Dance with Devils

DANCE WITH DEVILS

ANIME

STATUS
COMPLETE
EPISODES
12
RELEASE
December 23, 2015
LENGTH
23 min

DESCRIPTION

Ritsuka Tachibana has always been a good student, so she is completely shocked when she is suddenly summoned by the student council. And that's only the beginning; from there, her life is turned upside down as her mother gets kidnapped and Ritsuka gets drawn into a world of vampires and devils. Both groups are searching for the "Grimoire," a forbidden item allowing its owner to rule the world.

(Source: IMDB)

CAST

Shiki Natsumezaka
Daisuke Hirakawa
Lindo Tachibana
Wataru Hatano
Rem Kaginuki
Souma Saitou
Mage Nanashiro
Subaru Kimura
Urie Sogami
Takashi Kondou
Roen
Tatsuhisa Suzuki
Ritsuka Tachibana
Himika Akaneya
Jek
Yuuto Suzuki
Azuna Kuzuha
Risae Matsuda
Maria Tachibana
Hibiku Yamamura
Nesta
Keiji Fujiwara
Marta
Kanami Satou

EPISODES

Dubbed

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RELATED TO DANCE WITH DEVILS

Cover Art for Dance with Devils: Fortuna

MOVIE RomanceDance with Devils: Fortuna

MANGA RomanceDance with Devils: Blight

REVIEWS

Kalladry
67/100
Entertainingly mediocre. Grab a friend with no advance warnings, then inflict this on yourselves with no other prep.
_Second-year student Ritsuka Tachibana has the perfect school-to-life balance, but all of that’s thrown into chaos when she discovers that several of her handsome male classmates are actually demons in disguise._
This was a terrible, terrible show. I enjoyed every minute of it.

Because HOO BOY HAS IT BEEN A WHILE SINCE I WATCHED A SHOW SO UNINTENTIONALLY STUPID.

Let the Pomeranian Greek Chorus usher you in.

So what the description above, taken straight from Funimation, didn’t tell me was that the devils would be part of a battle between Evil and…Other Evil, fighting to find some Magic MacGuffin tied to our main character (of course).

Look, the story…it’s there. If the show had wanted to focus on the story, it would’ve been fine. But this show is the poster child for guilty pleasures: its focus is Ritsuka, a singularly boring cutout of a character, getting tangled up with extremely pretty magic boys who are determined to use her (or protect her from use), and who sing about it. so much.

Oh? Didn’t I mention? THIS IS A MUSICAL.

And it transformed what would have been an otherwise mediocre show in an extremely entertaining mediocre show.

No wait, come back, I’m not done yet.

Watching because the story sounds interesting? It falls flat.

Watching it, particularly with another person, to see how much more ridiculous and stupid it gets? Fantastic.

As we watched it veered more and more into the realm of absurd entertainment because the characters are so stupid.

Ritsuka’s defining trait as the protagonist is a blind and unrelenting inability to keep herself safe. “Don’t leave my side” a character will tell her, making it clear this is so Ritsuka won’t be killed. “Wait, I need to go do this thing. Better do it and just not tell anyone, especially the person worried about my safety,” Ritsuka will think twenty seconds later. There are multiple episodes where the plot, which this show technically has, I guess, moves forward only because Ritsuka has decided to ignore anything that might keep her safe for the fifth time this week.

(It occurs to me you could easily make a drinking game: take a drink every time Ritsuka willfully endangers her own life. Take a drink every time a male character expresses ~feelings~ for Ritsuka. Take a drink every time Best Friend Azuna, the only character with a brain, tries to bring sense into the equation. Take a drink for every character that bursts into song. For health and safety reasons, I recommend non-alcoholic drinks.)

The main devil, student council president (of course) Rem, has exactly one facial expression (annoyed), one emotion (annoyed), and one way of dealing with everyone or thing that comes up (treating them like an annoyance), which is why it’s frikkin hilarious to me that he’s supposed to be a love interest.

(To be fair, every male character is a potential love interest, the portrayals of which involve less desire than me picking out cheese at the grocery store.)

