Anime / Death Parade

"I am now about to explain to you what your circumstances are. I ask that you pay close attention. One: First of all, I cannot answer the question of where you are. Two: We will now have you play a game. Three: We will have you choose the game by roulette. Four: We will have you stake your lives on the game."

"Life is a mysterious thing. Each and every life spins its own, totally separate tale, yet they become intricately entwined in each other. And no one knows how they will end up."

"That's true. You never know until you die. You may not even know after you die. But you know what? That's what makes it interesting, right?"

Welcome to Quindecim.

Two people walk into a bar with no recollection of how they arrived there. Greeted by a mysterious white haired man who calls himself Decim, they are told very little of their current situation, only that they must play a game in which they will stake their lives. With no way to escape, they have little choice but to comply with the man's strange demands.

As they play the game, the two soon start to recall the circumstances that brought them to the bar, and their true colors begin to shine in a game that pits the two souls against one another.

Produced by Madhouse, Death Parade expands off of a half-hour short called "Death Billiards", Yuzuru Tachikawa's entry for Japan's Anime Mirai: Young Animator Training Program in 2013. The short was successful enough to be one of only two that were made into an anime series. The series premiered in 2015 and can be legally streamed on Funimation's site.

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Provides examples of:

• 2D Visuals, 3D Effects: Most of the backgrounds in the show are actually done in 3D, allowing for very dynamic camera movements and character acting. Because of the compositing and the way the show is rendered, it's hardly noticeable.
• Absurdism:
  • The canon opening theme shows the cast taking a break from work, which features them juggling, swinging on Decim's threads, dancing in front of dummies ^note which are actually just corpses, dancing on ''graves'', and drinking, all while a jazzy, upbeat song about living your best life plays in the background. The imagery of these fun looking characters just having a good time contrasted with what the show is actually about is truly jarring, but it only further adds to the show's overall absurdist philosophy.
  • Decim and the black-haired woman's relationship is integral to the plot, as well as Decim's character development. Her presence is what guides him into cementing his own ideas about human nature, and what kind of arbiter he wants to be. However, it is ultimately meaningless, as arbiters are set up to forget about their guests every 3 months.
  • Much like Albert Camus' Sisyphus, Decim is shown smiling at the end of the show. Though this seems hopeful, it's undercut by Oculus' assurance that if an arbiter works with a human, it will "ruin them." It's up to the viewer to decide if that's true or not.
• Abusive Parents: The theme of episode 4, where the deceased Misaki and Yousuke were either the abusive parent or the victim of one. Misaki was neglectful, while Yousuke's biological mother was verbally abusive as shown in his flashback where she told him she wished he was never born.
• Accidental Aiming Skills: Throughout the first episode, both Machiko and Takashi have an uncanny ability of throwing darts at specific parts of the board, just after the dart has left their fingers, even when they resolve to miss deliberately; this culminates in Machiko getting a bullseye after being knocked down by Takashi. Considering Decim has a device that is designed to create a Contrived Coincidence with every use, he's likely to blame for this.
• Accidental Murder:
  • In episode 1, Takashi accidentally kills his wife and his unborn child in a fit of jealous rage.
  • Played with throughout the series. Because the human characters don’t initially realize they’re dead, they understandably start to panic when they think they’ve grievously injured or killed the other guest, as seen by the characters in the short film or Misaki in episode 4
• Accidental Suicide:
  • Along with Accidental Murder seen above, Takashi also accidentally kills himself when he gets suspicious of his wife and tries to take her phone away while driving.
  • Mayu died by slipping on a bar of soap in the shower.
• Action-Hogging Opening: Enjoy the opening sequence, because it's the most fun and excitement these characters will ever have.
• Aesop Collateral Damage: Decim learns about the importance of empathy and the weight of judgement through the suffering of his guests, which he often enforces to begin with. This is most evident in the finale with his assistant, as he finally gains empathy and realizes how much his cruel games and judgments have been making people suffer by witnessing her suffering at his hands.
• Afterlife Antechamber: The setting is referred to as “the tribunal of the soul.” We never quite see what the void looks like or what the process of reincarnation is, though there are some hints here and there.
• Afterlife Angst: Given that this takes place in the afterlife, it’s to be expected. Most guests react negatively to realizing they’re dead, worried about the people they left behind or the things they weren’t able to do.
  • Chiyuki develops this after realizing she’s dead, which is hinted at throughout the latter half of the show and ultimately comes to a head in the final episode when Decim shows her a vision of her mother grieving over her shrine.
• Afterlife Tour: Nona gives one to the black-haired woman when she’s first introduced to Quindecim.
• All Are Equal in Death: Very much averted; there's often a fairly large imbalance between players' skills and experience in the games they're made to play, giving a clear indication of who's meant to win. As Decim says, "Life is unfair." Of course, this is all deliberately done to put the players through a high-stress scenario, to see how they react under the pressure. Considering that there's no rules against assault, it means that a pro can lose by virtue of being unconscious after a beating.
• All for Nothing:
  • The guests efforts to win the game after being manipulated into believing that they will die if they lose are utterly meaningless. The outcome of the game doesn't matter, it's the actions that you perform while you play that are being scrutinized.
  • It's heavily implied that Nona knows that her plan to change the system won't go anywhere, but she pursues it anyway because she thinks it's more interesting to have things done her way.
  • The black-haired woman has a massive impact on Decim's life, helping him learn how to be more empathetic and emotional. However, since arbiters are set up to forget about their guests after three months, it might not last.
• Ambiguously Brown: Castra and Ginti, as well as some background arbiters. Since they are not human, it’s likely they don't really have a race. However, since they used to be human, they likely did.
• Ambiguous Situation: Since the arbiters as well as the audience is never let in on what's going through the minds of the guests, it's often unclear exactly what they were thinking during specific situations, or if they even happened as shown in the first place.
  • Notably, the guests in the first two episodes: Was Machiko cheating on Takashi before they even got married? Was it really a one time thing? If so, did his behavior push her into doing it? Could they have been happy if they talked things through? Or would his bitterness truly make him permanently miserable?
  • Did Mai get plastic surgery so she could look like Chisato when she was young? Would Shigeru have liked her if she still looked like she did before? Or did Chisato's own self-consciousness lead her to pull away from him in the first place?
  • Did Sae really want Shimada to kill the man who assaulted her and his "friend", or did she only say that she wants them dead because she was traumatized and at her worst?
  • Did Tatsumi's wife really thank him for killing her murderer, or was he just hearing things? Would Sae's assailant really have kept getting away with it if Tatsumi didn't attempt to kill him?
  • When Decim's guests attack one another, is that really their "true nature," or are they just being forced into feeling this way because of the extreme situations? And in any case, does "why" they behave that way even matter in the first place?
• Amnesiac Resonance: The guests retain their skills and personalities when they arrive at Quindecim.
• Amnesia Missed a Spot:
  • The guest in episode 5 seems to remember Decim and the bar. Invoked trope, he was a test.
  • When Chiyuki arrived at Quindecim, she had remembered dying, something that we are made to believe has never happened and was simply an oversight due to the memory compilers being overworked. However, it is implied in the last episode that this was very intentional and that she is not the only one who has been used like this, and that Nona, Quin, and Castra have been doing this with various humans.
• Animal Motifs:
  • Jellyfish. They appear throughout Quindecim, including in the aquarium and the jellyfish-shaped chandelier. Even the puppet strings used by Decim to control the mannequins and out-of-control players evoke the tentacles of one.
