The review contains spoilers for the movie and all other mediums of DEEMO Grief is like the ocean it comes on waves ebbing and flowing. Sometimes the water is calm and sometimes it is overwhelming. All we can do is learn to swim. Vicki Harrison https://i.ur.com/2pFlnGb.png Menu artwork after completing the game the first time with a golden tree illuminating the rest of the darkness alongside the window in the ceiling Introduction The mobile game DEEMO is frustrating for its obscure but unique storytelling. You have to play a certain way and expect certain things to not miss important details that help to understand the core aspects of the story. To list some examples: There are no save slots Youre never prompted that new dialogue now exists Dialogue can silently become unavailable to read after a certain amount of progress Dialogue is shown randomly meaning to see new dialogue you may have to tap a character or location multiple times. You risk accidentally skipping new dialogue by accident and you have to tap that location multiple times again and get lucky. Rayark developer failed to communicate that 3.0s Forgotten Hourglass which Ill now call Chapter 3 is the actual conclusion to the story not 2.0 Chapter 2. Rather Chapter 3s story was communicated as an alternative perspective in the trailers. Then it was communicated as the conclusion to the story in the games changelog and the confusing messaging was never cleared up. Chapter 3 is paygated. Yes the true ending is paywalled behind DLC. Its Asuras Wrath all over again. Worst of all Chapter 3 has no new cutscenes nothing new to give players the clue that a new story is even being communicated to the player. The new story exists as dialogue visual storytelling with the changed backgrounds and the moments one collects but players are not prompted to think of these as more story to follow so most people did not care... This doesnt even account for the segmentation of the story across many untranslated and even rare media: DEEMO Last Dream no English translation DEEMO Prelude and Sakura Note No official English translation just a fan translation from JapaneseChineseEnglish DEEMO After Story Exists only on a discontinued version of the game DEEMO Last Recital for a discontinued console the PlayStation Vita. It is also the most grindy version and has lag spikes during rhythm gameplay Other than After Story the aforementioned three titles also include information that conflicts with the game canon as if it wasnt convoluted enough. Last Dream explicitly notes that Alice completely forgot about the castle when she woke up. In the game she not only remembers the castle because it is her mind palace but she revisits it multiple times in Chapter 3. DEEMO Reborn the reimagining of the original game could have solved these problems but decided to have even less story and even less music Its so baffling No matter how someone approaches DEEMOs story its going to be a convoluted and frustrating experience No wonder no one else cares about it https://i.ur.com/k8G62nl.png Timelines of the whole DEEMO franchise representing three different conflicting canons plus recommendations I heard news that an anime adaptation of the game was coming out. Interesting. Perhaps I should do my best to replay the game for the story try to find translations for all the other media and somehow get access to After Story despite never owning a Vita before. After experiencing the art the story and the soundtrack across the wide franchise DEEMO became my favourite story in fiction. I mean this sincerely. I am not joking. If you werent like me a person who didnt really care about the story this much before the revisit a person willing to be a completionist who can put up with the bullcrap and you were just a new player interested in one of the earliest examples of a mobile rhythm game with an allegedly heartbreaking story it is understandable why DEEMOs story is inaccessible beyond Chapter 2. The ending of Chapter 2 is good but it is truly frustrating. It is not the actual end of the story. Theres so much more and it is so much better but it is inaccessible to most people. The rest of the story that I love so dearly is almost impossible to share with anyone else. No amount of praise I can give is enough to motivate a new casually interested player into such an incomprehensible mess of poor narrative design and business decisions. And why would they be? They would rather watch and play something that is actually wellmade. Fair enough bro cant argue against that So when an anime movie was announced I had a little glimmer of hope in my soul. DEEMO Reborn failed me so my hope for the DEEMO anime was that it would not have the problems present in the games. The story the artwork the soundtrack can be experienced passively and without worrying if you missed anything critical. It would be translated into English in full. It would be purchasable on Amazon streamable even. You wouldnt need to do stupid things like tapping a screen endlessly. You wouldnt need to pay extra for the full story. The movie would and should have been the complete package of Alices tragic story and how she comes to terms with the death of her brother Hans. Much like the game I expected the anime to communicate Alices recovery in three core ways at the least: slow painful and introspective. The movie did not do this. Smallish Recap of the Details Ill assume you have already seen the movie or played the game so you know how the general story goes. Girl falls into fantasy world like Alice in Wonderland the most subtle inspiration of all time. Black TimBurton monster guy who seems nice plays music to grow the tree towards the window she fell from so she can escape back. Some trouble along the way but they succeed. Big revelation happens on grief and trauma but then the happy ending happens. As far as the movie is concerned this resolution happens because Alice now has friends she can confide in to move on from her trauma. She wont have to fight it alone anymore so shes able to move on. The movie replaces most of the previous and original stories with its own original story for its own thematic outcome. So Ill also give a smallish recap on the rest of the canon and what remains consistent across all of them. Alice and Hans parents died before she turned 8 and he turned 18 their mother committing suicide after her husband had a sudden heart attack. They were already neglectful parents but when her mother could not process the grief she felt she abandoned her children for good. Alice still had her brother Hans and he was the only person she could truly confide in feel protected feel loved and be motivated to do anything with. But theres a disturbing implication that the siblings have death near them at