Sara Talks Anime

This is the rare instance where the romanized form of the name is close enough to the English name to the point where I don’t think I need to tag it. Could I choose to tag it? Yes. Will I? No. So consider my writeups of Dead Account a nice break from having to see multiple names in the tags and wondering whether I mistagged or if that’s just the romanized form of the Japanese name. I am not trying Japanese characters in tags. I don’t want people thinking I actually speak Japanese.

Anyway, the episode begins with an intriguing question: what do you think happens when someone who has a social media account dies? While the answer to that question is obvious in our world, as it turns out, there’s a different explanation here. Put a pin on that, I’ll touch upon it later.

The series follows Soji Enishiro, known as the online ragebaiter (or “flamebaiter”, as the term used in the series is) Aoringo. He makes videos intended to get people to leave comments on them, regardless of if those comments are positive or negative. To him, any engagement is good engagement.

Now, he’s not doing it for a bad purpose. He’s doing it for the money, so that his younger sister (Akari)can get a treatment that could possibly cure whatever illness she has, or at least make the symptoms of it not as bad. This is intended to take place in a month.

Right on time, we get a time skip of a month and see life move on as always in Soji’s world. Soji has even stopped making videos because of the fact that he doesn’t have a reason to anymore. (That’s the best way for me to word it without spoiling what happens yet.) He’s busy texting Akari, who is seemingly still at a hospital, and Soji himself has been enjoying food that seems to be more on the finer side.

Then a guy breaks into Soji’s house and tries to break his phone. I wish I was joking. While this guy keeps apologizing for his language, I think that’s the least of everyone’s concerns at the moment. We learn two things during this time:

1. Akari actually didn’t survive her operation.
2. The “Akari” that Soji’s been texting is actually a ghost haunting her account, thus making her account go from a “dead account” to a “ghost account”.

Without getting too spoiler heavy, after a bunch of fighting regarding whether to exorcise Akari’s ghost or not, the guy trying to break Soji’s phone gets knocked out and Soji unlocks cybernetic powers in the form of blue flames which he uses to exorcise his sister’s ghost. However, he works himself too hard and falls unconscious, which makes the first guy and his team that came over to the area after the fact decide to take Soji to Miden Academy. That’s where the episode ends, and the only reason I’m even bringing up how the episode ends here is because that would likely get shown next episode anyway. May as well give you guys an idea of how the next episode will start.

If I remember correctly, I first heard word of this series in a TikTok I saw on my FYP prior to this anime season starting, and I thought the premise was interesting. Seeing Crunchyroll was simulcasting it made me decide to add it to my watchlist this anime season. And overall, I’m enjoying my time so far. This first episode did a good job at hooking me, and I’m excited to see where the series goes from here!

If there’s one little thing I’d say I have as a grievance with this series so far, it’s a little typo I found in Crunchyroll’s subtitles.

Yeah, it’s a small error, but I literally paused the episode when I saw it, thus taking me out of the experience. I know it’s not a major spelling error (most people seeing it likely wouldn’t have noticed it), but seeing that missing “to” was just…who was responsible for writing these subs?

Even then, this gripe is just if you needed me to reach for one. It’s just a minor thing that ultimately doesn’t impact the quality of the episode itself too much.

I’m gonna keep watching. I want to see what happens to Soji.

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