  • Ginti seems to have a cat motif going on. Some of his Kokeshi dolls have cat-like faces on them, his pet cat Memine is the only living thing he treats respectfully, and his design is very catlike as well; with narrow yellow-gold eyes and a lion-like hairstyle. He even sports a Cheshire Cat Grin in episode 6.
• An Offer You Can't Refuse: Considering the guests are set up to believe that they'll die if they don't agree to play the game, it's hard to see why they wouldn't immediately give in.
• Another Side, Another Story: The first episode of the series revolves around Decim's job to determine whose soul is worthy to be reincarnated between a married couple and the second episode is his assistant's perspective as an observer.
• Apathetic Citizens: No one in the tower seems to really care that humans are dying at an alarming rate. They're more annoyed by the workload it's causing.
• Asshole Victim:
  • While most of the characters are presented rather sympathetically, Tatsumi in episode 9 was the most antagonistic guest by far. Even the black-haired woman is hostile towards him. Viewers found it acceptable when Shimada chose to torture him. Even Tatsumi himself thought it was the “right” thing to do.
  • The guy who assaulted Sae is also portrayed very negatively, and his death was not portrayed sympathetically.
• The Atoner: Harada, after hearing of Mayu's devotion to him and his memories return. Feeling very guilty about the suicide of his ex-girlfriend and not wanting the same thing to happen to Mayu, he stalls her from falling to her "death" so that he can show his gratitude to her and that they can at least part on good terms.
• Background Halo: Seen at the 30 second mark in the OP.
• Bait-and-Switch Credits: The opening theme is a catchy, jazz-like tune and includes the main cast drinking and dancing around without a care in the world. The show itself... isn't so pleasant. Although as episodes 3, 6 and 10 show, even here we can have a happy ending.
• Barred from the Afterlife: Implied with the arbiters, who are said to have never lived or died. The final episode reveals that they are deceased humans who were cast into the void, but no information is granted on whether they can return or not.
• Beleaguered Bureaucrat: Everyone working in the tower is overworked and prone to making mistakes as a result of their terrible working conditions.
• Berserk Button: Many characters seem to be triggered by a certain event or even certain words that can drive them over the edge. Examples include Takashi never being loved by Machiko, Misaki thinking that she will die if she loses, the black-haired woman witnessing Decim's judgement methods, and worst of all is harming Shimada's beloved sister, Sae.
• Beware the Nice Ones: Shimada. He is a sweet and polite young man who cared deeply for his sister and did whatever it takes to protect her after their parents died. If you ever say anything bad about Sae or even go as far as assault her, there will be hell to pay. He will go as far as murdering the culprits and, given the opportunity, torture them and watch as they suffer as excruciatingly as possible.
• Birth-Death Juxtaposition: In the short film Death Billiards, the last memory the main viewpoint character has before realizing he’s dead is his mother breastfeeding him.
• Bittersweet Ending:
  • Episode 3. Mai gets to go on a date with the childhood friend whom she's loved for years, but they're both dead, and it seems it isn't until she had plastic surgery that he began to recognize her. While it's implied that they both reincarnated rather than one of them being sent to the void, this also comes with the fact that they could easily reincarnate as people a world apart, meaning they simply cannot be together as they want to be in this (after-) life.
  • The end of the series as a whole. Chiyuki passes Decim's test of character and is sent to be reincarnated, and Decim finally is able to accept his emotions. However, he and Chiyuki will never be reunited, a burden Decim's going to have to live with. It's also implied that Nona's machinations are mostly useless in the grand scheme of things, as Oculus says there may be powers even greater than himself. Puppets all the way down...
• Bleed 'Em and Weep: In episode 9, Shimada has a flashback that shows him killing his sister’s rapist and Tatsumi while breaking down in berserker tears.
• Blood from the Mouth:
  • Episode 1: Happens to Machiko when Takashi hits the symbol for her mouth on the dartboard, and then to Takashi himself when Machiko hits the heart symbol.
  • Happens to Tatsumi in episode 9 when Shimada assaults him by stabbing all the pucks associated with his organs.
• Break His Heart to Save Him: It's heavily implied this is the truth behind Machiko's actions in episode one. She lies about being pregnant with his child and tells him she was only in it for the money to absolve him of the guilt of indirectly causing the death of his family. She does this knowing full well of their situation—it's implied she knew what the purpose of Quindecim is and jeopardized her spot in "heaven".
• Breather Episode:
  • Episode 3, which caught anyone wondering how disturbing the next episode would be by surprise after the two previous episodes' development. Even the main characters commented on the relaxed nature of the episode.
  • Episode 6, due to having more comedic scenes and a relatively nice ending.
  • Episode 10 is a nice change of pace after the intensity of Episodes 8 and 9.
• Broken Bird: More than a few have rather tragic pasts which lead to their Jerkass or cynical personalities.
  • Misako and Yousuke of episode 4 both stand out though, with the two having dealt with serious domestic issues which lead to them not treating their nicer family members well and not realizing how awful they were until it's too late.
  • As it turns out, Chiyuki was this as well. She was a top tier figure skater and devoted her entire life to it, until a knee injury meant that she could never skate again. Her resulting depression caused her to distance herself from everyone around her and realize that no one had any hope in understanding one another. Believing she was "nothing," she came to hate herself, and eventually took her own life.
• Butt-Monkey: Episode 4 features two of the most tragic examples of this trope. Yousuke and Misaki both have lived very rough lives. Yousuke lived with a very abusive mother who wished he was never born and because of the way he grew up, he became antisocial and hardly spoke to anyone, not even his kind stepmother. Even in the afterlife, the arcade game has a Flanderization of him and he gets his face smashed onto the machine by Misaki. But, Misaki probably had it even worse. She married three times and each husband was just as abusive as the other and they all left her with at least one child. She ended up becoming abusive to her own children and her manager. She was done in by said manager after she had been through much of her abuse. In the afterlife, she plays as a Flanderization of herself and after learning that she is dead, she receives a figurative blow below the belt from Decim when he coldly states that she should be familiar with "life being unfair".
• Carpe Diem: Invoked with "Memento Mori," though Decim's interpretation is that it's less about living your life to the fullest and more about simply living in the moment.
• The Casanova: Harada, who's a popular Boy Band member and spent a lot of time with different girls. It led to his death.
• Cast of Snowflakes: Despite most episodic characters featuring muted color palettes and sporting darker, realistically colored hair and eyes, they're all distinguishable by their silhouettes alone. The recurring cast has an easier time with this since their hair and eye colors and designs can be a bit more outlandish, while still being cohesive.
• Celestial Bureaucracy: The staff are mostly portrayed as normal overworked employees at any regular establishment. There doesn’t seem to be any real criteria to becoming an arbiter, so all of the ones we see are flawed and biased individual who make poor judgments in character leading them to make arbitrary decisions. Those who work in information processing make constant mistakes due to being overworked and understaffed, and the higher-ups don’t seem to care very much. Nona and other high-ranking employees like Quin and Castra are shown to be manipulating their staff without facing any real consequences. To further drive the absurdity of the afterlife being set up like any ordinary job, Decim even gets audited at one point.
• The Comically Serious: Decim and his assistant have moments of being somehow hilarious while retaining their poker-faces.
• Childhood Friend Romance: In episode 3. The couple of the week were an aversion in life, having been old loving childhood friends who later lost contact up to their deaths; it's played straight after death, however, and they share a date before departing at the elevators.
• Chick Magnet: Harada is a member of a very successful boyband and thus has many fangirls.
• Closed Circle: Once the guests enter the bar, they cannot leave until they finish playing the game.
