their judgments. There is nothing particularly wrong with the formula; in fact, it helps with the character studying that the series sets out to do. Not only that, but although very few of Quindecim's patrons are seen in more than one episode due to the nature of the series, most of them do make enough of an impact to keep them memorable. A couple of examples are the guests from episodes 8 and 9; their stories were both shocking and heartbreaking at the same time.

At the center of it all, however, are Decim and the mysterious, black-haired woman who serves as his assistant and who remains unnamed until very late into the series; to avoid spoilers, I won't call her by the name she is revealed to have. I will emphasize, however, how important her presence was to the overarching story. With the emotions she displays that Decim is not allowed to have as an arbiter, she often challenges Decim's way of judging people. This is essential to Decim's character development; although his role essentially remains the same from beginning to end, you can see at the very end that her presence did leave an impact on him. If it wasn't for this, Decim would be a rather boring character, with the supporting characters carrying the show all of the way through; that's why I feel like the black-haired woman's presence was important.

You know whose presence in the show I didn't feel was important, though? Mayu Arita. I mean, I didn't feel like many of the recurring characters made a huge impact on the overarching story, but I feel like Mayu was the worst offender of this. Her episode was the only one where a game was overlooked by a different arbiter, which was an interesting change of pace; after that, however, she ends up sticking around until near the end of the series, and it doesn't feel like there was a point to that. The kind of role she played after her episode seemed like it could make the arbiter who overlooked her game get a little bit of character development, but in the end, it felt like he remained largely the same. I wouldn't say that I hate Mayu as a character, but it does make me wonder why she stayed in the series longer than she should have. Her presence did warrant a random cameo from Light from "Death Note", though, which I was more amused by than I probably should have been.

Speaking of Death Note, the animation studio behind that series, Madhouse, is also the one behind Death Parade, and like with Death Note, they did well with the animation for Death Parade. I also liked the character designs for each of the characters, especially that of Decim; his mostly black-and-white color scheme matched his black-and-white way of thinking that he had for his judgments. As for the voice acting....well, due to my desire to legally watch this anime and Crunchyroll not having the Japanese version of this anime, for some reason, I was semi-forced to watch the English dub. I don't have a problem with this, however, as this is one of the better English-dubbed anime there are out there. Each of the character's voices fit their character, and their voice performances were really good, especially Alex Organ as Decim and Jamie Marchi as the black-haired woman.

As far as the music was concerned, the background music was very good and fit each scene pretty well. What I really want to talk about, however, are the opening and ending themes. Before watching Death Parade, I had listened to the opening theme, "Flyers" by Bradio, several times, and I was aware that it wasn't the best fit for the overall mood of the series. It doesn't matter that much, though, as it's a really catchy song that would make a good fit for dancing to at a dance party! However, I had never heard the ending theme, "Last Theater" by NoisyCell, before watching this, and I will admit that while I don't find the song as catchy, it does fit the overall mood better, especially with the mannequin-themed ending animation that accompanies the song for most of the episodes it is played in. You take some, you give some, I guess.

Overall, while Death Parade isn't perfect, I did think it was an excellent anime. If you want to watch an anime that will challenge your perspectives, I'd highly recommend it. While you're at it, you might also want to check out Death Billiards; I don't remember much about it since it's been too long since I've watched it, but I do remember liking that a lot, too!