‘You are here to play a game on which your life depends’
The Moral Dilemmas and Life-and-Death Decision Making in Death Parade
Tags: #DeathParade #Anime #Reincarnation #DeathGames #Quindecim
It is neither easy nor necessarily straightforward to make morally right choices. Ethical decision making in real life is influenced by a wealth of factors including personal values and beliefs, cultural norms, and situational context. Determining the most ethical course of action is thus complex and necessitates a nuanced understanding of human behaviour and emotions. In Death Parade (Madhouse 2013), these contextual factors are taken away to have an alleged neutral entity judge the newly-dead. Arbiters, dummies that are neither dead nor alive, decide whether human souls are reincarnated or sent to a neverending void. Their lack of emotions disables them to empathise and sympathise with their subjects.
As the series begins, Decim, the resident arbiter of Quindecim, one of the afterlife bars, has his visitors randomly choose a game, often with odd, magical twists, to aid in the judging of their souls. These games, and the misunderstanding that only one of them can be saved, pushes the visitors into extreme reactions, often at the expense of another. Decim tells his assistant, a woman with no memories and a mysterious past, that arbiters need to resort to such extreme measures to judge ‘the soul’s true darkness’. Throughout the series, many of the characters question whether this is true and if the visitors can be judged on how they react in these life-and-death scenarios.
Unbeknownst to Decim, he was given human emotions in an experiment to challenge the conventional ways judgements have been made in the afterlife. By receiving snippets of visitors’ memories and with a new assistant at his side, Decim starts to contemplate about the decisions he has made. Through Decim’s journey and the moral dilemmas he faces, Death Parade invites viewers to reflect on the complexities and implications of moral decision making and the role of empathy in the pursuit of justice.
The Court’s Decisions Are Final
Over the course of 12 episodes, there were five of Decim’s decisions that we agreed with. Four of these souls were chosen for reincarnation. Only one was sent to the void.
In episode 3, two young adults enter the bar and are tasked to bowl. As the episode progresses, they both realise they were childhood friends. Listen, it’s a cute episode, there is not much to say other than they end up going on a date. It’s wholesome. They deserve to be reincarnated. May their fates intertwine in another life too.
In episode 4, a young recluse has to battle a middle-aged woman in an old arcade game. The young man while battling depression, distanced himself from everyone, eventually dying by suicide. Though darker than the other episodes, the young man just needed some therapy and even in the face of his opponents reaction, is a pretty level-headed guy. Send him back.
Similarly, in episode 10, an elderly woman arrives at Quindecim and plays cards with Decim and his assistant. She reminisces over her life as an illustrator and the entire episode is just very nostalgic. So, an easy choice to make.
The last soul that was, and definitely should have been, sent for reincarnation was his assistant: a woman named Chiyuki. Finally revealed in episode 10, Decim’s assistant remembers that she was a figure skater, depressed after a career ending injury to her knee. Originally arriving at Quindecim with her memories intact, Decim’s manager, Nona, erases everything and sets her up as an assistant to give Decim more time for her judgement. Chiyuki does help Decim push past his limitations as an arbiter, allowing him to fully feel emotions, before he finally sends her off. She makes for an excellent counter-viewpoint for Decim, and supports his interest in understanding the humans that come through his bar. He better send her off to be reincarnated.
The soul that was rightfully sent to the void was given a 2-parter in the series. The detective-turned-(serial)killer threw any ounce of morality out the window in the final stages of his life to avenge the murder of his wife. Whilst this may be justifiable under certain circumstances of vigilante justice, as the story unfolds, it is revealed that he was observing possibly countless instances of women being assaulted on the premise of ‘gathering evidence’; and people still wonder why women would choose a bear… To top it all off, he also continuously tried to incite the other visitor to violence and unleash his anger. It, thus, did come to no surprise that the detective’s soul did not qualify for reincarnation.
An Appeal Has Been Filed
Despite agreeing with most of Decim’s decisions, there were also three choices we would dispute. Two visitors, we believe, were wrongfully sent to the void. One soul should have been sent there but was reincarnated.
In the arcade game episode, player two is a housewife turned TV celebrity. Having experienced abuse at the hands of her former partners, she managed to make a life for herself and her five children. When the odds at the arcade game are not in her favour, she takes matters into her own hands and harms the recluse to gain an advantage in the game. She is immediately remorseful but is forced by Decim to continue the game. Given that she is currently under the impression that her life is at stake, you cannot really fault her for attempting to get back to her family at all costs. In the end, she was a victim of her circumstances; it does not seem like the morally right choice to have her sent to the void for this.
