REVIEW: ‘DEAD DEAD DEMONS DEDEDEDE DESTRUCTION’ Brings Post-Apocalyptic Dread and Hope in Episode 0

This is a mostly spoiler-free review of DEAD DEAD DEMONS DEDEDEDE DESTRUCTION. This review covers EPISODE 0 which premiered Thursday, May 23 at 8:00 PM PT. Thank you Crunchyroll for the advanced screener of the English Dub!

“I wish the world would end so I won’t have to deal with this” Raise your hand if you thought that Inio Asano’s first animated work would be DEAD DEAD DEMONS DEDEDEDE DESTRUCTION? Was a manga with a premise of a world forever changed a little on the nose to watch right now? Are aliens ever off the table in pop culture and the media we consume? This is an Asano manga series I hadn’t got around to reading so I have been hyped that the anime adaptation was coming out. Episode 0 of DEAD DEAD DEMONS DEDEDEDE DESTRUCTION opens to perpetually tired and sleepy voiced Nobuo Koyama (Giles Panton) working away his life. For a moment, he sees his daughter, the unimpressed Kadode (Elyse Maloway) who not so gently tells him he stinks and that she’s home that day, August 31 because it is summer break. In a taxicab, Nobuo, looking out the window along with other Japanese people across the city witnesses the alien mother-ship touch down. The first five minutes of DEAD DEAD DEMONS DEDEDEDE DESTRUCTION throws the audience for a ride and then a father wakes up—years later with a found family, a sea of exposition and history, and a need to find his family: his daughter Kadode. The world has changed, he himself has changed, and the place of refuge he’s been at is at first glan…