At the end of the second episode when Ritsuka’s older brother Lindo shows up, I wondered if this was a spinoff of a dating game. You already had 4 pretty devils with tissue-thin personalities and even thinner explanations for any attraction they felt toward our mushy overcooked cauliflower of a heroine, and here was yet another male character who was very prettily designed. Too prettily designed. And he doesn’t look super related to Ritsuka, I wonder if that’s relevant…

(Spoiler alert: it is indeed relevant, which I called before he got his own rock song about how he will protect her as an expression of his love.)

(Worry not, this show isn’t nearly good enough to deal with the implications of this, so it just doesn’t! One-sided pseudo-incest is just thrown in there on the side to ~spice things up~ and give Ritsuka or the audience a pretty boy who’s not ostensibly evil.)

But no, the anime is original! Which makes this all the more befuddling because there wouldn’t have been a built-in audience yet!

Verdict

English Dub? Yes. The voice acting was okay. And that would have been fine without further comments except this show is a MUSICAL. And these poor, poor English voice actors were clearly not chosen for their ability to sing, at least in most of the keys the songs are in. (I suspect in keys better-suited to their voices, and without having to try and put on a character voice, they would be fine. But that’s not what happened here.)

But no, every main character gets at least one song.

I get the distinct impression that the lyrics were translated very close to literal translations, and then they were never adjusted to make those words & syllables in English fit the existing melodies. What probably sounded fine in Japanese (and if you watch songs in Japanese, they do indeed sound melodic) comes off as clunky and awkward in English, and that’s before they try to fit these words and phrases into the melody of the existing songs. Like, there’s a duet at the end with the lines “Two dissimilar worlds, two dissimilar paths,” and they really have to rush to get all the syllables in, when “two different worlds, two different paths” would have worked JUST AS WELL.

For example, have this wonderful song from early in the series:

See what I mean? I spent so, SO much time ranting to my watching companion about how I could’ve easily rewritten this line or that line and made them so, so much better to English ears while keeping the same meaning. I don’t understand why the decision wasn’t made to adjust the English song lyrics but hey: perhaps it meant the English version ran perilously close to having decent audio, which would then put the focus back on how flimsy the story itself is.

Visuals: Nothing standout, not terrible since I literally never thought about them. Too distracted by lines like So helpless and pathetic, like a rabbit controlled by Providence, those melancholic eyes reflect a life so pitiful.