all times and their time is soon to come maybe by their own hand. And indeed Hans died leaving Alice all alone. It is a genuine question in the light novel whether Alice will commit suicide from losing her brother just as her mother committed suicide from losing her husband. Its a very dark canon for what was originally spawned from a more kidfriendly canon. Theres literally a moment where a mother gives birth to a child in a public park and a scene with implied sexual assault. All of that is knowledge specific to the Chiren Kina canon and not from the games and nothing since has conflicted with this information. Its the first example of Rayark being handsoff for good and for bad. Everything described now comes from Tonys canon the definitive canon. He is the creator and director of the original games by Rayark making the rest of this recap from the original and definitive story. One day Alice and Hans are hit by a reckless truck driver and are sent to a hospital. Within a coma Alice has an internal battle within herself that determines if she wakes up or dies in her sleep. The Little Girl is the part of her that wants to wake up. The Masked Lady is the one who wants to sleep and keep dreaming. The most important characters to know their roles for are Alice herself and her two constructs of self The Little Girl and The Masked Lady. The Little Girl is the Masked Ladys doppelganger who without knowing threatens to end the dream and destroy everything the Masked Lady sacrificed to keep. Deemo is revealed to be Hans so if Deemo is gone Hans is gone. Everything the Masked Lady does is with the motivation that Without my brother I cant go on living Please dont take him away from me. By continuing to keep dreaming and staying in the coma she can continue to be with the last fragment of her brother she has left. Alices life the actual person hinges on whether she can wake up and handle a reality with her brother gone. If the Masked Lady wins Alice dies. Her last moments are with the castle growing dimmer and colder as the last candles go out but these last moments are with what is left of her dear brother even if it is just a dream. If the Little Girl wins Alice lives but she has no choice but to face the sobering reality. The Little Girl wins. https://i.ur.com/F06t7Pt.png Alice after waking up and facing her sobering reality The Masked Lady represents Alices maladaptiveness to her brothers death. She will always be a part of Alice. If she disappears so does Alices memory of her brother because forgetting her brother completely is the only real way to get rid of the part of her that grieves and suffers. It would be convenient but thats impossible. No matter how much Alice tries to suppress or get rid of the grief and trauma the Masked Lady will remain and she will make Alice suffer. But its not like the Masked Lady isnt suffering herself. As an anthropomorphized construct of what is a part of Alices whole self we get to see the Masked Lady as someone to talk to and understand like any other human being. This is when Chapter 3 the Forgotten Hourglass begins. Chapter 3 makes a very creative use of the multipleplaythrough system where the more the full game is replayed the closer we get to understanding the Masked Ladys own side of the story. Through just talking and confronting the painful memories the Masked Lady had been surrounded with for as long as she existed Alices healing process could begin. Canonically this repeatedplaythrough process of talking and confronting painful memories continues from childhood to Alices adulthood. At the end of the story the Masked Lady and the Little Girl understanding one another proper this time apologise to each other and promise that if any negative feelings are boiling up they will fix it together and not be left in the dark ignored and left to wallow in their own suffering. The grief never truly goes away for her brother and her grief will never not well up in her at times. But Alice finds out she can confront it and come out on top again and again by working with the parts of herself that are hurting. Alice is empowered through this and it is what allows her to continue living. At the end of the story she fulfills her promise to her brother and becomes a worldrenowned pianist. That is DEEMOs story: a girl who slowly but eventually liberates herself from her grief and the harmful way she processes the memories of her brother. They turn from being hurtful to empowering. But most importantly and this is the part that separates DEEMO from every other story of trauma and grief I have seen: Empowerment is a lifelong process Alice goes through. She will never not stop having moments of grief and that is too relatable. Negative feelings can come back at any point and it can feel we get stuck in the past and cannot move on. But if Alice and the Masked Lady within herself can learn to navigate their trauma the first time the second time the third time they happen from childhood to adulthood and beyond they know they can navigate those feelings together again and then again and then again. Grief will never stop being a threat and it will always try to take Alice down but she will always get back up stronger than before ready for the next time it tries. Nothing can stop her not even herself the worst enemy she ever had. By being alive she has prevailed and always will for as long as she lives. Chapter 2 has players reasonably assume that Alice quickly recovers after waking up because theres no to be continued after its credits. The game released in 2013 got its Chapter 2 in 2015 and everyone thought it was done until 2017 when Chapter 3 suddenly releases to miminal fanfare. Chapter 3 is presented as an alternative perspective in the trailer and then written as the conclusion to the story in patch notes as if all the praise Ive given so far came from some happy accident that Rayark does not realize they made. If Chapter 1 and 2 were really what the whole story was it would be like every other get over it story Ive seen. Chapter 3 whether Rayark intended it or not probably not shows that this recovery is not as simple and quick as it was made out to be. But even when it is not I can only imagine Alice would be shouting to herself at herself triumphantly that she manages to keep being alive despite her endless suffering. These neverending waves of pain are normally seen as a horrific prospect of endless suffering. To Alice and to me it is a constant reaffirmation of how strong she is and continues to be. It is one of the most inspiring and grounded stories I have encountered in fiction told so simply and so beautifully whether it was an accident or not. https://i.ur.com/IxaNa1M.jpeg Fanarthttps://www.pixiv.net/en/artworks/62273930 from