That would certainly make the title 'Death March' make more sense. In a sense, being suddenly transported inside the very game he was working on could have very easily served as an effective metaphor for being trapped inside his own job. You can imagine that any game developer would have to have an innate love for games to start working in the industry in the first place, but I could imagine Satou not only hating his job, but games as well, seeing as he works on them all day. He doesn't have time to bathe, his co-workers and clients are piling last minute tasks on top of him, and he has to sleep in his own office. To Death March's credit, episode 1 depicts how our protagonist, Satou, is living an extremely miserable existence running himself ragged working in the video game industry. The first issue I have with Isekai shows is how little it matters that the main character once existed in the real world, as well as how little they care about leaving their old life behind, even if they were video game or fantasy fans previously. So I ask you to think about if the time you're spending watching and potentially defending this show is really worthwhile. If there's nothing else you want to watch this season, I almost feel like it would be a better decision to forgo watching anime entirely, to take a break and do something else with your life until something better comes out, at least if you haven't resolved yourself to blog about anime like I have. There's no way we'll ever be able to consume all the media we want to during our lifetimes, especially as more and more gets produced. Death March may not be the worst show ever made, but our time on this Earth is finite. I will say, however, that if you do like Death March, I would personally claim that there are plenty of other better anime you could be spending your time on, both older anime and anime from the current season. You're not a bad person for liking Death March, and I don't think you necessarily have bad taste either. When I refer to 'the audience' in this post, I mean that in a broad sense- what I think the audience for the show is, and what the show thinks its audience is. I've never even met you in all likelihood, so I don't know what you're like. I should also preface this by saying that if you like Death March or any other anime that I may criticise, you should not take that as a criticism of you specifically. Rather, my problem is that recent shows have been doing almost everything lazily and badly, for reasons I am about to outline using Death March as an example. I'd love the idea of living out the fantasy this genre presents us with, and I love fantasy stories weather they're Isekai or not. In fact, in concept, it should be one of my favourite types of stories. Now, I'm not going to claim that the entire genre is contemptible. For such a popular trend, Isekai shows sadly feel like they're single-handedly lowering the average quality of the entire medium. I blame the popularity of Sword Art Online, personally, since these Isekai shows also tend to have a video game twist to them. It's no secret that the Isekai genre, primarily defined by having a protagonist transported to a fantasy world, has become an extremely popular trend in anime this decade.
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