Review: Deadman Wonderland 1

At first glance, Deadman Wonderland looked like a pretty bog-standard action show based on its premise: A theme park open to the public that uses prisoners to entertain the paying customers.

The show starts thankfully without the OP theme, which does a lot to set up the show itself: A middle school in Nagano is the catalyst for the events with Ganta Igarashi, the stereotypical reluctant main character in tow talking to his friend Mimi and his best male friend. They reminisce about living in Tokyo and going to Deadman Wonderland as a class trip,  with Ganta mentioning that he doesn’t remember his life in the metropolis. A shadowy figure that he calls “The Red Man” appears and decimates the third floor classroom using some sort of concussion wave that kills all but Ganta leading into the main emphasis of the episode, which is his subsequent arrest, speedy trial and conviction for the mass murder of his entire class, leading to his transfer to Deadman Wonderland.

The animation’s nice and fluid as expected for manglobe, but the CG work for The Red Man’s power is glaringly obvious and kind of distracting, though some of the other characters such as the head warden Makina are attractive, if a bit stiff character-wise. The head of Deadman Wonderland is a psychotic park manager and treats Ganta like a human birthday present, toying with him. The show ends with Ganta meeting Shiro, a young girl wearing a bodysuit and mittens that looks identical to his dead friend Mimi with a sadistic streak who ends up saving him after initially attacking him when prisoners hassle him and beat him up.

Overall, the show isn’t bad but it’ll need time to get its characters fully developed and a lot still needs to be explained, such as the significance of the candy mentioned in passing and the full extent of the collars fitted on the prisoners, which would be technically possible if not for those pesky human rights charters. I may not have liked the first episode, but there is a lot of potential. The gore certainly helps.

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