https://www.pixiv.net/en/users/4162755 on Pixiv showing the Little Girl and the Masked Lady sleeping with each other beside the tree as Deemo plays music As beautiful as the story is the poor gameplay decisions made while fantastic symbolically are far more obtuse and obstructive than the storytelling benefits can account for. Sure the multiple playthrough system is fantastic in symbolising the repetitive and slow process of empowerment over Alices life. Sure the new bright and light filled areas represent how Alice is literally no longer in as dark of a place she once was and her brain literally being in a coma. However the gameplay cost is a grindy and frustrating experience that not only offers no new cutscenes to indicate a new story is even happening but Its designed to have unsuspecting players miss crucial dialogue entirely resolvable only by deleting the app and restarting the 15hour journey back to the spot they were just at among the other issues I mentioned at the beginning. To Rayark Chapter 3 really could have just been an alternative perspective and not the conclusion to the story that deserves the greatest care and fanfare. The game does immediately end up in Alices realworld room after Chapter 2 where she seems happy chipper and quickly cured. Actual effort on what was probably a mere extension to Rayark all along could have been asking too much. For all the reasons I shared I sincerely and completely disagree. But unfortunately its that attitude that probably led to their handsoff approach with the movie and how the movie ended up the way it is. DEEMO Movie Review So how did the movie do with adapting the games story and contributing to the overall canon of DEEMO? Unfortunately... the movie is almost satisfactory and only for the most part doing only the story up to Chapter 2 and only slightly considering Chapter 3. This focus presents various problems that make the anime significantly incomplete and so much less impactful than it could have been. Recovery as Slow and Effortful Not Met The anime considers but doesnt really adapt Chapter 3. It introduces an original story of Alice in high school and the outcome is that she makes two new friends Sania and Rosalia. Alices time in high school would have been an excellent hole in the timeline to tackle but the animes original story can be summarised sadly quickly. Alice is a transfer student who excels at the piano getting Sania and Rosalias interest. Learning that Alice is trying to remember a certain melody Sania and Rosalia try to suggest their own melodies and clues. When Sania suggests the sakura blossoms Alice begins to fully remember the truck accident and her brothers death alongside the melody. Valensky their music professor then explains that the trauma was so great that Alice repressed the memory of the incident and her brother. Fortunately Alice made two new friends so she can move on from the trauma without being alone. https://i.ur.com/5x2s4gS.png Alice and her friends having ice cream seen after Playthrough 2 of Chapter 3 This summary is just one aspect of Chapter 3s story in the game which is depicted through this image. One aspect. You get this image playing through the game three out of five extra times total sometime after the accident was revealed and Alice woke up from her coma. In other words Alice isnt seen making friends until two extra playthroughs through the game which communicates to the player that it was a slow tedious process getting to the point where Alice has the capacity to maintain friendships a sign of her slow but effortful recovery. The movie unfortunately does not communicate the slow effortful part of the games message on maladaptive trauma. It has the same problem as Chapter 2s ending where the reveal and assumed recovery is sudden and resolved very quickly. The movie and Chapter 2 alone leave no opportunity to explore the aftermath of Alice waking up from the coma and fully realising her brothers death. Consequently the games primary theme how we can see our precious memories in a hurtful rather than empowering way and how we liberate ourselves from this negative way of thinking was not met in this anime adaptation. Rather the anime chooses to forgo this conclusion as much as possible which this will be discussed in its own section... Introspection: Celia as The Maladaptiveness of Trauma Incomplete https://i.ur.com/HWf7jYJ.png The Masked Lady staring at the tree that stopped growing starting Chapter 2 of the story The animes handling of the Masked Lady is only satisfactory if Chapter 3s existence is completely ignored. I gave a recount of the story above but it really bears repeating. Celia the Masked Lady does not want the Little Girl to leave because if she leaves the world crumbles bringing Deemo along with it. Deemo is a construct of Alices brother and the only figment of her brother left that she can continue being with. This means a disturbing implication: Alice would not have woken up from her coma if Celia had won. The part of Alice that did not want to wake up to face a reality without her brother would mean her death in a hospital bed. This is how a game rated for kids communicates suicidal ideation. Unfortunately just like Chapter 2 of the game the anime does not explore the motivations or aftermath of these aspects and the consequences of Celias character that make her compelling. The anime only somewhat replicates the Chapter 2 ending creating more questions than answers about Celia. Chapter 3 reveals that Celia has been in darkness for so long that she believes there is no hope she will be happy. This is because Celia is the part of Alice that suffers. Similarly to how depression is personified in stories Celia would be something Alice wants to eliminate completely as it could mean being happy and getting over her grief. However Celia is also the part of Alice who remembers her brother fondly. Therefore if Celia is to be removed to solve Alices grief that also means Alice has to forget her brother as well. The anime somewhat communicates this very somewhat because they exclude so much of Chapter 3. By excluding Chapter 3 of the story we do not see Celia and what she is going through after Alice wakes up from the coma because we never return to the castle. The majority of Celias motivations and role is unknown to the animeonly watcher. https://i.ur.com/jIe6orA.png Celia gazing into the overcast darkness from what was meant to be her brothers bedroom now turned into a balcony as seen in DEEMO After Story The reason Celia has such a grip on the castle and wants to stay asleep is also further elaborated in After Story Tonys canon a prequel to the main story involving Celia as the first Little Girl making her the first to be in the castle. Its not entirely necessary to play but