One thing I know for sure about Death Parade – it has one fantastic opening. As for the show, I’m not so sure yet, though the premise is interesting, the characters seem fun, and for one episode, at least, it avoided being some lower form of torture porn. I enjoyed it.
Seriously, sweet opening.
Episode one focused on a young couple (Takashi and Machiko), just married, who must play a deadly game of darts, the reason for which isn’t determined until the end. That’s when we find out the eternal destination of both, and that the woman we as the audience sympathized with was actually the wrongdoer. Through most of the episode, we’re led to believe that Machiko had no idea what she was getting into – that she married an awful guy. But at the end we discover that Takashi is the one who didn’t realize who he was marrying.
Most of you reading this are not married. I am. And I’ll let you in on a little secret – no one really realizes what they’re getting into when they wed, nor exactly who they’re marrying.
When you marry someone, you level up in the relationship, right? You’re given all of that person – you learn his most intimate flaws, those that he doesn’t let anyone else see, those that he may not even know about himself. This is a huge leap for some relationships, especially for couples who aren’t best friends before they marry – marriage is a rude awakening.
But even if you cohabitate first, even if you’ve dated your partner for years, marriage will still give you a shock, sooner or later, because we all change. We’re humans. We’re dynamic. The person we are now is not the person we’ll be in five years or in ten years. Our bride now will be very different in many ways thirty years from now. She may even seem very different in just one year.
And further, marriage itself changes us. We now love someone more than ourselves – we now put our partner above ourselves all the time, if you’re doing marriage right. The Bible tells of a mystical union – of two becoming one. You can’t go through this union – something meant to symbolize God’s marriage to His people – without changing in some manner.
The point is this – we’re not led in some continuous line of love and wedded bless. We must choose to love our partner, to give him or her our hearts, to shine grace when wrong is done, to wake up every day, next to our loved one, making that choice. Marriage is the culmination of the idea of selfless love – unlike Takashi and Machiko, if we’re to make a marriage work, it must be without pretense, without lies, without strings attached.
And when you do that, you won’t fear failure. You won’t fear the change that comes with marriage. You’ll embrace it.
I’m on the same level as you with this story. I really don’t know yet. I found it interesting who was sent to hell and who got sent to heaven. I kind of got the idea that someone might have sacrifed themselves because they didn’t want their love to go to hell.
Is this related to Death Billiards by any chance?
Yes, this is the full series of the Anime Mirai Death Billiards project.
Cool, too bad it’s not on CR.
Not on CR, but it is streaming on FUNimation.
The forever skeptic here; I figured Machiko was the wrongdoer. It was really solidified with her constant texting and her not answering the phone in the car. Plus, its anime, and I have learned, its usually the opposite of what I first thought in shows like this. But I loved the attempt in this show. It was done well.
On marriage, you are absolutely right. You don’t really learn a person until you marry them. And you don’t fully realize that marriage is really for the long-haul when you have to handle a situation differently than you would have as a single person. Marriage is no easy feat.
Now THAT is a cool opening, I agree. Never ever heard of this anime, so going to check it out.
I also enjoyed reading your thoughts on marriage. I myself am also married, blessed with an amazing wife. I am not perfect, and try my best to be the best husband God made me to be. I continue to grow, and am dynamic as you said. I do believe, that with God’s guidance and wisdom, we can grow in a positive way and bless our spouse/boyfriend/girlfriend etc. as long as we die to ourselves daily, and seek His will and not ours. It’s hard, but it works.
[…] liked The Tangles’ zeroing in of Death Parade episode one as an allegory about marriage. I interpreted the ending a little differently than he did—when Machiko said “I love […]