• Contrived Coincidence: Decim has a device that allows him to pull these at will, in order to raise the stakes.
• Cool Old Guy: Coincidentally, Sachiko's husband happens to be the same old man from Death Billiards. He was a man who can hold his own and even take on a young man with just a billiard stick.
  • However, he seemed to have a shady past and possibly sent himself to the Void deliberately.
• Cool Old Lady: Sachiko from episode 10 is a sweet and polite elderly woman who lived a fulfilled life and loved to draw. She had a blast playing cards with Decim and Chiyuki in Quindecim.
• Cooldown Hug: Decim delivers these when someone really needs them, as well as the praise "You did well".
• Cosmic Horror Story: The show's take on the afterlife falls right into this. If you die, you're faced with the binary options of continuing to reincarnate or being discarded and deleted from the system. The celestial bureaucracy decides which fate you get by subjecting you to an arbitrary, sadistic Secret Test of Character. The kicker? The whole system exists because the people running it are so detached from humanity that it's the only way they can think of to assess the human soul, and they neither know nor particularly care when they get it wrong, to the point where the higher-ups have had to bring in an assistant to mitigate the Quindecim staff's frequent fuckups and teach them about how humans work.
• Creepy Doll: The lifesize mannequins hanging around the bar. The unfinished ones are inevitably shown by the staff when someone refuses to play a game involving their lives, and in the darkness they look like hanging corpses, implying that anyone who refuses will join them. It's not actually true (at least, not in the way they think), but it's a hell of a motivator. In reality, they're just Decim's (weird, creepy) hobby, and he's kind of bad at finding storage for them all.
• Cryptic Background Reference: Most of the dialogue going on between the higher-ups like Nona, Oculus, Quin, and Castra are handled like casual conversations with no actual exposition since the characters in question know what they're talking about. The audience, however, is left with vague statements about God's absence, excessive strife in the real world, and various manipulations they're engaging in. Almost nothing they talk about is explained, but most of it doesn't impact the plot in any way.
• Darker and Edgier:
  • The series as a whole is darker than the short film that preceded it. While the premise is still the same overall, Billiards had some comedic moments and wasn't as dramatic as most episodes in the show are. It was less graphic, less creepy, and also (mostly) less ambiguous. Then comes the first episode of the show proper, which is about a toxic relationship where the characters become increasingly hostile towards one another. It's revealed that they died because Takashi was so bitter and paranoid that Machiko was cheating on him that he tried taking away her phone while driving, and drove themselves off a cliff, killing them both as well as his unborn child. The episode ends with the man begging Decim to let him hit his wife. There are about two or three episodes that debatably have a more laid-back tone to them, but most follow this thread.
  • Episodes 8 and 9 are by far the darkest in the series. Both guests are guilty of murder for revenge, and the black-haired woman breaks down to the point where she calls out Decim for his cruel methods and even intervenes to try to save Shimada from sending himself to the Void, and she fails.
• Dead All Along:
  • The black-haired woman is hinted to be this. Confirmed in episode 5.
  • To an extent, the arbiters are implied to be this despite saying they can neither live or die. As it turns out, they were once humans who were cast into the void.
• The Dead Can Dance:
  • Decim and his assistant are shown to be great dancers in the opening theme, and may other characters get to do a little jig as well.
  • Lampshaded in the Drama CD when Nona instructs the black-haired woman to dance and she says she doesn't know how, but Mona reassures her she'll do just fine. As a figure skater, she's physically skilled and well-coordinated, so of course it comes naturally to her.
• Dead to Begin With: In both the short and the series, the pair arrive in Quindecim after they die, but they don't realize it immediately. The audience realizes it once the First-Episode Twist.
• Death Amnesia: The characters do not immediately realize that they are dead and tend to be very surprised when they realize it. Averted with Chiyuki, however, who remembered that she was dead, but not how.
• Died Happily Ever After:
  • The guests in episode three are reunited childhood friends who joke about being glad they died because they finally got to go on a date with one another. They were among the most pleasant characters and, while they of course weren't thrilled to have died, they were able to find some joy and beauty in it.
  • The old woman in episode 10 plainly states that she has a good life and she has no negative feelings towards her death, even telling Decim she doesn't care to know how she died.
  • In episode 11, Chiyuki explains her death in a rather blasé manner and talks about her suicide with a small smile. She doesn't seem terribly bothered by it and seems eager to be done with all of this so she can move on. Subverted later on when Decim forces her to watch her grieving mother and she finally admits that she wants to live again, so she can see her again.
• Distinctive Appearances: The human guests are all very realistic looking, with normal hair and eye colors. The arbiters, however, are easily identified by their candy-coloured hair and exaggerated hairstyles, as well as the cross symbols in their eyes.
• Divine Misfile: While it's generally left up to interpretation, the first guests in particular were likely so misinterpreted by Decim that it led to him sending someone into the void because he thought they were deliberately malicious when they were heavily implied to be performing a Heroic Sacrifice.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?:
  • In episode 3, the bowling balls are stylized to resemble the players' hearts. Shigeru puts his fingertips into the ball's holes, cutting to a stylized scene of his fingers inside pulsing red flesh. He blushes and smiles, and then says "She's so warm..."
  • Oculus's lotus flower hair and beard. What other godly figure is there in real life who uses a lotus flower motif?
  • Various poses in episode 6 during the Twister match deliberately invoke this.
• Domestic Abuse: Misaki of episode 4 went through three of them, each of them having her bear at least one child before they left her. Suffice to say, it's left her and her family a little broken.
• Downer Ending:
  • In just the first episode, we have a happy couple that ends up having their relationship torn completely to pieces and Decim actually slips up and sends the two to the wrong fates.
  • In episode 9, BOTH guests are sent to the void, despite the black haired woman's attempts to prevent this outcome by talking some sense into Decim and Shimada. She fails.
  • The conclusion of Ginti, Mayu, and Harada's plotline results in Ginti sending both Mayu and Harada to the void after deceiving them about the possibility of resurrecting Harada by sacrificing a random soul.
• Dramatic Irony:
  • Every episode that involves a judgment is predicated upon this trope, since the audience knows what's going on before the characters do.
  • Three episodes before the black-haired woman learns about her identity, the audience learns that she is a dead human, which means that all this time, she's been judging people just like her.
• Driven to Suicide:
  • Kana, one of Harada's girlfriends, after he breaks up with her.
  • Yousuke, one of the guests in episode 4, has this as his backstory.
  • Chiyuki committed suicide after learning she can never go back to professional skating after injuring her right knee during a contest.
• Dull Eyes of Unhappiness: A recurring theme in this show, along with plenty of other Eye Motifs. Arbiter's eyes rarely reflect light outside of dramatic moments, and human eyes will often go dark just before Jumping Off the Slippery Slope.
• Duty That Transcends Death:
  • Episodes 8 and 9 involve two people who died while trying to commit murder. While they initially don’t remember this, they slowly uncover their motivations as they play the game together,, and their behavior changes completely when they remember what they had set out to do, becoming more motivated to finish the game so they can go out and accomplish their goals.
  • Even after realizing he had already accomplished his goals, Shimada is so overcome with rage at realizing the depths of Tatsumi's corrupt morality that he is urged by Decim into torturing him.
• Dying Smirk: The old man in the short film flashes a rather menacing smirk just before the elevator doors close. In episode 10, we see his wife who is an equally nice and charming woman.
• Eldritch Location: Castra's den is undeniably ominous and impressive, with wine glasses organized in pyramid shapes and being filled with droplets of blood slowly falling from somewhere up high. There's also her high chair, which looks like some bizarre skeletal structure but is also very insect-like at the same time, and the random serpentine spines emerging from the floor.