it is super helpful. She chooses to stay in the castle reluctantly after retrieving her memories knowing that while she wants to return home she refuses to face a possible reality where her brother isnt with her. This is a conclusion Celia draws as she explores a dream of the mansion she did actually live in the real world. As the mansion distorts to vocalise more and more how Celia made the wrong decision to leave Deemo and the castle and by extension her brother Her initial motivation to wake up also distorts. Succumbing Celia then puts on the robe and mask and falls into a deep dark cold sleep. The consequence is that Alices coma is prolonged making her more likely to die. Celia wouldnt know the coma aspect just that her initial goal and motivation was to go home. But if staying means not leaving the last part of her brother behind she is willing to dream eternally. Celia wants to go home but she cannot leave her brother and this constant tug at both sides weakens her conviction the conviction needed to actually succeed and win the fight against the Little Girl. Through multiple introspections throughout Alices lifespan the Little Girl would eventually and properly understand Celias struggles and gain her trust. Rather than try to fight each other they would work together to solve their anxieties and fears. They would work together by comforting each other whenever they felt bad usually with a big hug every now and then. https://i.ur.com/kDCZ6sW.jpeg The Little Girl and the Masked Lady effectively Alice and Celia being there for each other on the fourth and final playthrough of Chapter 3 Unfortunately the anime does not include any of this. Consequently animeonly viewers can only be confused as to why Celia for example suddenly started to help Alice reach the window: Celias conviction to stay asleep wasnt that strong to begin with as indicated by After Story. Animeonly viewers would also feel the ending is rushed because like Chapter 2 it actually is rushed. In an effort to be conclusive while sticking to just the story up to Chapter 2 the anime feels just as rushed and incomplete. Baffling. This also personally ticks me off. The anime officially subtitles the Masked Lady as Seria when she is meant to be Celia an anagram to Alice. Seria is how the name is pronounced in Japanese but that is not how her name is spelt. So animeonly viewers are going to see this name not get it is an anagram and assume the Masked Lady is just a different character who looks like Alice. By making these changes and leaving out so much animeonly viewers can only be confused Freud Ruins the Adaptation Quoting Professor Valensky at the end of the movie Alice was so full of grief that she erased the memory of the incident. Not only of Hans death but of her involvement in the accident too. Though the animes thematic and character issues stem from Chapter 2 before Chapter 3 comes to solve those issues the anime does its own thing with Alices trauma. And it completely misrepresents Alices journey and ruins the entire adaptation for me. The anime takes a very weirdly Freudian approach to how Alice remembers and processes her trauma. The memory of the trauma manages to be perfectly preserved in her brain but she cannot consciously recall it. She is literally unable to in the movie. She is only able to recall the trauma from the incidental circumstance of looking at Sakura blossoms. It is also very weirdly Freudian that Alice happens to live normally with her daytoday life until she suddenly remembers the trauma like remembering you forgot your car keys after getting into the car and seeing the keyhole. She acts like an aloof loner in the movie but without any context she just seems like a loner who is a prodigy at the piano one of the most common anime character archetypes: the quiet and mysterious character who others get interested in and want to learn more about. The original story does not fall into this weird Freudian hole. The mobile game suggests that Alice tried to suppress memories instead like someone going to the bar and drinking a lot of booze to try and forget things. Suppression actively avoids making peace with the traumatic memory which lets the memory keep a stranglehold on ones mental wellbeing resulting in anxiety and depression that can be draining on ones life potentially leading to worse outcomes later. That is why in Chapter 3 the best way Alice could move on is when she stopped trying to suppress the Masked Lady. She started helping the part of herself that sees and suffers from these memories. Without making peace with her past Alice would continue to grieve because Celia will always be a part of Alice. For the anime to make out that Alice repressed her memories in the Freudian sense suggests that for all this time nothing about the truck accident affected how she lived. She grieved intensely but briefly before she could somewhat return to normal and just go about her day. The trauma couldnt explain her aloof personality as the trauma had no active role in her behaviour. It was just gone. Celia as a maladaptive part of Alices psyche meant nothing. Everyone in the castle meant nothing. The toys that Hans gave Alice had almost no association with her actual trauma so they were just toys she always had for some reason. And worst of all in the anime Alices journey to recovery is made out to be I now have friends. I can at least hang out with them. https://i.ur.com/JTPU2M5.png The final scene of DEEMO: Memorial Keys where Alice believes having supporting friends can resolve her childhood grief This is not what DEEMO is about and was never about It is good to confide in others for support. I am absolutely not denying that. But that is just one small aspect of the original story that contributes to a much much more meaningful whole. She gets friends in the original story but it is one small snippet of her life. The original story has Alice find a way to be empowered by her own strength and courage as she continues to live with the pain for the rest of her life and I find that to be a far better outcome. The anime story instead assumes that Alice could only move on because she has friends to confide in. The movie doesnt even attempt to show how Alice continues to live with the pain. Shes just cured. Two pills of friendship a day to keep the doctor away. With the power of friendship the trauma could be instantly defeated. I guess it was just that easy all along. At the very least in the new DEEMO Movie manga Sakura Notehttps://anilist.co/manga/148494/DEEMOSakuraNote/ the trauma does actually affect Alice even when she doesnt know what the trauma was actually about. She frequents the doctors for occasionally passing out usually by trying to remember her past. Valensky and others try