Dies Irae

Summary: >

Ren is an orphan with little knowledge about his lineage, but he's about to be caught up in a ritual that could lead to the death of everyone in the city he inhabits. During WWII, a group of Nazi officers formed a cult which sacrificed countless lives in Berlin. Now over half a century later with the gift of immortality they intend to invoke the ceremony again.

Ren learns he has a latent power which could perhaps stop them. Can he master it in time?

Thoughts: >

Painful to watch is how I'd best describe Dies Irae. The first episode was bad but many shows struggle with the first episode. I figured if it didn't get coherent by episode 3 there was no hope, but I knew by episode 2 this one was a goner.

When distilled down to it's simplest form, even the most complex shows have a fairly simple core theme, and build out from there in sub plots and additions to the story. But you need that core, which Dies Irae does not have. It's basically a pile of incoherent nonsense piled up, and disguised with randomly thrown in German words. There has to be a point to this, but many episodes in I still had no clue what it was. It seems like this uber Nazi guy has a sense of dejavu concerning everything he does, which he finds boring so he wants to transcend the world? Or something. Why does this take place in Japan? ... No idea. Dies Irae is one of those anime titles that is a little bewildering in how much bullshit it can throw in, not explain any of it (yet hinting it has meaning like you give a damn) then continuously shovel in more drivel. No matter how much I wanted it to stop, it kept coming.

I often go easy on characters as they tend to be a factor of the story (which in this case is terrible). But much like how the story rolls in, characters are haphazardly tossed in randomly and often, and never developed much. Not to mention there are a LOT of them, some of which just end up dying and invalidating their existence.

Does it end? You know a lot of these uber German demon mecha things appear, but none are defeated in 12 episodes. Can this ever end? Fortunately I never found out as it just stops at 12 episodes, with another 6 to come supposedly. I'm not sure if that will happen either, but I can't see how Dies Irae can possibly be redeemed. Not worth it.

I learned Dies Irae is a visual novel adaptation resulting from a kick starter campaign. Apparently they raised enough money. And after thinking about it, I believe the visual novel could be decent. With fleshed out characters, along with substantial time and care spent building up the story (a hell of a lot happens, so it would need plenty) this concept could be interesting if done right.

Screen Caps: >