Despite there actually being a continuous flux of visitors at the Quinn Decim, due to the nature of their visits, there are actually not many visitor's sans the curios black haired woman that actually stay long enough to have significant screen time. However while I won't speak specifically of each visiting character, each visit from any given character almost always play a key role in influencing our primary characters beliefs, as well as the story on the whole despite their relatively short screentime.Being that they're subjects of Decim's judgement, & often times his new assistant has a problem with the way he handles his judgements. Even for being an arbiter, Decim is rather quite lifeless & short spoken, and is plain as his hair is white. Death parade to me, is also a story about humanizing Decim as a character, as he steadily grows provoked & touched by his curios assistant's sentiments & gestures, his perspective starts to shift & change as he becomes a little bit more human.
It's his journey into learning what the essence of humanity & emotions, and how such feelings are critical when deciding one's fate through his judgements. A process that was once easy for him, now becomes increasingly more difficult & confusing for him, as he continues to learn what humanity & what life really means from his black haired assistant. Compared to Decim, her personality is more or less the opposite, where she openly voices her opinion & appreciation for others - Decim on the other hand is short spoken and keeps to himself, aside from being to the point with his duties as an arbiter, & where Decim is not easily moved, his assistant is swayed quickly by her heart and easily upset. Though both are similar in their sense of politeness, and casual nature as people, that they're able intermingle & coexist.
In conjunction with Decim, is of course his temporary black haired assistant, in her newly found role as Decim's assistant, along with observing the ways and lending a hand to Decim as a Arbiter, she often times grows bothered by his methods, when probing his visitors darkest memories, & through this they learn from one another & about each other - Both from their agreements and their disagreements. In this process, his black haired assistant also slowly learns more about herself and who she is, as her memory is slowly jogged when showing empathy for visitor's struggles that are probed by Decim's many games. It's this duality that takes precedent between Decim learning about what it means to be human - & his curios assistant in discovering who she was and her deep regrets for the mistakes she's made in life.
Nona on the other hand, being the manager of the arbitration system, it falls upon her to make sense of this conflict between the hardship of dealing with the stress of judgement in deciding one's fate & judging someone with fairness, empathy & equality. Though fairly outwardly appealing & seemingly young, she's also calculated, is experienced in her wisdom & is disciplined when dealing with those under her, albeit sometimes violent. Though she also has a somewhat more listless and indifferent side about her, in addition to being quite amicable a fair amount of the time. I think she's an interesting character, as she has a level of complexity that other characters within the show don't really have, definitely proving to be somewhat of a favourite of mine. The old man Oculus on the other hand, the creator of the arbitration system & just second in line to "god", likes to play billiards & banter with Nona. Being that he's also manipulative as he is perceptive, quick to learn about Nona's ploys to subvert the arbitration system by making the arbiter's more human, contributing to the mini ambiguous conflict subplot lurking behind the main character driven story.
Being a relatively short watch, others only get something of a supporting role. Namely, characters such as Ginti. Being Decim's antithesis, he's rash, hotheaded, lacking manners & has read hair too at that. I mentioned him because he does get a decent amount of screen time, or at least enough to warrant enough of a conversation. Since he's also an arbiter, we also to get to see one or two of his own judgements as an arbiter. Being critical and disgusted of Decim of not being able to judge his assistant, insisting that Humans & Arbiters can't coexist with one another. Though he two one day has trouble judging a woman that visits his bar. She also serves as counter to Ginti, being that she air headed & eccentric. Their relationship in the end goes on to further prove just how flawed and unfair the arbiter's judgement process & system really is. Also as a side note I love Quinn as character, as she'd pretty whimsical and chill, though sad as she didn't get much screen-time though.
If I were to point out any problems, it'd probably be with the occasionally cheesy dialogue regarding the visitors of Quinn Decim, at times a few of these moments that were supposed to be more pivotal ended up being somewhat overdone, & while I generally like the idea's that Death Parade has to offer, I feel like while Yuzuru Tachikawa actually has written a pretty interesting story and script, as a director he doesn't necessarily have the best sense of framing & shot flow. I mean at times his framings & use of camera movements are sometimes uninspired or perhaps unmotivated, thankfully though he's able to pull through in the most pivotal & climatic moments. While the story and related details & mechanics are not perfect, as somethings are still left unanswered & other characters underdeveloped. Along with the oddly narrow and perhaps claustrophobicly vague setting, I personally feel these were only moderate issues that didn't necessarily effect the emotional outcome that we arrived to at the end and my personal viewing experience in general.I will say though that despite being quite climatic, at the very end of things, despite having reached a conclusion to the curios black haired woman's story, what about the rest of the world itself? Even if by miracle we do get a S2, which character would we segway off of? Due to the ambiguity of it all, I thinks it's best if Madhouse left the possibility of a second instalment alone, unless they're confident they can fix the said issues with another chapter in the given story.