to hide the truth from Alice for fear that she cannot handle the truth for good reason. She literally passes out from it. Even when Alice becomes aggressive about not being told the truth other characters stand their ground for her safety. She is not only affected by the trauma it is clear that it is causing harm to her and to others around her. The anime in contrast could not care less seemingly. Maybe it could be inferred on rewatches but that is a crazy ask for what is meant to be such a simple and beautifully told story. Overall the anime could be considered almost satisfactory in most of its executions even though they dont necessarily expand on the games canon or clarify questions and answers. The general story beats are told in an okay way and some of the themes do exist. However this moment in the anime misconstrues the entire core message of the original story and to me this is the damning point where I lost faith in the adaptation and the creative team behind it. They worked to adapt DEEMO into a movie yet they managed to completely miss the point. Possible Conflict of Interest? Keep in mind that the following is an interpretation of machine translations of two Japanese interview articles. From what seems to have been written there was a conflict between the directors vision and what Pony Canyon wanted to sell. The director intended the movie to be a TV anime series with a heavy focus on an animeoriginal plotline with Alice in high school linkhttps://www.cinra.net/article/202202deemoiwmkr. However that wasnt the actual DEEMO story that Pony Canyon wanted to sell so the script had to be rewritten. Fujisaku was brought in and he tried to give a compromise that satisfied all parties with a mix of the original content and the game content linkhttps://futabanet.jp/seiyuumen/articles//84985?page=1. This is the solution they went with. What could have been the TV series can be somewhat inferred from the Sakura Note manga. I can imagine most of the series being about Alices aloof nature softening over time as she keeps interacting with other characters some who know the truth and some who just want to hang out. One of Alices goals could also be to win an upcoming piano recital and her prodigious skill already has that win in the bag unless something or someone were to disrupt her. Theres 3 more characters in the manga version so there are many more opportunities for Alice and others to interact and gain something whether to have a good sliceoflife time or to further heighten the mystery and drama about her past. The scenes in the castle could have been interspersed seemingly at random similar to how the Illusionary World scenes occur in CLANNAD. The castle scenes have no dialogue in the manga and are intended to be mysterious. The TV series suddenly involves high fantasy elements for seemingly no reason so of course its mysterious and intriguing. The castle scenes could start and end at weird places before going back to the real world and they may or may not be acknowledged by Alice right after those moments. The manga has scenes where Alice seems to witness the Masked Lady appearing in front of her so the show could have moments where the fantasy seems to be actually real deepening the mystery and drama further like how Alice is connected to these characters. I can see this working very well. The director had a genuinely interesting idea for a completely original DEEMO story that would fill out a gap in the timeline left by the game. Unfortunately the movie was compromised into a Frankenstein mess that attempts to do way too much for too little runtime. A good adaptation is like a train: It goes in one distinct direction and doesnt get dislodged from the track when trying to switch lanes at random. The compromise they ended up with removed all potential the film would have had if it committed to one direction over another. The animeoriginal story doesnt add anything substantial to the canon of DEEMO but because so much screen time is given to the new story the actual game story cannot be given the focus it deserves like including the Chapter 3 content. It is a genuine shame because to me its just a bad excuse. A conflict of interest prevented the movie from being a great adaptation or derivative of the game. They not only misunderstood the point of the story it is excused by a conflict of interest where a stupid fight on what story is more important to do got in the way of absolutely everything. Theres also a mention of COVID but just no. Other Positives and Negatives The Soundtrack Talking about some positives the movies soundtrack is excellent. The most wellliked track is understandably Walking By The Seahttps://www..com/watch?v=7Wwy9j4MIeQ which goes from the games groovy soft tunehttps://www..com/watch?v=CnET7ZNNV00 to an explicitly funky tune. Sairaihttps://www..com/watch?v=8tgxcbJXkI would also get an outstanding orchestral cover that gives a wonderfully unique alternative take to the originalhttps://www..com/watch?v=GEX8Cv2U3Ww. The movies version of Leviathanhttps://www..com/watch?v=6rLHesuSZeA is somehow even edgier and more intense than the originalhttps://www..com/watch?v=yjXuLualzk which surprised me. Though the movie doesnt integrate the soundtracks in the best way e.g. Veil of Memoryhttps://youtu.be/G4IWv3W0fbc?t=53 being cut off too early characters talking over songshttps://www..com/watch?v=yHa7hxTLsBM and some covers are inferior to the originals ANiMA for dampening the piano volumehttps://youtu.be/kBRyRgsKqw0?t=43 compared to the originalhttps://youtu.be/a7ffh5sucw?t=44 ironic in a pianofocused movie and Milis songs Nine Point Eighthttps://www..com/watch?v=Le5nXTvNYJc and Yubikiri Genmanhttps://www..com/watch?v=AN72SVbETA lacking lyrics the soundtrack is a genuine delight and one of two truly good highlights of the movie. Story Structure and Original Elements In the original game the Little Girl and the Masked Lady were the only characters who would speak and scenarios like the high school the Metronome room and so forth did not exist in the original. Despite a large amount of original content however I have not noticed anything new that the DEEMO franchise has not done before e.g. the toys interacting with Alice are just a better version of the fairies from DEEMO Reborn nor did I notice any extra questions being asked or answers to questions being presented e.g. What is the note in the study? What exactly is Deemo? What was Alices childhood life like after her brother died? What is arguably new is that Deemo the Little Girl and the Masked Lady are the only ones who can see notes on a sheet. But this is only new because of the newly introduced toy characters who didnt exist in the game. One theory for including this much filler with the original content