“Dead Demon Destruction – Episode 1.”

©Ino Asano/Shogakukan/DeDeDeDe Committee

If I were to summarize this episode in one word it would be “unpleasant”. It's a feeling that pervades both our heroine and the world in which she exists. Kadode is a girl who doesn't feel like she fits in her own life. On the one hand, she is a jaded realist and realizes that everything from her family life to her future future is not what she wanted. On the other hand, she still clings to her childhood dreams—carrying her childhood backpack to high school and talking about what it would be like to fly.

Kadode doesn't know who he is or what he wants to become. And while she craved change and excitement when she was young, now that she's entered adulthood, she wants nothing more than for things to stay the same. But a common phrase epitomizes this episode and this series: “The more things change, the more they stay the same.”

The appearance of alien life forever changed the world. The Americans then destroy part of Tokyo, spreading unknown alien radiation in the process. However, three years later, everything returned to normal. Kadode's life now is generally no different from before the aliens arrived. Oh sure, her father is “dead” and her mother is basically a hypochondriac—but here's what might happen if there wasn't an alien ship appearing overhead . She still goes to school, hangs out with her friends, and struggles to deal with her feelings for her teachers.

Even so, there was still a sense of unease—a sense that things were getting tense. As Kadode's school life is coming to an end, this phase of humanity is also coming to an end. After all, we saw in Episode 0 how things would play out in just a few years. All that's left is to get there.

This first episode is amazing. The story, the characters, the mood—it's all perfect. But you know what's not perfect? How Ocean Studios handled the subtitles and dubbing.

Let me be clear. Overall, 90% of this episode's subtitles and dubbing were fine. However, that remaining 10% is especially serious. On the one hand, we have the fact that no text on the screen is translated—whether native or non-native. This means that everything from what characters are reading to on-screen narration notes—such as those explaining when or where scenes take place—is written in English. Japan. (Though this was fixed in the dubbed version.)

On the other hand, we have the problem that the subtitles aren't subtitles at all—they're dubbed subtitles. This means that the words appearing on screen must match when the English voice actor speaks—not when the Japanese voice actor speaks—so the timing can cause confusion. To make matters worse, the dub itself has a huge error. Nearly 30 seconds of voiceover at around the 4 minute mark is missing from the dubbed version. There is background sound and music, only dialogue.

So, does all of this ruin the anime? Are not. Like I said, it's mostly fine. However, this English presentation is clearly inferior to what we would expect from anime for a service that people pay a lot of money to use. Ocean Studios and Crunchyroll need to make sure these issues are fixed before the next episode airs, lest these problems become a defining characteristic of the anime rather than an excellent story.

Dead Demon's Dededede Destruction is now streaming on Crunchyroll.