• Emotions vs. Stoicism: A predominant theme throughout the show, this primarily comes up as a dichotomy between arbiters and humans but it also a central struggle for many individuals as well. The black-haired woman is contrasted against Decim as an emotionally intelligent and expressive young woman, while he is cold and logic-driven. This was deliberately invoked by Nona, who actually orchestrated their meeting and coerced Decim into taking her in as his assistant. She did this in hopes that it will strike change in the entire arbitration system, or at the very least, discover different ways to judge the deceased.
• Establishing Character Moment:
  • Episode 1: Takashi takes control of the situation right away and always places himself in front of his wife. He’s angry and extremely antagonistic towards Decim, slamming his hand on the table and Suddenly Shouting when he talks to him. No other guest is shown to be quite this hostile. This neatly portrays him as an angry, paranoid individual who immediately assumes the worst of people, including, as we find out, his own wife.
  • Episode 4: Misaki takes the lead in her dynamic with Yosuke. She aggressively teases him to get him to play the game her way, and he meekly goes along with it. Misaki is a TV performer and Yosuke is a shut-in with a Mother complex.
  • Episode 6: Mayu enters Viginti and is immediately excited to be there and unquestioning, singing for the ghosts to come out and play. Harada, an idol, is portrayed as cool, and constantly smiles at Mayu and speaks to her in a friendly way while his first line of internal dialogue is about how gaudy she is, showing that his idol persona is a front and he doesn’t actually care about his fans.
  • Episode 8: Tatsumi is immediately scrutinous of Decim and very calmly questions why he’s here. He is soon revealed to be a detective.
• Existential Horror: The afterlife is a Celestial Bureaucracy that has all the trappings and failings of any regular workplace and doesn't seem to care for change. The people who will judge you have no empathy for your struggles and are so far removed from normal human emotions that they're prone to making mistakes in their judgements. People who are good can be sent to the void, and people who commit heinous acts can be reincarnated based on a whim. Judgments can only be described as emotional torture. They are explicitly meant to bring out the worst in you and to use your memories and experiences against you. The arbiters themselves have no idea who they are and where they came from, and any attempts at character development, change, or connection are inherently frowned upon by the system they are forced to work under, meaning that even if they do find value and meaning to their "lives," or the lives of the humans they judge, it will be All for Nothing in the end. It's unknown if Chiyuki's influence on Decim will stick, or if he will revert back to zero after the three month rule.
• Exotic Eye Designs: The arbiters all have eyes that have very large crosses on their irises... and they turn when they receive a new couples' memories. It's actually rather creepy to see.
• Evolving Credits: The ending credits switch every other episode, showing a slide-show of the two players of the episode or of a crumbling set of dummies.
• Eye for an Eye: Lisa's sister Kana committed suicide after Harada dumps her. Later, Lisa kills Harada using a time bomb in the shape of an heart and with a note saying "A present from my sister, Kana".
• Eye Recall:
  • This happens often once guests remember that they have died.
  • Also happens to Decim's assistant when she requests a memory transfer for the quests in episode 8. Interestingly, this doesn’t happen to Decim when he gets memories of the dead, though.
• Eye Take: Frequently happens throughout the series as part of the shows recurring Eye Motifs. The finale of episode 9 has an ending so brutal that three characters do this at once.
• Fake Memories: As a test, Nona has these implanted in a dummy in Episode 5. It works.
• Fangirl: Mayu is a big fangirl of boyband member Harada.
• First-Episode Twist: It can be fairly hard to explain the plot of the series to someone new to it, especially considering the opening theme is so jarringly peppy compared to what the show is really all about, which may lead to fans of Darker and Edgier anime to shy away from it or fans of Lighter and Softer anime to want to watch it. The couple that walks into Quindecim is dead. The bartender is an arbiter, and the games are created with the sole intent of bringing out the true colors of the players in question and judging whether they will go to "heaven" or to "hell".
• Five-Second Foreshadowing: In the black haired woman's flashback, there's a brief shot of her rubbing her knee with a mild look of concern on her face in the shot just before her knee injury is revealed.
• Flashy Protagonists, Bland Extras: This ends up being a Justified Trope. The humans, while all very distinct from one another, are designed with muted color palettes and normal appearances. The arbiters have much more exaggerated features however, such as Anime Hair in strange colors and unnatural Magical Eyes.
• Foreshadowing: The black haired woman skates on the floor at some point during the OP. At first it seems like wacky hijinks, but it hints at her true identity as a former professional figure skater. There's also a pair of skates on the counter along with some games.
• Freeze-Frame Bonus: The opening is packed with them.
  • There are two very spoileriffic ones toward the black-haired woman and her being a figure skater when she was alive:
    • Along with the game paraphernalia on the bar in the scene with her, Nona, and Decim, there's a pair of ice skates, seemingly at random.
    • Decim applauds her slide across the floor behind Nona and Quin drinking. Not only is she in a Biellmann spin pose, if you look closely, you'll see that she's wearing the figure skater outfit she eventually wears in ep. 11.
  • In the colorful shot of the title bursting at the screen before the switch to Decim and the black-haired woman at the bar, in the last few frames the organs affected by the games can be seen.
  • When Ginti rips his shirt off, one of the buttons flies towards the screen. Memine catches it.
  • As the cast is swinging through the air, Clavis falls off his wire.
  • The scene where Nona is playing the DDR-style game has several symbols of death, and Buddha's hands can be seen in the background.
  • In the scene where all of the arbiters are coming out of the elevator and pointing up, Ginti is snarling at Mayu putting her arm in his face.
  • Take a close look at the Chavvo doll in the final shot. The right cuff of its coat's sleeve appears to be torn off, hinting at the black-haired woman's cutting her wrist to kill herself.
• From Bad to Worse: Episode 8 starts out with one of the guests being a murderer, but then it turns out they both were murderers.
• Garnishing the Story: A lot of background elements about God and about the condition of the planet Earth are sprinkled throughout the show to add an overall air of foreboding and mysticism to the series, but don't foreshadow any specific events.
• Genki Girl: Mayu is full of energy, much to Ginti's chagrin.
• Good Stepmother: Yousuke's stepmother was a very kind and loving parent in contrast with his real mother. Sadly, Yousuke never accepted her and became depressed to the point of suicide. In fact, in the afterlife, his biggest regret was that he never got the chance to call his loving stepmother "Mom".
• Go Out with a Smile:
  • In episode 3, both Shigeru and Mai do this in a similar fashion, but it's more bittersweet.
  • Mayu does this when she forfeits the game for the sake of the other player, believing she's about to fall to her death. She doesn't, since she's already dead, and what she thought was metal pikes was really just inflated balloons, so there wasn't even any pain involved.
  • Chiyuki as well, getting sent to reincarnation. She sees Decim smile for the first time just before she leaves, and graces him with one of her own in return.
• Gray Rain of Depression: During a flashback sequence in the eleventh episode, the guest's happy memories are abruptly cut off by a flashback of a career-ending injury that caused their depression, and we soon see them alone in their hospital room, all color drained from the frame as a hard rain can be seen and heard beyond the window.
• Hanlon's Razor: Malice driven from mere ignorance and misunderstandings seem to be the true explanation for why Quindecim works the way it does, coupled with a generous dose of bureaucratic apathy.
• Healthy in Heaven: Injuries seem to disappear after the characters die, only to return when they regain their memories, and even then it's only sometimes.