itself even turning out to be filler was to give the movie more stuff going on. The creative staff might have felt the movie would be boring if it were just Alice exploring and vocalising her observations. A translation of this interview articlehttps://tvbros.jp/movie/2022/02/11/27877/ gives credit to the theory as Ayana Taketatsu VA for Alice mentions how much more expressive and ageappropriate Alice became when the director decided to add the toy characters alongside the movie being more than Alice going what is that? all the time. Alice being more obviously expressive thanks to extra character chemistry would have allowed the creative team to do more things to maintain audience interest. In my opinion this decision from the director more or less suggests that DEEMO should not have been a movie but a short featurelength OVA like Totsukuni no Shoujo 2022https://anilist.co/anime/130550/TheGirlfromtheOtherSide/ or a short OVA series that encompasses all the games story and the original story the director wanted. The movie/series could have easily included more Chapter 3 content. It came with entirely new environments colour palettes so many things that would have been discovered and used for cool musical montages. The notion that the filler content was to give the movie more stuff going on implies the game does not give enough content to fill 1 hour and 29 minutes. Thats just completely wrong. Theres game dialogue of Alice asking Deemo to play a game of doctor with her at the very least. That couldve been animated if you were so hardpressed to get the runtime up. A general rule of thumb is that an anime adaptation exists because the original work is good. An anime adaptation can elevate the source material but an anime adaptation is not usually the reason why a work is liked to begin with. The original material has to be good enough that it can be given a greenlight for an adaptation. An anime is expensive to make so they should attempt to show how good the original work is in a different medium hoping to capture a new audience. It would be very arrogant of anime staff to think their version fixes things. I only hoped for this to be the case because of how much Rayark fumbled the gameplay and narrative design. But to change the story itself is a very arrogant thing to do. To suggest that the filler the movie added was better than what existed in the game enough to ignore Chapter 3 content is bad faith towards the ability of the original work to captivate an audience. The Visuals https://i.ur.com/ykowVaM.png Tadaaa.... The most obviously bad aspect of the movie is the visuals which look like cheap motioncapture CGI you would find in 2000s TV shows. Everything is incredibly barren compared to the game artwork. The piano room does not even have water with lotus surrounding the stump. I guess water wouldve been too difficult to make look good as everyone walked on it. The top floor is just a flat expanse of starry sky with some surrounding trees. The trees themselves are all the same size and at the same elevation looking unnatural and haphazardly placed. The game had a large expanse of trees and walls that made the room dark and claustrophobic. It invoked the right amount of anxiety and mystery and it looks beautiful artistically. https://i.ur.com/mQ4XPCx.png https://i.ur.com/GbwZPoQ.png In Chapter 3 the trees clear and reveal a similar blue sky to the anime but this change is representative of Alices improved mental state. The anime does not do any symbolism remotely like that. Its not only a poorlooking CGI room but its also creatively bankrupt. Credit where credit is due though. In the same area Deemo bleeds sakura petals when wrestling the thorny vines off the piano. That is the only bit of symbolic creativity the entire scene has. I personally think that the mocap character acting is very good besides some rigging issues where a characters arms snap into place while playing the piano alongside the mostly unexpressive eyes. My favourite example is Alice waving her arms in excitement as she talks to Mirai. The model isnt doing anything particularly expressive but the actor behind it made Alice look very cute there. I also think that despite its cheapness the CGImocap is a unique look that I dont see often in other CGI anime. Other CGI anime usually stick with a choppy framerate and are animated while the DEEMO movie is almost entirely mocap and uses all 24 frames per second for the motion. Its something I could get used to and find charming especially if it were a TV series and not a movie. With more effort it couldve looked as masterfully charming as Kemono Friends. By being almost entirely motioncapture there are no examples of the CGI being animated to do less humanly possible and exciting movements. The cyclone and rollercoaster scene just has the characters standing around and not doing anything. Only Mirai is taken up by the cyclone when the entire room could have been taken up as everyone flies and flips around matching the intense energy of the music. Alice and Celia could have been barely controlling the cart during the rollercoaster ride showing some level of performance instead of just sitting in it and doing nothing. The visual language of the characters in the film is heavily restricted as a result and lots of scenes that try to be exciting mostly have the characters being still for minutes. It is incredibly boring and unambitious. The movie has a lot of decent backgrounds and even some good colour use but a lot of this effort is ruined by an excessive amount of bloom and blur effects. I suppose the bloom and blur would further obscure the dolllike CGI models for the characters but this impacts how easy everything is to see such as the details of leaves furniture etc. The blooming and blur also outright erase facial features like the nose making some characters look more uncannily chibi than they should. Some scenes look genuinely impressive but only when the movie is not trying to hide its already obvious faults. Also again if they just included the Chapter 3 content we could have gotten this area. https://i.ur.com/jAypdNL.png The Cherry Blossom Forest in Chapter 3 with lush pink flora some crystals growing from the ground and a bright illuminating source of light at the end of the viewable pathway creating a sense of mystery for what lies deeper into the forest Anime staff why do you make the decisions that you do...? The Prelude Manga is a Lie? According to Comic Zerosumhttps://twitter.com/comiczerosum/status/1487017624781213701 the final episode of the Preludehttps://anilist.co/manga/126117/DEEMOPrelude/ manga should be read before watching the movie to enjoy the movie more. Sounds good. I hate story segmentation. It had only caused confusion long before