It's rare that an anime makes such an impact on me, and for that reason, this anime is one of my favorites. I lovelovelovelove Dead Dead Demon's and I really think more people should give it a watch. Now that it's finished, I can finally give it my full review. Get ready for a full yap session lol.

I think one of the main reasons this story has such of an impact on me is because it reminds me of how my friends and I are. We're the same age as the main characters and have a pretty similar friend group. I see a lot of resemblance and I feel this anime teaches to really value the time you have with people who are important to you. That even the smallest moments with these people can be important, good memories. It shows that time is limited, so you have to treasure it while you have it.

While this is a sci-fi anime, Inio Asano takes a realistic approach to the world and characters, as he often does in his stories. While this one isn't as dark as Goodnight Punpun or Girl on the Shore it's certainly memorable. For this story shows the daily lives of realistic people during an apocalypse, all of them being aware of their impending doom. These characters aren't special, there's nothing that really differentiates them from the average person and that's what makes them stand out so much to me. They feel real.

Oran and Kadode Progression

Okay I'm going to start off with my two favorite characters and the main characters of this series, Oran and Kadode. They originally stuck out to me the most because they really reminded me of my best friend and I. Throughout the story, Oran and Kadode are young adults, ending high school and going to college. They have to deal with high school issues, ones that people actually deal with rather than some silly scenario for the sake of the story that a lot of school animes have. We see Oran and Kadode not do well on tests sometimes, laughing about it together, we see them figuring out their college situation (I can REALLY relate to that) and then we see them go off to college. Now this isn't about their character or anything, but it's nice to see their progression throughout the story and how it's written in a realistic way.

Oran

As for their characters, I'm going to start with Oran. Oran appears energetic and very friendly on the outside. She's likable and silly, that's why she's my favorite character. But we see WHY she's that way rather than her just being that way. A backstory that isn't the easy to digest is shown, one that shows that she was originally quiet and timid before a traumatic thing happened (I'm trying not to spoil anything, at least for now) and now she acts super friendly and all to cover up her real emotions, almost as a way to keep everything together, whether that be herself or her friendships. Sometimes she's not able to keep up this persona, such as when one of her friends died. She tries to appear as if she doesn't know, that she's happy and just hang out with her friends, but she's not able to hold her feelings in and eventually bursts. There's a lot more to her character, but I think it's best to just watch. She really was written well.

Kadode

Kadode is a hard character to fully talk about without spoiling anything, but I'll try my best. Kadode grew up isolated for the most part, it's really until she becomes friends with Oran that she begins to lighten up. It's almost as if she finds her purpose in a way. Now she finds another purpose that she doesn't handle well and that ends in tragedy. But when her friendship with Oran really begins to bloom, she's happier and ends up making a lot of friends. She's more of the thinking one between the two, to keep Oran grounded, and the two match really well because of that. Another thing that stood out to me about Kadode is how she handles mistakes like a lot of people would. She ends up trying to do something right to help people, and that turns out blowing up in her face. And unlike many other anime characters, she doesn't take this well, she doesn't fix anything, and the whole situation ends terribly. Sad, but realistic. It led to a very memorable moment in the anime that I am trying so hard not to spoil.

Kadode and Oran's Friendship

Another one of the focuses of the story is Kadode and Oran's friendship and how meaningful it is. The two love each other, they're like family to one another. The time they spend together is relatively normal of a friendship, yet it's something to be treasured, especially since the anime makes such an emphasis that there is a time limit on everything. The two do have their conflicts, but the end of everything, they treasure their time together, they love each other. The anime really does a fantastic job at showing their emotional bond, especially by the ending. I cried Lol.

Other Characters

I LOVE KEITA, his relationship with Oran is so sweet. The way he cares for her and wants to protect her, and she feels the same about him is so sweet.

I really liked Futaba's moral struggles, where she was debating whether or not to help protect the aliens.

Kenichi is a psycho but I like how the anime showed some of his reasoning for how he turned out the way he did.

I liked how Makoto's gender and everything was depicted.

Hiroshi is a great older brother, I really liked him too so I had to mention him lol.

All the other characters were done really well too, they were shown as characters in Oran and Kadode's daily lives, and I feel like the anime shows as much of them as people as you'd learn from interacting with these people. The story doesn't just show Kadode's and Oran's perspective to everything, it shows many of the different characters' perspectives and what they're going through, which really helps give a feel for the characters and the world.

Story

From a first glance, the story doesn't seem too complicated. Average people living in an apocalypse and just trying to go about life. Yet the story shows their internal struggles and how the apocalypse impacts them mentally. While it's slow, the story does get rather complicated and has a few twists. If you think the first few episodes are boring, I highly recommend to keep watching, it gets really good. Politics are also a major focus of this anime that showed how a government would probably handle a situation like this, so I like how the anime showed that aspect of everything. The story is emotional and I think that's what it does best. It has moral dilemmas, sad moments and interesting characters. When there was action scenes, they were really tense, as the story spent so much time developing these characters and now everything is on the line. I loved it. I would write more on the story, but I feel I already decently covered it in the other sections.

However, I could definitely see how this sort of story may not be for everyone. It can be very calm and slow at times and it takes a while to get to the more dramatic/chaotic moments. This isn't an action anime and focuses on the characters and the issues in the world around them more than anything. This wouldn't be an anime my sister would like for example.

As for the ending of the story, this contains spoilers. I'm not the biggest fan of when time is reset in order to fix things, but I don't really believe that was the case here. The world in which everything happened and so many amazing characters died still exists, and that version of events, everything we saw is gone. The dad traveling to a new timeline doesn't change anything of that, because now we have characters that haven't gone through what we saw, they're not the same people. I think a good example of this is when timelines were first swapped by Oran. So I'd say the ending was well-done and bittersweet.

Animation and Sound

The animation really surprised me, it looked absolutely fantastic. I was a bit worried about how the spaceship and the giant hand scenes would turn out looking, but they ended up looking really good! The backgrounds are pretty, the animation has a smooth flow to it and I really just think all the scenes were done well. I was really impressed.

Same with the sound, I think it was great. The opening and ending songs were catchy as well.

Confusing Stuff

I don't understand why this anime wasn't prompted more. It's so good and yet I saw barely any people talking about it aside from on here. It's really good and yet Crunchyroll barely showed it off, you can't watch the opening or endings online, there's practically nothing of it on YouTube. So I'd assume this anime didn't do too well since it seems not many people knew about it. Maybe it was well-known in Japan, I don't know. But it's disappointing so few people knew of it.

The releases were confusing too. Two different movies, an episode 0, and then 17 episodes. Certainly confusing. If you're going to watch, I'd watch up to episode 16, episode 0 as episode 17, and then the last episode as episode 18. Confusing, I don't know why they did this.

Now I do like how this anime wasn't just given 12 episodes it was given the amount of episodes it needed in order to properly tell the story. I wish more anime would do this, it makes things so much better.

End of the Yapping

I would absolutely recommend watching this, at least if you have the patience for it because it is rather slow but it's certainly worth it. It feels genuinely emotional and that's what is so great about it.

Now I can only wish that Goodnight Punpun would get an anime Lol.