• Heaven Above: Going upwards is associated with their heaven equivalent, which is stated to be reincarnation. The "put your hands up" line in the OP as well as Decim and Chiyuki pointing upwards is a nod to this: they're telling you to live.
• Hell: This is what they call "the void" in their world.
• Hellevator: When Decim's judgment is finished, he sends his guests off to the elevator where they go to the void or go to get reincarnated.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Considering the fact that the characters are Dead All Along, this ultimately ends up being a subversion each time, but it's happened twice so far:
  • In episode 1, Machiko does this for Takashi's sake, but it seems no one other than the black-haired woman is aware of the heroism in her act. It is revealed in the second episode that Machiko lied about bearing another man's child to free Takashi from the guilt of killing his own child. Unfortunately, Decim didn't realize that she was lying and sent Machiko to the Void and Takashi to be reincarnated.
  • Mayu does this for Harada in episode 6. This happens before they realize they're dead, though, and it's not made entirely clear if she did it to save face (because she was about to piss herself in front of her idol) or out of genuine selflessness, either. Tries to do it again in episode 11, because Ginti tells her there is a chance to get back Harada's soul if another soul is given in his place. He lied.
• Hitler Cam: Used to great effect with Decim, often when he’s trying to intimidate his guests.
• Hope Spot: Happens frequently during the games.
  • The young man in billiards thinks he has a high chance of winning due to his experience level and the fact that his opponent is an old man with unsteady hands...cue the old man hitting multiple balls in a row.
  • While playing the arcade game, Misaki is finally unlocks a special move that she thinks will help her win...only for it to do absolutely nothing. When things do seem to be working out, Decim tampers with the game, breaking her controller to make her freak out.
  • After realizing she has died, Misaki laments that she had finally found hope in becoming a reality TV star because it gave her a second chance at life and she could finally find a way to support her five children, only to have her die while they were all still minors.
  • Decim also gives one to his assistant in the final episode, leading her to believe that she will be able to bring herself back to life in exchange for one random person. She falls for it before he drops the act, though]].
  • In episode 9, the black-haired woman puts all her strength into holding back one of their quests from assaulting the other one, and for a moment, it works. He pulls back and sighs, seemingly ready to take her advice, before the other guest laughs off her positivity and taunts him, goading him on into continuing his assault.
• Hot-Blooded: Decim's assistant, even if she doesn't look like it, and Ginti often show that they have quite the temper and can be very enthusiastic. Mayu is also prone to getting fired up, though it's less angry and more genki.
• I Just Want to Be You: Mai in episode 3 has a Mistaken Identity and believes she is one of her Childhood Friends, because she believed she was ugly and got plastic surgery and due to the loss of her memory after dying is unable to recognize herself. It’s implied she got plastic surgery to look like that friend in the first place and attract her Love Interest.
• Inn Between the Worlds: From what we get to see, the whole tower seems to be this, with each floor hosting a different establishment you can only get to via elevator. The outfits the characters wear and the way Quindecim is set up nods to classy hotels. Clavis, who controls the elevators, is even dressed similarly to a bellhop.
• Irony: The OP of the series "Flyers" is a hopeful song, stating that as long as you're still alive you can change for the better. Meanwhile, in the show, everyone going to Decim's bar is dead already, to be judged whether they're worthy or not based on what they've done when they were alive.
  • However, the theme of the song is played straight with Decim, who has his emotions awakened and learns from his experience with Chiyuki.
• I Want My Beloved to Be Happy: Although the end result leaves Takashi more angry than happy, it's more like "to be free from guilt". Machiko lies about being pregnant from another man to alleviate Takashi's guilt from killing his own child, and it potentially may have cost her being reincarnated.
• The Journey Through Death: The entire show is about revealing an afterlife system and showing us how humans experience it. More specifically, this is the black-haired woman's journey.
• Judgment Of The Dead: Arbiters exist to judge the deceased. Nona even refers to Quindecim as "the tribunal of the soul."
• Kimono Fanservice: In episode 6 after the test, Mayu wears one that shocks both Harada and Ginti since she's wearing much less make-up and doesn't look as gaudy.
• Left Hanging: Death Parade has quite a few mysteries left unsolved, such as what happened to God, why humans are dying at an alarming rate, and what some of the characters were scheming. No one in the recurring cast has a backstory except for the dark-haired woman, and when it's eventually revealed that Arbiters used to be humans that were sent to The Void, this only leaves us with more questions. The canon Drama CD implies that there is some backstory between Nona and Clavis, but it's never elaborated on and it's unclear how much the characters themselves even know about it given that it's possible it happened before either of them began working in the tower.
• Leitmotif: The piano into of "moonlit night", the song which plays in full during Chiyuki’s skating scene, also plays when the story of Chavvot plays.
• Limited Wardrobe: The black-haired woman's wardrobe is filled with multiple copies of her crop top-and-skirt outfit—it becomes a minor plot point in episode 5 when another dress is in there as well. It's revealed in episode 11 to be her skating outfit. The same can be assumed of the rest of the cast.
• Locked in a Room: The guests that come to Quindecim are told explicitly that they cannot leave until after they play the game. That doesn't stop them from trying to open every door they can find, though.
• Loophole Abuse: Good lord is there this. Any rules said for the games are literally the only rules for the game, meaning assaulting other players or using their limited pieces can be perfectly legal. The only reason the players don't abuse this for all it's worth from the start is that they either want to play fair or assume the usual rules against such actions are in effect. As the games are supposed to draw out a player's true and darker colors, especially when the tension is driven up, such actions are required for a proper judgement. Any assault after the games are finished, however, is halted by Decim himself.
• Lyrical Dissonance: The upbeat opening of the show, to the tune of "Flyers" by BRADIO, which accompanies the overall dark undertones of the story with its lyrics about trying to overcome depression.
• Matter of Life and Death: The guests are implored to believe that they will die if they do not play the games.
• Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: While it's clear to the audience that the arbiters all have *some* kind of supernatural power, it isn't clear to what extent, and a lot of the strange things Decim does during his judgments are interpreted differently by his guests. His ability to link body parts with game pieces gets him accused of human experimentation by a doctor, while other guests think it's just psychological fear. In one episode, during the explosions that happen when a game is decided for the guests, a TV star says they must have "one hell of a budget."
• Meaningful Name: Names of all the arbiters linked with Latin numbers. Other staffers have Latin words as names. The only exception is Decim's assistant who has no name and is credited as "Woman with Black Hair". In episode 10 we finally learn her what is her real name—it's Chiyuki, written with the kanji for "knowing" and "happiness".
• Medium Blending:
  • Various parts of the Quindecim, such as when the games are revealed and parts of the background and game sets, are used in some rather obvious CGI. However, given the otherworldly setting, the contrast actually works to the series' advantage.
  • The memory flashback scenes are done traditionally, mostly in sepia colors, making them look wistful and causing them to stand out in stark contrast to the more modern coloring of Quindecim.
  • The black-haired woman's Dream Sequence is drawn like a children's book and looks completely different from the rest of the show, with a matching and soothing narration to complete the image.
• Merger of Souls: As they ride the elevator together down to the void, Mayu and Harada seem to have their souls join into one at the end.
• Mood Whiplash:
  • Episode 6 is absolutely insane, being played for laughs for most of the episode to suddenly becoming morose and dark, before jumping right back into hilarious again. The jumps happen so much so that it's hard to believe it's from the same show.
  • After the incredibly dark and harrowing events of episodes 8 and 9, episode 10 is...just a game of Old Maid between Decim, the black-haired woman, and a sweet, gentle elderly woman.