the movie came into existence. But its been officially recommended that I take this route. Near the movies end with Hans and Alice on the Cherry Blossom road he comforts Alice before he prepares to leave for his piano recital. After this moment the truck crashes into him. In Prelude however Hans has already performed his recital in Episode 5 after which he gets an offer to go on a world tour. That world tour not an upcoming recital is what he tries to comfort Alice about. Two chapters later in the manga after Hans takes an upset Alice to an aquarium to reconcile he gets killed in the accident. In other words the manga and the movies timeline of events dont match up. They are different timelines. Comic Zerosum has lied THEY LIED TO MY FACE I prefer Prelude and its sequence of events more than the movie so it was easy for me to choose which should be the accepted canonical version of the differing timelines. That being said these people couldnt even get events in a timeline to match up events they themselves made. How can they recommend reading something that contradicts another thing and not only fail to realise this but manage to fumble themselves into that problem in the first place? The Coma Scene Lots of fictional works misrepresent what it is like to be in and recover from a coma. DEEMO is no different. Im no medical student so I cant just look at how my local hospital handles coma patients exactly. But I did some research to inform me that the movies depiction of Alice waking up is surprisingly the best version in all of DEEMO media. A study titled the portrayal of coma in contemporary motion pictureshttps://scholar.google.com.au/scholar?cluster=17912160580031152444 finds examples of incorrect portrayals such as patients getting out of bed immediately absent delirium and a beautified appearance with correct portrayals including a long road of physical and mental recovery. This road to recovery is especially true if the patient shows no signs of recovery within a 48hour period THE PROGNOSIS OF MEDICAL COMAhttps://scholar.google.com.au/scholar?cluster=13955385061029426874 https://i.ur.com/zMMJ9v1.png Alice waking up from her coma at the end of Chapter 2 bandaged and connected to a ventilation system heart monitor and an intravenous bag In the mobile game Alice is shown to have messy hair and she is connected to the ventilator as she opens her eyes. To my nonexpert eyes it seems like a somewhat accurate portrayal of waking from comatose. However she immediately rushes out of bed to stare out the window as if completely recovered. Im no expert but I dont think thats how waking up from a coma works. Because Alice has been in a coma for more than a week thanks to the events of After Story source: light novels last dream chapter the Chiren Kina canon complete physical and mental recovery after waking up is unrealistic. Some versions of DEEMO do not include the ventilator Last Recital and Reborn but it might not unrealistic for a patient in comatose not to need a ventilator. I would not truly know. The movie still presents the Coma Scene unrealistically in that she manages to get out of bed and looks out towards Taipei Taiwan at least in the game version. The anime shows a city I cant find any identifiable markers for. But instead of showing Alice immediately rushing out of bed she slowly gets out of bed and walks to the window. The movie is the only entry in the franchise to show Alices physical weakness when waking up. The movie also shows her in delirium as she attempts to process her surroundings before a sudden river of tears appropriately conveys the flood of emotions that she cannot fully express with her face as she is still physically weak. This makes the movie the only entry to portray Alices delirium when waking up compared to every other entry where she is oddly very lucid. https://i.ur.com/2vwTYe7.png Alice quietly crying tears after waking up in DEEMO: Memorial Keys her overwhelming feelings of sadness catching up to her delirium after just waking up For all the negatives the movie has how it handled the Coma Scene was arguably the best in the franchise. Its still not perfect but it is the only example I found where the movies execution was a genuine improvement compared to other versions. For this scene alone regardless of it being CGI and heavily bloomed it captured the magical visual storytelling of the game with just the right amount of subtlety that it is clear what is going on but it is communicated so concisely. Goodbye Deemo is a wonderful track but the movie version using just the sound of the beeps the wind and the bustling activity in the street while Alices emotions slowly but intensely flood in is so much better. Good work creative team. Brownie points for that. Same with the soundtrack like highlighted before. I just wish that amount of effort and sincerity was applied to every part of the movie not just two. Movie Conclusion The anime presents an almost satisfactory but deeply misconceived alternative to the mobile game and its core messages. By sticking to Chapter 2 while also doing a derivative story inconsiderate of Chapter 3s core themes and messages the anime turns out to be the 2nd worst attempt at representing DEEMOs story. I personally think Reborn is worse for having much less subtlety with the mystery hiding Hans face during the reveal and changing the ending to make Alice not only oddly calm about her brothers death but had some people think she jumped out the hospital windowhttps://www..com/watch?v=9HvW31VK6a4lc=UgyMEr4aPbKOsJSgB4AaABAg scroll down for highlighted comment. The ending communicates either Alices sudden rationalisation and act of suicide an extremely dark alternative ending that had the potential to be good and unique like this Bilibili fan animationhttps://www.bilibili.com/video/BV16G4y1M75y/ or the ending showed that Alice could easily move on with her life with little emotional baggage damaging the games themes more than the movie ever did. That being said if I am comparing the anime movie to Reborns handling of the story something went truly wrong. The movie is also similar to DEEMO Reborn in that the visuals are something to be desired with both forgoing the 2D drawings and illustrations that made the mobile game light novels and manga genuinely beautiful. The true highlight of the movie is its soundtrack with flaws in some tracks that only somewhat disappointed me only to be outshone by how good the rest of the soundtrack is. Perhaps if you are disappointed in how the movie handled its original story and its themes there is a manga version called DEEMO Preludehttps://anilist.co/manga/126117/DEEMOPrelude/ and Sakura Notehttps://anilist.co/manga/148494/DEEMOSakuraNote/ which appear to expand on the highschool story