Worth watching? AHAHAHAHA grab a friend and don’t warn them in advance, then inflict this on yourselves with no other preparation. This is the most fun I’ve had actively watching a show with someone in months.
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coolbeans9289
50/100
*Spoilers* This show is filled with absolute idiots
The show itself, has a basic story that they somehow still messed up. And somehow nearly every character fell in love with the main character; a useless, whiny nobody. These people that "Fall in love" with her include, a guy that basically ignores her, a guy who had no issue with killing her if he needed to, a weird masochist, a guy who wanted to basically make her his slave, and the worst one HER FUCK!NG COUSIN. There's only one character who's worth anything AND HE'S STILL A DOUCHE BAG. He's a cocky asshole but at least he treats her LIKE A FUCK!NG HUMAN BEING. The show also has random dance/ musical numbers every episode UN-IRONICALLY and OMFG some of them are truly terrible. To the point your fighting the urge to force a pair of scissors in your ears. This show lacked any solid plot and the romance that was set up at the end amounted to ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. HE LIKED HER AND SHE LIKED HIM, THEY KISSED AND NEVER SPOKE TO EACH OTHER AGAIN. LIKE WHAT?!?!?!? Mage was the only thing in this show that made it manageable. Everything else sucked ass, the characters, the plot, the romance, and especially the main character who ignored everyone that knew what they were talking about and almost got herself killed ALMOST EVERY EPISODE. You knew that she was going to do something stupid before she even did it because she truly is a dumb fucking bitch who would forget to breathe if no one told her to. Also the school makes no fucking sense, because the devils ( they need a stupid grim wore) and that's the only reason they are in the human world are all members of the student council at the school. Actually they are the ONLY MEMBERS, HOW TF DID THAT HAPPEN. Everybody in this show is a fucking idiot and I hate them. Except Mage, I love him <3. Also everybody that the main character knows is somehow helpful to her or the plot. ISTG THERE IS NO IRRELEVANT SIDE CHARACTERS. ZERO. It makes no sense how this whole show is filled with idiots, the devils, the vampires, the exorcists, all want her dead. THEY SHOULD HAVE JUST FUCKING KILLED HER. THE SHOWS WOULD BE TEN TIMES BETTER THAN THE BULLSHIT I WATCHED. AND NONE OF THIS WOULD HAVE HAPPENED HAD LITERALLY ANY OF THE CHARACTERS NOT LIKED HER. IF JUST ONE OF THEM DIDN'T LIKE HER THAT DUMB BITCH WOULD BE DEAD. BUT NO. SHE'S SO AMAZING THAT ANYBODY WHO HAS WALKED THE EARTH FALLS IN LOVE WITH HER STUPID ASS. I HATE HER. SHE DOES DUMB SHIT THAT IS VERY CLEARLY A TRAP. EVERY EPISODE. SHE IS INCAPABLE OF LEARNING ANYTHING FOR HERSELF AND SHE SHOULD HAVE DIED IN THE FIRST EPISODE. I HATE HER. I HATE EVERYONE. Except Mage~ he deserves some ice cream. Even though he fell in love with her ( even though she fucking sucked), he was the most manageable of the six who fell in love with her stupid ass. Moral of the story, FUCK RITZKA SHE IS A STUPID BITCH WHO CAUSES PROBLEMS FOR EVERYONE.
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ScarletLily24
60/100
Dance with Devils : The messy otome game anime
Dance with Devils is an It is a reverse harem/musical anime that came before it's otome game version did.

The Plot:
Ritsuka Tachibana is a normal second-year high school student who attends Shikō Academy.
She lives with her mother and big brother, who is currently studying in England.
One day Ritsuka gets summoned by the student council, in suspicion that she has broke some school rules. The student council president Rem Kaginuki, a devil, approaches her and gets repelled by her necklace. The student council members are surprised but let her leave.
When Ritsuka gets home, her mother is injured and some men are going through their home, looking for something. Ritsuka flees and calls the police but when they arrive the scene, her mother is gone and house is undamaged. She is scared and goes to stay with her friend, but is soon attacked by the men. The men are vampires an demand that she reveals the location of the "Forbidden Grimoire".

The Plot Spoilers:
She is rescued by Rem, who is the heir of the Arlond family, the most powerful devil family. Rem also wants to find the Forbidden Grimoire since his father has ordered him to do so. The other devils Shiki, Urie and Mage want to find the grimore too.
Lindo comes back from England when he hears about their mother's disappearance. Lindo has all these years been studying to become an exorcist to protect their family from devils and vampires. It's later revealed that Lindo is half human-half vampire, His father is the leader of the vampires. Lindo is also actually not Ritsuka's brother, but her cousin.
It's also revealed that Ritsuka is half devil- half human, Her father is a devil named Maksis, who was the former devil king before Rem's father. Ritsuka also has the grimore inside her, she is the grimore.
As the story progresses it becomes very obvious that Lindo has been in love with Ritsuka for a long time and now Rem, Urie, Shiki, Mage and Roen (a cerberus under Ritsuka's father Maksis) are all falling in love with her.

Personal Opinion:
The story is a common otome game plot. There were parts that i liked but the anime is messy. The anime is so fast paced, short and baffling. All the guys falling in love with her, even her real cousin.. Personally i was put off about Lindo loving Ritsuka. The ending for this anime is also "open ending" type of situation and it is not satisfactory at all. The characters too were very common otome characters with really nothing new and refreshing to bring to the table. It is a shame that this promising concept was wasted to do an anime like this.
If you want to watch an anime to laugh for it's "cringiness", go ahead, but don't expect too much. I don't like to use words "bad" or "stupid" when describing animes, but this one did have a "bad plot". The only reason to watch this anime is for the songs, they are very catchy and good.

6/10 and i feel like i am being generous..
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