  • In episode 11, we have a beautiful skating scene and mentions of severe depression/suicide a while later.
• Mr. Fanservice: Harada, an attractive idol that spends half of episode 6 in only his underwear.
• My God, What Have I Done?:
  • What happens in Billiards when the younger man knocks the old man out and thinks he's killed him.
  • Happens in the first episode of the series, when Takashi realizes that he caused the death of his wife and unborn child.
  • Happens to Yousuke in the fourth episode when he realizes he committed suicide before calling his stepmother "mom". And to Misaki when she in desperation, bangs Yousuke's head against the video game machine's screen.
  • Harada from episode 6 feels this way after his previous girlfriend Kana committed suicide because he left her.
  • The dark-haired woman also goes through this when Decim shows her an illusion of her mother grieving over her shrine. She's absolutely tortured over having caused her mother so much grief after her suicide.
• Morality Pet: It seems that Tatsumi's wife was this for him before she died, and it's implied that her murder is what turned him into a vigilante Serial Killer, or at the very least pushed him into becoming one.
• Mortal Wound Reveal: When the young man in Billiards begins to remember his past, he undoes his blazer and sees the blood from a stab wound. However, as he's already dead, he doesn't die from it. This happens again with Tatsumi in episode 9.
• Mundane Horror: The Quindecim passively looks like a normal bar, but nearly all the props in the games that Decim creates are covered with disturbing imagery, including pulsing organs, skulls, and various body parts that are synched up with the guest’s bodily functions.
• My Life Flashed Before My Eyes: Happens as the players start to unfurl the reasons as to how they wound up at Quindecim.
• Never-Forgotten Skill: The deceased guests always retain their inherent skills, such as their jobs or sports they were good at. This is often exploited by the arbiters, who will intentionally pair up players with mismatched skill sets in attempt to bring out the worst in people.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Decim is so detached from humanity that he fails to understand why someone would lie to protect someone else, and because of this, he made the "wrong" decision when he judged the couple in the first episode.
• The Nothing After Death: People who are denied reincarnation are sent here.
• Offscreen Afterlife: We get some hints, but we never really see what the void looks like.
• On the Next: Every episode ends with a brief next episode compilation.
• Only Sane Woman:
  • In episode 1, not only is Machiko the first to realize that they’re dead, she is also the only one with the emotional intelligence to lie to her husband in hopes that he wouldn’t have to deal with the regret of inadvertently killing their unborn child.
  • Averted in episode 4. Misaki is older than her opponent and more sociable, but she really has no clue what’s going on and assumes it’s all just a fun game show.
• Orange/Blue Contrast: Quindecim's cool color scheme and Decim's blue eyes are intentionally contrasted against Viginti's warm palette and Ginti's fiery orange hair.
• Pietà Plagiarism:
  • Decim holds Takashi like this in the first episode, but it's decidedly not romantic.
  • However, Decim holds his assistant in a similar manner in the OP and some promotional photos which does invoke some Ship Tease. He also carries her to bed like this in episode 5. Seen again in episodes 11 and 12.
• Platonic Cave: In the last episode, he puts Chiyuki in one of these by absorbing all of her memories and recreating her home and a likeness of her mother to put her through her final test.
• Police Are Useless:
  • Deconstructed in episodes 8 and 9, where a teenage girl was being stalked and harassed, but the police did nothing to help her. This of course led to her being assaulted by that same stalker.
  • One of the guests in these episodes is a detective whose wife was murdered by someone he had put behind bars, which led to him avenging her death by killing him. Knowing how useless the cops can be, he goes on to become a vigilante and murders people who commit crimes, but only after witnessing them do it...which led to him watching that girl get assaulted so he could kill her guy who did it.
• Poor Communication Kills: A major recurring theme throughout the show.
  • Takashi is so distrustful and paranoid that he believes his wife is cheating on him with very flimsy evidence, even before it actually happens. He spends their marriage bitter and resentful, but he never discusses anything with her. The hostility builds until he tries to take her cell phone away while driving, leading to their deaths as well as the death of their unborn child.
  • When Machiko eventually does cheat on him, she's shown to be remorseful, but she also doesn't talk about it.
  • Due to being emotionally abused and neglected by his mom, Yosuke refuses to get close to his stepmother, even though she seems to be a kind woman. He deeply regrets being unable to even call her "mom" before killing himself, and hates himself for not letting her in.
  • Shimada's sister was assaulted, and while she's recovering in the hospital, she wishes death upon the people who harmed her while talking to him. Instead of realizing that she is traumatized and probably wouldn't actually want that to happen if she was in a better headspace, and instead of staying with her, he swears revenge on the people who hurt her and dies in the process, leaving his orphaned teenage sister alone.
  • As Unwitting Pawns, both Decim and his assistant fall victim to this. Most of the pain they endure could have been avoided if Nona were honest with them from the start.
  • The black-haired woman's inability to open up to Decim or anyone for that matter turns out to be her Fatal Flaw, as it's revealed that she pushes away people who care about her and doesn't bother trying to communicate her feelings or her needs. She believes that people fundamentally can't understand one another and that there's really no point in even trying. This is what lead to her suicide, and it's something she ends up deeply regretting and wishing she could take back.
  • On the other hand, while Decim wants to get to know her better, his attempts at doing so are backwards and cruel, and it's unclear to her that he's even trying to do so until the very end. Open and frank communication is such a foreign concept to his kind that, when he's asked how we express our feelings to others, he can't even come up with an answer. His inability to engage in honest discussion like a normal person is partially what leads him to taking in his assistant in the first place, and ends up causing them both a great degree of pain.
  • Ultimately, this is the Fatal Flaw of the black-haired woman.
• Potty Failure: Happens to Mayu a while after she gets ignored when requesting to use the bathroom in the middle of her game.
• Prelude to Suicide: After Chiyuki had a Career-Ending Injury, she fell into a depression that deepened over time. She distanced herself from her friends and family before committing suicide.
• Psychopomp: Arbiters judge and send the dead to the afterlife. The problem is that they're so detached from humanity that their evaluations on where souls go is skewed enough to need an assistant, one who is decidedly not a psychopomp herself.
• Psychological Horror: Despite the supernatural setting, much of the terror comes from characters reliving some of their worst memories and often confronting the ugliest parts of themsleves. The psychological manipulation and mind games orchestrated by the arbiters add another layer of this, blurring the lines between who we are and who we can become when pushed too far.
• Questionable Consent: The entire system they operate under is predicated upon giving the guests as little information as possible to get them to accept the terms of the game and continue until they're done.
• Rated M for Manly: Episodes which feature two male guests tend to be a lot more violent and heated than other episodes. Examples include:
  • Death Billiards, where the young man and the old man get into a violent fight and trash the place.
  • Episodes 8 and 9 where Shimada and Tatsumi started off on good terms but after learning about each other's pasts, Tatsumi berates Shimada and when he is given the opportunity, Shimada stabs the hockey pucks that are connected to Tatsumi's orgams to torture him and make him suffer for watching Sae get assaulted.
  • This even includes episode 5 where "the boy" and "the man" ended up becoming more hostile than they looked.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: Frequently happens between the guests.
  • Episode 1: Takashi is a hot-headed, aggressive, antagonistic, and paranoid man. His wife Machiko is more timid, calm, quiet, and perceptive.
  • Episode 4: Misaki is out-going, forward, and temperamental. Yosuke is meek, reserved, and depressive.
  • Episode 6: Mayu is an excitable, simple-minded, and overall nice Genki Girl. Ginti, her arbiter, is world-weary, angry, and hot-headed.