dramatically. We get more insight into Alices character and medical condition due to the trauma and more instances of Sania and Rosalia interacting with her. Prelude is also a prequel story before the main game and a prequel before After Story telling the life of Hans and why Alice loves him so much as a brother. They are both fully translated though it is from Japanese to Chinese and then to English which is not the best nor official. They would rather do an official Korean translation before ever doing an official English translation. And while the manga series removes any and all subtlety has too much expositional dialogue and is more eyerolling with its messages as a result it is worlds better than the movie and manages to capture a good chunk of the original storys magic particularly with the dialogueless chapters. Ultimately it is the original mobile games I want people to play and that means not Reborn. But as this review introduced its not an easy thing to tackle. But I can give some recommendations here to guide people. 1. Try to get the Switch version of the game. It is around 20 USD and is objectively the best version of the game. Not only is all the DLC free but Chapter 3 is also free. Thats Chapter 3 FREE on the Switch version. Beyond those options players must pay 10 USD for Chapter 3 which cuts out 99 of those who would be interested. 2. Play and enjoy the game but make an effort to tap on areas and characters to bring up their dialogue. The dialogue is chosen at random each tap and characters can change poses and positions when coming in and out of rooms. Try to get as much dialogue as available and think of the order in which they come in and what corresponds best with the actions onscreen. Be sure to do this after the tree changes artwork and grows as this is when characters get new dialogue alongside old dialogue. Some old dialogue is deleted after some time so take extra care to pay attention. I wish the game indicated this but thats how it is. If you feel this is too tedious which it is there is also this resource documenting the dialogue in the gamehttps://sites.google.com/site/deemoproject/comprehensivedialoguelist though some are not included for some reason. 3. Most of the game is fine until Chapter 3 where it suddenly expects to be treated like Undertale in one instance. On the 2nd playthrough of 4 in Chapter 3 3 playthroughs out of 5 total when you get 100 on the stairs you must go to the Basement and tap around the left side of the screen for an interaction that has the most critical dialogue in the entire game. Why is this so obscure? Dont ask me ask Rayark. 4. If you feel tired of replaying the game over and over and run out of new music to play one trick that worked for me was letting Flight of the Bumblebeehttps://www..com/watch?v=SVXJwA61eJY play in the background. It is the shortest track in the game and you can score 0 and still get the light orbs to spawn around the tree. So in roughly 4 minutes you can grow the tree 1.5m in the mobile version. The Switch version straightup gives a ton of tree growth when playing the game so the trick is pointless in that version. Bless Fly High Works... Actual Conclusion In the end a couple of things should be clear from everything I have said. 1. DEEMO is truly special to me. I cannot name another piece of fiction especially from a mostly childfriendly fiction that is told so beautifully and concisely so jampacked with visual and lyrical symbolisms and motifs some of which are not subtle and offers a genuinely helpful and practical method of sorts when I am dealing with negative emotions and thoughts. 2. This beautiful story was clearly an accident because Rayark never cared to do this story again whether in Reborn or the animanga series. And they will never care to give Chapter 3 the effort and care I think it deserves because to them it is just an alternative perspective. 3. The lack of care has led to gameplay and narrative designs that have convinced 99 of people that the story is just background compared to playing the actual rhythm game. Despite the genuine shock felt from Chapter 2 in 2015 where a cheap mobile rhythm game managed to have a heartfelt story that touched millions of players most of the story is still poorly understood with many people believing the game does not have dialogue just forced cutscenes. The movie was probably just a job for the anime staff and nerdy stuff like consistency and themes are not at the top of their priority list but if professional artists like the DEEMO movie staff only bothered to see the cutscenes up to Chapter 2s ending and assumed nothing else from the original story was worth adapting what hope is left? But there is a silver lining. Of all the people who got to experience DEEMO and its original story I am so happy and thankful that I got the themes and takeaway messages that I did. I managed to immediately get it somehow the various symbolisms and connections with the dialogue song lyrics and artwork the cutscenes the moments as critical storytelling devices. I was motivated by some miraculous chance to play for the story not just the rhythm gameplay so I focused on story elements and came away so unbelievably happy. I hear everyone else talk about the game so differently from me as if I hallucinated the story I recapped here and every reason I find the story special was just a happy accident. Maybe it was. Maybe I am just as guilty as Rayark. Not everything I recapped is explicitly told or shown but the result of my personal interpretation of the evidence across the entire franchise. But dammit I am so glad that I got the story that I did. And thinking this made me recognise one more positive about the movie. It is making me talk about this story again. I am going to be in pain forever and ever about how my favourite fictional story has been treated for over a decade. I will feel this pain even a decade later. I will probably feel this agony for the rest of my life as I fail to communicate the wonder of this story to others. But I manage to keep living and gush about this story at any opportunity I get. Being able to talk about the story again being able to think about and process this wonderful story brings me so much joy. For all the negatives I keep reminding myself I manage to somehow come up with positives and that is enough to give me strength and faith in the quality of my life going forward. Only DEEMO could teach me this. It was a joy writing this review. Thank you for reading https://i.ur.com/uko5A5E.jpeg Alice sleeping on her bed with cherry blossoms growing on the blanket. Artworkhttps://twitter.com/niwauxx/status/1640677209076813825 by Haruki Niwa https://twitter.com/niwauxx on Twitter who is the artist for DEEMO Prelude and DEEMO Sakura Note