Episode 1

**Ignition** is the first episode of the *Deca-Dence* anime series.

### **Plot**

Teenager Natsume graduates from Tanker Orphanage with dreams of becoming a Gear and fighting the Gadoll, but she is assigned to an armor repair team led by the surly leader Kaburagi. However, she discovers that he has a gentle side and is breaking the rules by keeping what appears to be a small Gadoll as a pet which she names "Pipe". One night, Kaburagi is seen removing a "chip" from a comatose man in a dark alley. While Kaburagi and Natsume are cleaning the exterior of the moving fortress city of Deca-dence, they come under attack by a horde of Gadoll, including one called a "giland" which is almost as big as Deca-dence. Natsume, Kaburagi and two others of the team fall from their positions, and surprisingly Kaburagi proves to be an accomplished warrior. He not only saves Natsume, but also attacks and kills some of the approaching Gadoll. Eventually, Deca-dence moves into defensive action and fires a blast from its canon at the giant Gadoll, destroying it after first draining its oxyone.

### **Summary**

Deca-Dence starts small and modest: a father on a mission to investigate artifacts; his young daughter Natsume tagging along out of a sense of adventure. It doesn’t end well for Natsume: she loses her dad and her right arm. Still, she survives, and dreams of fighting and making a difference.

Fast forward to when Natsume’s about to leave school and take on a job as a Tanker, supporting the Gears who fight monsters called Gadoll. They all live on Deca-dence, a massive mobile fortress and humanity’s last bastion. Only she never hears back from The Power that doles out the jobs. She wanted to be a soldier, but it seems her missing arm disqualifies her. Natsume is instead given a hard, dirty armor cleaning job under the supervision of a joyless man named Kaburagi. He slaps a harness on her and pushes her off a ledge onto the sheer side of Deca-dence. Rookies typically scrub rotten Gadoll guts and blood for five years before any kind of advancement. While it’s gross exhausting work, Natsume eventually gets the hang of it.

Natsume eventually convinces her stoic boss to throw a welcome party for her, during which she gets tipsy and takes Kaburagi to task for his fatalism. He just wants to live a relatively quiet peaceful life within the walls, and can’t see why Natsume looks at her arm stump and says to herself “More of that, please.” The older Kaburagi has clearly been worn down by his experiences, while despite suffering quite a bit of trauma of her own Natsume remains optimistic about the prospect of defeating Gadoll and living in true peace and prosperity. At the same time, Kurenai has a pet harmless Gadoll whom Natsume names “Pipe”, and also a strange, unexplained side-job involving extracting “chips” from people when ordered to by a shadowy boss.

Eventually Deca-dence comes afoul of a Gadoll attack party, led by an immense, Leviathan-like mega Gadoll Giland that seems equivalent to the size of the fortress, surrounded by a bevy of bizarre candy-colored Gadoll small fry, however even the smallest of them are bigger and faster than humans. On the other hand, the Gears use sphere shaped flight packs in order to increase their speed and mobility. When the Gadoll are spotted Natsume and Kaburagi are still outside, and their colleague Fennel and another maintenance guy end up falling off the side of the fortress. They fall for a very long time, accentuating the sheer scale of their home as well as the battle unfolding below. That battle actually doesn’t seem to be going so well when Kaburagi drops in with Natsume, but he grabs a flight back from one of the dead Gears and proceeds to unleash a can of whoop-ass on the smaller Gadolls, with a tethered, nauseous Natsume trailing behind him.

In a high-tech command center that belies the fortress’ chaotic, grungy exterior, General Minato has his crew go through a number of checks and elaborate technobabble that essentially transform the fortress into a giant mass driver cannon in the shape of a fist. Once the cannon is charged up, they wait until the Gadoll is as close as possible before firing. The physics of large scale masses coming into contact at ridiculous speeds, and their effect on the surrounding environment, is beautifully rendered down to the smallest spec of debris. With the latest round of Gadolls thoroughly defeated, it’s time to collect all the Gadoll meat, rest, heal, repair, and celebrate until the next battle.

### **Characters (In Order of Appearance)**

* Muro
* Natsume
* Linmei
* Fei
* Kaburagi
* Fennel
* Pipe
* Minato
* Kurenai