  • Episode 8-9: Shimada is nervous, warm, and unassuming. Tatsumi is sharp, direct, cold, and scrutinous.
  • The black-haired woman and Ginti are both red to Decims blue. Decim is cold, stoic, pensive and distant while his assistant is passionate, friendly, and emotional, and Ginti, as mentioned above, is much more aggressive.
• Reincarnation: How the afterlife works. It's the staff's job to decide whether the recently-deceased's souls are worth salvaging via reincarnation through the Secret Test of Character of the Death Games. In some cases, both souls can be sent to reincarnation, regardless of the game results. Confusingly, guests are often lied to and told that the choices are Heaven and Hell.
• Resurrective Immortality: No matter the assault that may occur, players in the games cannot die; if they stop breathing or their hearts stop, they simply come back up again a time later. Makes sense, considering they're already dead. On the other hand, there IS a possibility of causing the other player a pain of unimaginable strength... and it is NOT a pleasant thing to see.
• Revenge: The ultimate theme of episodes eight and nine, as this is what connects the two players together. Shimada's sister was assaulted, and he wants to avenge her death by murdering the person who did that to her. Similarly, Tatsumi's wife was killed by someone he arrested, and he wants to kill the man who killed her. In the end, it is revealed that they both succeeded in killing the ones they wanted to. It's then revealed that Tatsumi was killed by Shimada—because Shimada suspected him of watching the other man assault his sister...which was correct. Tatsumi was a vigilante Serial-Killer Killer who allowed Shimada's little sister to be victimized so he can justifiably torture and kill the assailant. The episode ends with Shimada getting his revenge a second time and torturing Tatsumi for what he's done by repeatedly stabbing the hockey pucks linked to his body parts, an act which gets Shimada banished to the Void forever, never to see his sister again.
• Ridiculously Alive Undead: Arbiters sleep, eat, get drunk, and seem to feel the effects of exhaustion. They move and behave just like normal people do. However, it's unknown how much of this (if any) is actually necessary for their "survival."
• Running Gag:
  • Decim's shirt gets grabbed by someone in every episode for the first half of the series. Averted in episode 6, however, because he only shows up briefly during the credits. This time, Ginti falls victim to the assault at the hands of Mayu.
  • Nobody believes Decim when he says that guests can't leave the bar until they finish the game. They believe him only after they tried to find the exit and failed/find the now shut-off elevator.
• Sadistic Choice:
  • In order to prompt the guests into staking their lives on a bar game, Decim implies they will die if they refuse. As a result, many of them end up behaving brutally during the games, since they naturally assume they will die if they lose.
  • Mayu is given the (deceitful) option of sending her Love Interest into the void or sending some random guy in his place.
  • The dark-haired woman is giving a similar "choice": get brought back to life and amend your mistakes, but someone else will die in your place.
• Secret Test of Character:
  • The true purpose of the games, deciding whether the players deserve to be reincarnated or not by revealing their true selves through a high-stress scenario. The twist is that since Decim doesn't really get how humans work, they're not particularly efficient or reliable tests, and the implied cruelty of this trope is completely unnecessary.
  • It is eventually revealed that the entire show is actually a Secret Test of Character Myth Arc regarding the black-haired girl, who was a human who entered Quindecim with the memory that she was dead. She thus refused to play the game, leading to some Laser-Guided Amnesia that landed her in her current situation.
  • Clavis, the elevator operator, is chronically late for every episode except for the final one.
• Secret Underground Passage: Clavis has a key that opens one up in the elevator, which he does so at Decim's command in the finale. It leads to where the humans get discarded after their souls are sent to the void.
• Self-Fulfilling Prophecy: Nona postulates that Takashi was so incapable of trusting others that he never would have found happiness in his relationship, no matter what.
• Sentimental Homemade Toy: Chiyuki’s mom made her Chavvot dolls for her birthday when she was young, which Decim later uses to emotionally exploit her in her secret test of character by showing her a vision of her mom crying while cradling them. At the end, Decim holds onto replicas of them when they part ways.
• Ship Sinking:
  • The first one to sink is Ginti/Mayu. His judgment of her is harsh and particularly deceitful, and he gets her sent into the void. Though on her part, she makes it pretty clear that the only person she cares about is Harada, anyway.
  • Decim/the black-haired woman, as she gets reincarnated in the end, and even if her soul ends up in Quindecim again, it still won't be the same person and she likely won't remember Decim anyway. Though it's implied that he still remembers her (based on her Meaningful Name and the fact he's still able to smile because of her at the end), this just adds to the tragedy and ultimate futility of the ship.
• Ship Tease:
  • Decim/his assistant. The opening shows them dancing together and Decim about to carry her. Episode 5 furthers this by Decim showing concern for her after Ginti knocks her out cold and later carrying her to her bed. He also gives her a Longing Look or two for good measure, and opens up to her in episode seven about his "hobby." After this, she seems to be warming up to him a little more, as well.
  • The drama CD provides tease for Nona/Clavis of all people.
• She Cleans Up Nicely: Mayu, after removing her makeup and changing into a kimono, so much that Ginti doesn't even recognize her and Harada, who previously didn't consider her that cute, is pleased and says that she's his type.
• Shout-Out:
  • In the OP, Ginti does Uma Thurman's "V's across the eyes" move from her dance in Pulp Fiction.
  • Ginti asks Mayu if she is willing to send someone to the void in order to save Harada. If you look closely at the guy Mayu would need to sacrifice, you may notice that he shares a striking resemblance with one popular character. Well, if it isn't Light Yagami! That would explain the strange increase in deaths several of the characters gossip about...
• Shut Up, Kirk!: The black-haired woman finally decides to interject with one of the judgments, giving a young man a Rousing Speech to prevent him from assaulting the other guest and getting sent into the void as a result. The other guest suggests she's lying as part of the young mans judgment and mocks her wishful thinking before shouting about how they live in a Crapsack World.
• Sinister Nudity: Invoked by Decim. The mannequins he hangs behind the bar to scare his guests into believing that they will die if they don't go along with the game are all undressed, making them look like naked hanging bodies.
• Start of Darkness: Tatsumi's start was the murder of his wife, which caused him to find the murderer and then torture and kill him. After "hearing" his late wife's words of gratitude, he then proceeds to spend the rest of his life as a Vigilante Serial-Killer Killer, who would go so far as to watch people be victimized while doing nothing, simply so that he could have someone to "pass judgment on."
• Stealth Pun: The OP features a scene of Nona playing a DanceDanceRevolution-style arcade game...but if you look closer, you can see that the game is built out of a Japanese funeral shrine. So, Nona is literally dancing on someone's grave.
• Surgical Impersonation: In episode 3, it's implied that Mai received plastic surgery in part to look more like Chisato so that Shigeru would notice her.
• Sympathetic P.O.V.: Machiko gets this in episode 2 through the eyes of the black-haired woman, revealing that she lied to her husband to absolve him of the guilt of killing his own child and to preserve her feelings for him.
  • This seems to be a major point of that woman's character type in general. Episode 9 firmly cements her as Decim's Foil when she tells him that dragging out the darkness of someone's soul is forceful and arbitrary, and she sympathetically recalls and somewhat justifies past actions of the dead guests, noting The Power of Love and implying that not everyone who exhibits "darkness" is actually "dark" themselves. Basically, she humanizes the guests, rather than demonizing them.
• They Look Just Like Everyone Else!: Aside from their more eccentric color palettes, the arbiters just look like ordinary people, which probably helps to make their guests feel somewhat more comfortable.