The counterpart to the detective across episodes 8 and 9 is yet another young man. Raising his younger sister after their parents died, he decided to take justice into his own hands after she was assaulted by her stalker. Since the justice system did nothing when he reported the stalker, the brother went to the stalker’s apartment and fatally stabbed him. Additionally, he killed the detective, who stood by when the assault happened to further his own agenda. While the detective indirectly enabled bad things to happen to people, particularly women, the siblings were failed by the justice system. He was sent to the void, but without the antagonisation from the detective, the brother most likely would not have continued to be violent. As Chiyuki pointed out, a nuanced understanding is important when trying to understand humans. People are complex and people are simple. Instead of being sent to the void like the detective, the brother should have been reincarnated.
In episode 1, a jealous husband battles his wife in darts, accusing her of cheating and for becoming pregnant, potentially from her affair. While eavesdropping on her friends at their wedding, he assumes that they are talking about his wife and that she only married him for his money. On their honeymoon, he tries to grab his wife’s phone while driving and they die in a car crash, sending them to Quindecim. As they play darts, the darts cause pain in various body parts based on where they strike the board. As his fear of dying grows, the husband begins to target his wife, while acting like he is making mistakes. As tensions rise, and the wife admits to an affair, he attacks her. From our perspective, his actions appear to have some malicious intent behind them. Although he was sent for reincarnation after his wife's admission, we believe he firmly belongs to the void.
Court Hearing Adjourned
There are another three guests whose judgements left us wondering whether the right decision was made. One soul was judged by Decim while the other two souls were sent to another bar in the afterlife. All three of them were sent to the void.
The wife in episode 1 was sent to the void because of her actions in Quindecim. Admitting to an affair, she also tells her husband that she never loved him and only married him for money. Decim judges her harshly for this, though in episode 2, Chiyuki voices her suspicions about the wife’s motivations. Chiyuki believes the wife lied about her circumstances to save the husband’s soul. While this may be the case, it is not a particularly obvious conclusion to come to as a viewer but it did leave us wondering where her soul should have ended up.
The final two souls whose whereabouts post afterlife can be questioned are a fangirl and an idol appearing predominantly in episode 6 and again in episode 11. It seems the idol was immediately sent to the void (which perhaps was a bit of a harsh conclusion) while the fangirl’s judgement was adjourned when the other arbiter couldn’t come to a decision. In the end, he has the fangirl decide her own fate. He tells her that she can save her idol by sending another soul to the void in his place (a soul who looks suspiciously like Light Yagami…). Whether or not this is true, the fangirl decides to join her idol in the void, unable to sacrifice a stranger. Although the idol appears to have been a womaniser in life and tempted by the arbiter’s offer to save himself at the fangirl’s expense, he doesn’t. It’s unclear exactly how this other arbiter made his decision and therefore, as the viewer, unclear if it was reasonable. The outcome of their fates remains questionable at best and excessive at worst.
The Court Has Now Concluded
In Death Parade, Decim questions whether he can accurately judge humans without understanding their nuanced emotions. With Chiyuki as a proxy, Decim realises that the lines between right and wrong are not always clear-cut and moral judgements are limited by a lack of empathy and compassion. In turn, the viewer, too, is invited to contemplate moral decision making (just as we have shown in SOMA).
The show itself doesn’t have a definitive ending on the topic of whether the arbiters are adequately enabled to judge humans; a lot is left to the viewers interpretation of the events. Each episode is quite short, but more context for both the visitors and Decim’s choices would have been welcomed. Though, perhaps, that is the point; we are all constantly making choices without knowing the full context. We can only work with what we know. And do the best we can and believe in each other. And support our friends (just like the Addamses).
It’s a good show. The opening is a banger. Watch it and judge for yourself.
Image Credits
Crunchyroll [@crunchyroll] (2023a). ‘Welcome to Quindecim. (via Death Parade)’. 5 November, https://www.instagram.com/p/CzP53gzu0D7/?igsh=dW51M3NjeHZmamMy
Crunchyroll [@crunchyroll] (2023b). ‘A proper Quindecim welcome 🕺💃 (via Death Parade)’. 28 November, https://www.instagram.com/p/C0MvEOMMVl4/?igsh=eGYzYTlmbGZqM3Bi