Dead Dead Demon's Dededede Destruction

Episode 3

In this episode, we take a step back from Kadode's existential crisis and look at what's going on with the ancillary cast as well as the government. It's basically open season on UFOs. The government is shooting down everyone they can—even though the Americans come in and collect the remains. Of course, we know (and the Americans know) that these UFOs are, in fact, manned craft—meaning each shot is killing at least a few of the aliens. On the other hand, the aliens have harmed no one. Well, other than the inconvenience of blotting out the sky, the only human to die in this episode does so because they were hit by a crashing UFO that the government shot down.

So why is the government doing this? Basically to show they are doing something—anything—to deal with the aliens. It's all just PR to promote the upcoming expo in Tokyo and keep the politicians in their seats come the next election. Simply put, it's a waste of both lives and money.

We also get a peek at what's going on at S.E.S.—the toy company-turned-weapons-manufacture giving the government the ability to shoot down UFOs in the first place. Rather than the people at the top, we get to meet a mid-level PR manager—a girl who knows nothing really and just joined the company because she liked the robotic dogs they used to make. Now she's a cog in the machine that's killing aliens for no reason. The question here is: “Does her job make her a bad person?” She's not doing anything evil directly but her company is. How far does her responsibility go? How far does anyone go when it comes to what's going on?

That said, the real meat of the episode comes in the form of the date between Kiho and Kenichi. Kiho is a girl experiencing young love for the first time. She's into her boyfriend—eagerly learning about him and the things he likes. She worries about her friendships, her place in the group, music, fashion, and getting along with her boyfriend. Or to put it another way, her worries are of the more personal/superficial variety.

Kenichi, on the other hand, has a terrible case of being terminally online. He believes that he is a free thinker—concerned with the “real” problems that shallow people like Kiho can't see. In truth, he is firmly placed within his online echo chamber. He hears only things that support his ideas and doesn't even think to question them. Worse still, he believes that his echo chamber is actually representative of what society at large thinks. He constantly appeals to this (mythical) majority as proof that he is right. And when that doesn't work, he does the typical “appeal to authority” fallacy (like random musicians would somehow know more about what's actually happening than anyone else).

In the end, neither has any clue as to what is actually happening—and that's the point. The difference is that Kiho has accepted (and decided to ignore) her ignorance while Kenichi has rejected it—filling his gaps in knowledge with the equally ignorant words of others. This is the state of society in Dead Dead Demon's Dededede Destruction. It's all just an endless cycle of the blind leading the blind. We have either people taking action for no other reason than to appear as if they are doing something or simply ignoring the issue and focusing on the things actually within their control. Humanity, people. Humanity.

...Anyone else need a drink?

Rating:

Random Thoughts:

• Ouran is clearly lashing out at Kiho due to jealousy. However, the moment she realizes Kiho's actually hurting, she is the first to comfort the girl over her breakup—and she quickly wrangles the other girls into emotional support mode.

• Poor Kiho. While the others clearly are her friends, you can see how, even after working to cheer her up, they naturally shift back into their “childhood friend” pairs and leave her as the odd one out.

• Man, the timing of some of these dubtitles is killing me. They're either way too late or way too early when paired with the Japanese voice track. Also, the lack of on-screen text translation continues (but only in the subbed version).

• Kenichi's breakup message is impossibly cringe. He says he'll become strong enough to protect her... but protect her from what? From what we've seen, the alien-caused body count remains at 0.