• Time Bomb: Lisa, the last girl Harada was dating before he died, turned out to be the sister of his previous girlfriend who killed herself after he broke up with her. Lisa left him a ticking time bomb (in the shape of a heart and with attached note) hidden under the plate lid.
• Together in Death:
  • Episode 3 is about two childhood friends who grew apart and are reunited in Quindecim, finally able to go on a date with one another.
  • In the penultimate episode, Ginti tricks Mayu into sending herself and Harada into the void. As the elevator descends, their two souls dance together and then combine into one.
• Transferable Memory: Memories are condensed and then get sent to arbiters via something akin to telekinesis.
• The Tragic Rose: The primary ending theme features a mannequin (which in this series is basically a stand-in for a corpse) reaching out for a beautiful red rose before crumbling into pieces.
• Trauma-Induced Amnesia: The shock of dying causes the deceased guests to forget about their own deaths, as well as the events which led up to it.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: The assistant delivers this to Decim in episode 9 and it hits him hard. She calls him out for his "extreme conditions" to bring out the darkness in human's souls when all humans aren't inherently "evil" or "dark". Decim has kept a stoic face and has merely been forcing people to become as desperate and hostile as they become because he changes up the game and forces people to take drastic measures under high-stakes and life-threatening situations. This activates the human emotions that were inside Decim where he clutches his chest and experiences human emotions for the first time.
• Rousseau Was Right: The black-haired woman realizes early on that rather than "drawing out the darkness in people's hearts," the arbiters are creating that darkness by putting them through stressful, traumatic situations. She says that people are rather simple, and will obviously be impacted by the world that surrounds them.
• The Show Must Go On: In the short, after one of the contestants has been beaten unconscious, Decim convinces the despondent assailant (under the thought that he'd killed the older man) to finish the game. This is reinforced in episodes 4 and 9, as well.
• Undeathly Pallor: With the exception of Ambiguously Brown characters like Castra, Ginti, and Tria, the Arbiters are portrayed as significantly more pale than the human characters. Decim stands out the most though - in some lighting his skin is almost as white as his hair◊.
• Undignified Death: In episode 6, it's shown Mayu died by slipping in the shower and hitting her head... because she was too busy jumping around and fangirling over her favorite boy band.
• Unwilling Suspension: Done by Decim towards his guests if they get violent once he has already cast his judgment. He also did this to his assistant after she had been put to sleep to help carry her to bed, and later on he does this again after he puts her to sleep himself so he can prepare her judgment.
• Victorious Childhood Friend: In episode 3, old childhood friends Mai and Shigeru agree to go on a date after the game and even after the shocking revelations they're still up for it and so get to go on one date before departing.
• Vigilante Man: As it turns out, Tatsumi was this in real life, but his methods and behavior makes it seem like it was all just a justification to torture and kill others.
• Void Between the Worlds: To simplify things for the guests, arbiters say that they will end up either in "heaven" or "hell". What they really mean by the latter is "the void."
• We All Die Someday: Variations of this quote comes up in various ways. Arbiters will often make blasé statements about the inevitability of death and the “irrational” ways humans react to it. Most notably however, Decim in the penultimate episode puts a much more optimistic twist on this idea when he explains his interpretation of this concept: that since we are going to die eventually, it should mean we have all the more reason to live now.

  "I believe that humans do not live just so that they can die someday. It is because they live, that they inevitably must die as a result."

• Wedding/Death Juxtaposition: The first episode features a recently deceased newlywed couple. While they don't actually die on the same day they get married, scenes of their happy wedding and shocking death are contrasted against one another throughout the episode to dramatic effect. In episode two, Nona mockingly introduces them to the black-haired woman as "a couple that's newlywed and newly dead!".
• Wham Episode:
  • Episode 5 reveals the Myth Arc of the series—the assistant's judgment. As it turns out, she is a dead human who could recall that she had died upon being sent to Quindecim, so Decim had her memories erased and is now keeping her as his assistant in some Secret Test of Character. This episode also hints at a fundamental difference between humans and arbiters, which isn't really elaborated upon until episode 7.
  • Episode 7 dumps so many swerves so casually that you can hardly tell they even happen. Mainly, Arbiters are emotionless dummies who cannot die, and Nona has had human emotions implanted in Decim for immediate reasons that have yet to be fully revealed.
  • Episode 9 is even worse, since it is a Wham Episode for the series as well as the continuing guests from episode 8. The black-haired woman breaks down and says many, many things that shocks even Decim. She finally expresses her rage and contempt towards how cruel the system he serves is, eliciting a genuine emotional response from him for the first time and sparking Nona's plan. And then the guest's memories return, revealing that Tatsumi was a Serial-Killer Killer and obsessive Vigilante Man who watched Shimada's sister get assaulted simply so he could kill the assailant. Shimada eventually killed him before bleeding out himself. The episode ends on the darkest note yet.
  • Episode 10 reveals the assistant's true name to be Chiyuki, the old man's wife from Death Billiards passed away, and Oculus finally discovers that Nona implanted human emotions into Decim after stealing memories from Clavis.
  • Episode 11, where do we start? We learn that Chiyuki was an professional skater who won several skating competitions until she got an serious knee injury which abruptly ended her career. She went into deep depression and killed herself. In the same episode, Ginti tells Mayu that there is a way to bring Harada's soul back from the void by offering a soul in his place. He lied. As Mayu and Harada descend into the void, they transform into dummies; confirming that before they were dummies, Arbiters were once humans.
• Wham Line:
  • Episode 2 gives us the precise moment when we learn how badly out of his depth Decim is, turning the show's entire premise on its head.
    Decim: Lying? Why would there be any need for that?
  • In episode 10, Decim's assistant remembers her true name.
    Chiyuki's Mother: Her smile really is terrific, huh? I'm with you, Chi.
    Assistant: My name... is Chiyuki.
• What Is This Thing You Call "Love"?: One of the rare examples that's played for horror. This is pretty much the worst possible question to be asked by the judge of the afterlife when you're evaluating his performance.
• What the Hell, Hero?: Decim's assitant, in episode 9, snaps and brutally rips into Decim for the cruelty of his tests.
• When She Smiles:
  • In the children's book within the series, Jimmy felt this for the titular Chavvot. He was very enamored with her smile. This is a direct parallel of Decim and his feelings towards Chiyuki, as her Tearful Smile upon realizing that she was dead is what drew him to her in the first place.
  • Gender inverted with Decim himself, whose parting smile towards Chiyuki allows her to Go Out with a Smile herself.
• Wicked Stepmother: Inverted by Yousuke's stepmom who was much more kind and loving to him than his actual mother, and her greatest desire was for him to call her mom.
• Women Are Wiser: Played with.
  • This is a Justified Trope with the black-haired woman ( Chiyuki), as she has been brought to Quindecim in hopes that her empathy and humanity will influence Decim’s role as an arbiter.
  • Zigzagged with Mayu, who is a lovable idiot but still has the emotional intelligence to defend herself and question Ginti’s philosophy.
• You Can't Kill What's Already Dead: While the guests can be injured, knocked down, or even pass out, they obviously cannot die again. This gets exploited in episode 9 when Shimada finds out that his partner Tatsumi watched his sister get assaulted and didn't do anything despite being a detective. Decim says some version of this trope and gives Shimada the opportunity to torture him for the sake of his revenge.
• Your Worst Memory: Frequently invoked by the arbiters towards their human guests. A lot of the memories that come up during the games are stressful and traumatic, such as Domestic Abuse, Parental Neglect, infidelity, and depression.

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