Dies Irae Review
I finished Dies Irae it was very fun one thing i would say is series which is known for action pack chuni stuff suprisingly a lot of good slice and highschool drama which I really fuck with like i have a lot of fun with it.
I will go route by route.
- Kasumi Route :-
I think the finale was anticlimactic.
The fight was lame, and the whole thing felt incoherent.
Trifa was about to rape his own stepdaughter and only stopped because he saw the ghosts of the children from his orphanage. And I’m supposed to believe that he was always going to let Fuji kill him and that the whole thing was just a prank?
Oh, and in the end, everything was practically worthless because Reinhardt would have been coming back anyway.
With that said, the tragedy was good.
Is Ren alive at the end? Is Kasumi fucking some other dude?
Kei. Oh my God, Kei.
At least the Shirou stuff wasn’t a fake-out either, so that’s good. He really did die.
- Kei Route :-
Phenomenal route as a whole, but the climax was underwhelming.
Sakurai is such a great character. I already liked her in the previous route, so I’m really happy to see her character expanded here.
Her tragedy is being so stuck in the past that she’s willing to walk the same path again, and she’s fully aware that she’s sinning. She’s even willing to die if the punishment comes, just like it did in the last route.
Her embracing Ren after being left completely hopeless was fucking beautiful.
I think the anticlimactic part was the final stretch.
There was so much hype built up with one fight after another. You have Cain vs. Shirou. You have Sakurai nearly defeating Trifa. Then you get the fucking ankle-breaking ending with Reinhardt arriving at the very end.
But the reason I feel disappointed is because so many of the hyped matchups were between Ren and Machina or Beatrice and Eleonore. It feels like a cop-out, like the story is just saving those fights for later.
The ending should have been Reinhardt and the boys killing us all and fulfilling the ending.
Instead, it ended in a very contrived way: “Yeah, Mercurius is gonna bail us out.”
“Oh, did Mercurius kill Rea? Apparently something related to her caused the castle to collapse.”
Nope, she’s fine.
“Oh, did he kill Kasumi to unleash Cain?”
Nope, she’s fine.
It all feels like, “Yeah, see you again. Please love Marie so she has a chance against Reinhardt.”
But that final scene was beautiful.
Good route, meh ending.
- Marie Route :-
10/10
I have no flaws to point out with this one. Probably one of the best routes in a visual novel I’ve ever read.
The grander narrative was absolutely magnificent, both on the macro and micro levels.
Whether it was the grand battle between Reinhardt and Ren, or the minor characterization of Eleonore—how she hates women because she believes her love for Reinhardt will never be reciprocated, which explains why she is the way she is.
The thematic conflict on the surface is solitude vs. bonds.
One side believes that a community can be forged through togetherness, kindness, and shared pain, while the other believes that true strength comes from individual fortitude—to fight until they reach Valhalla, essentially questioning the point of kindness and believing that human nature is ultimately defined by the harshness of the world.
Of course, both sides have their contradictions.
Reinhardt, despite his appetite for destruction, makes a half-assed attempt to form a familial bond in the end, only for it to backfire on him.
Ren, meanwhile, has to grapple with the dilemma of how far he is willing to go to protect the people he treasures, and whether he is willing to sacrifice countless people he doesn’t even know for the sake of the one he loves.
There were so many banger character moments: Trifa and his pathetic end; Ren finally finding his purpose in life; Marie realizing her feelings and learning how to love something; and Rea dealing with her unrequited love.
And then there’s Reinhardt vs. Ren, which is easily one of the best fights I’ve ever seen in anything, especially in the anime/visual novel medium.
Reinhardt is easily one of the best antagonists I’ve encountered. He is genuinely a force of nature, yet at the same time, there is something incredibly empty about him. He represents unabashed cruelty, but he interprets that cruelty as love. He destroys everything while believing that he loves everything, yet he never truly understands what love actually is.
The fact that he can say “I love all and everything” while being so completely hollow makes his character even more fascinating.
And that climax on the rooftop, man. That was genuinely heart-wrenching. The side story at end was heartbreaking those sinners have tomorrow damn it.
One of the best routes this medium has to offer.
- Rea Route :-
Rea Route was phenomenal.
I feel like this route was the answer to everything: Who is Ren? Who is Mercurius? Who is Reinhardt really? It answers almost every mystery surrounding the world.
It also gives us some of the most anticipated fights in the entire series. One of them was off-screen, but it is what it is.
It was incredibly fulfilling to see the full development of all these characters. We finally get to see Trifa take a stand against his destiny and, this time, actually make a difference.
The character dynamics were also fantastic. The showdown between Lisa and Eleonore finally gives us the dynamic that was teased in the Kasumi route, especially their disagreement over what a woman ought to be. Both of them are broken women, but in completely different ways. Lisa is a sinner, while Eleonore is coping with losing the battle for Reinhardt’s love. She has accepted death as the only finale she can look forward to.
Rea is an adorable baby girl who loves Ren with her whole heart. She is aware of her destiny, but she’s still happy living within the fake paradigm of their lives, with Trifa and Lisa acting as her parents. She’s happy simply because she gets to be with the boy she loves.
Her arc—of a girl who is destined to be sacrificed, yet still longs to remain with the person she loves and wants him to be safe even when everything else is falling apart—is beautiful.
Mercurius is suicidal, I guess? Curse of immortality type shit.
And Rusalka, my goodness, what a phenomenal character she was.
She spends all this time chasing the love she lost, but at the same time, she’s deeply broken by men and desperately trying to fill the wound in her heart. She lives in fear of Heydrich because of her past trauma, and that explains so much about why she is the way she is.
That final scene in the side story, where she finally finds her love, was fucking beautiful. Even though the tragedy is implied—he still dies—she at least gets to confess her feelings to him. That was genuinely heartbreaking.
And Reinhardt finally gets his full character arc.
This time, he actually loved all and everything. He paid his child support. He had no hesitation anymore. He was finally aware of how miserable his life could have been. He used to be afraid of death, as shown in the flashback with Mercurius, but not anymore.
He gave up on the life he had as a bureaucrat in Nazi Germany. He is finally free from those bonds, and now he is simply giving everyone his pleasure and his love.
I had a lot of fun with this route.