When I think of violent sports, pool is not one that immediately comes to mind. Of course, when the stakes are life and death like in the anime short Death Billiards, a bit of violence is understandable.
Death Billiards is a 2013 anime one-off episode that served as the prototype for Death Paradeâone of this seasonâs most popular anime (as well as one of Kotakuâs own must-watch picks).
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[Note: This article spoils the basic setting of Death Billiards and Death Parade.]
Like Death Parade, Death Billiards is set in the afterlife bar Quindecim where people are judged after they dieânot that the players know this. And, as in the series, two people face off in a game that is designed to illicit the darkest parts of their respective natures.
The game featured in Death Billiards is poolâas you might expect from the titleâand is played between a young man just hitting his prime and an elderly man on his last legs. It starts off friendly enough, but when it appears that the loser of the game will die magically when the last ball is sunk, it escalates into a fightâone certainly more murderous than your average pool hall brawl.
In a lot of ways, Death Billiards feels like a second possible first episode to the seriesâyou learn about the rules and setting naturally over the scant 25-minute runtime.
But what is most surprising in retrospect is how well Death Billiards fits into the series despite coming out nearly two years before Death Paradeâand, surprisingly, taking place in the middle of it chronologically. There are no blatant contradictions to be found between Death Billiards and Death Paradeâwhich is impressive when you consider that things like the various other bars, the godsâ hierarchy, and the seriesâ overall mystery are not even hinted at in the short.
Other than the two pool players, the only characters in the short are Decim and the Black-Haired Woman. And while they spend most of Death Billiards simply watching the game, both have a few brief character moments that mesh perfectly with the more defined and developed personalities they have in Death Parade
Death Billiards itself was devised as part of the Young Animator Training Projectâan annual program sponsored by the Japanese government to do just what the title suggests. Each year the project culminates in Anime Mirai: a series of one-off anime shorts produced by some of Japanâs top animation studios.
Death Billiards was part of its 2013âs film collectionâalong with anime darling Little Witch Academia. And while the Anime Mirai 2013 DVD is now out of print, Death Billiards and other Anime Mirai shorts can easily be found online by anyone interested in seeing them.
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