#inexqueuesable

Looks like this depicts parts of LN11 Interlude II and Chapter 4. I did have to manually transcribe some of the dialogue. This took way more time than I can afford.

The opening scene depicts the killing of the 28th victim/witness, an aristocrat named Lord/Sir Alonso. This must be the murder that Larolf reports to Esperanza in the latter half of LN11 Interlude III? Larolf describes the victim as a "boy" who witnessed the Mask Maker right before Niki did in the novel, but this Sir / Lord Alonso is certainly not a child. Hm...

I believe the bit of Niki we see in this chapter is her telling Esperanza the food is delicious from the beginning of Interlude III. However, the manga seems to be omitting the part where Larolf reports [Alonso's] murder? It shows Niki walking away with a maid, whereas Niki runs away when Larolf makes his report...and there's no moment where Esperanza is angered by the bruise on Niki's face per the LN.

Moreover, am I right that the manga also omits Monica and Elmer's encounter with the bald man and Maiza in Chapter 4? There's no marketplace with children singing the MM song, no bald man, no Maiza...

...but the previous chapters also omitted Elmer's first encounter with Maiza, didn't they? So the mangaka's been deliberately holding off on Maiza's introduction from the start. I guess the manga's going to move the bruise reaction, Larolf's report and the bald man/Maiza-Elmer-Monica encounter to another day? How will that account for Elmer's wound, though, since Elmer doesn't show up to class after being stabbed?

I probably need to reread manga chs. 1–2 and actually take note of what was and wasn't adapted. I should do that anyway, since that would be useful for the wiki.

Okay, some positives...

Larolf depicted! (I only know because he was depicted in Chapters 1–2, so this is a belated celebration of a Larolf Hancletia design. Ch.2 gave us Huey's mother, too.)

Warehouse depicted!

Patisserie lady depicted!

Hey, it's Elmer's room at Esperanza's place!

Elmer wounded! Bandages on Mask Maker's arm are neat.

Monica has a lot of fun expressions. Manga is leaning hard into the classic twitterpated teen girl archetype and her 'tells' (big eyes, blushing), and these do serve the purpose.

Denkurou and Zank (albeit seen, not heard)!

Elmer's back scars...

Some mild complaints:

Zank's body should be as dark-skinned as Zank's head. Did the mangaka forget to color the torso? If this is a lighting thing where Zank's head isn't in range of a light source, then Denkurou's body should reflect that too. It's such a weirdly stark difference in hue that it really looks like a coloring error.

Am I allowed to feel lukewarm about Elmer's design? Maybe the fact that I've never seen Elmer with flat (slicked?) hair is throwing me off (aka it's throwing me off a lot), but there's something about his head's shape as well. The big forehead?　The eyebrows floating halfway up the forehead? The flat hair is contibuting to the forehead's largeness.

To be totally fair, this is gawky teen!Elmer, not adult!Elmer, and Elmer on the LN11 cover does have a rounder face (than adult!Elmer) that I guess the manga is honoring.

And...

Elmer's back scars.

I am whelmed. I guess I've built up my mental image of the scars for so long that probably any illustration is doomed not to meet expectations. It might be unfair of me, but I can't help think that a mangaka could go all out on the scars, since they only have to be drawn for 1—3 panels—honestly, why not just devote a full page illustration to it or one panel that fills most of the page?

Ex: Contain Monica's horrified expression + Huey going ??? to one panel. Overlay that (opt. and the next panel) with a small panel of Huey's face to emphasize Huey actively following Monica's gaze. Thus, rather than showing a Huey!POV of Monica looking at Elmer, you could dedicate one big panel exclusively to Elmer's full back and arms. Go all out.

There, one and done.

Here's the LN description of Elmer's scars for comparison.

Elmer was stripped to the waist, squeezing his clothes out, and his back…

…was covered in scars.

And it wasn’t only his back; uncountable scars covered the parts of his arms that had been hidden by his sleeves.

Currently, not a single wound was bleeding, but if all those scars became wounds again, he couldn’t even imagine how much they would have bled—

That was how mutilated Elmer was.

He might have had even more scars than Huey’s mother had in his memories of her.

They weren’t just cuts. There were marks as if something had been used to gouge out divots of flesh, and an enormous burn that covered the top half of his back. Not only that, but the burns appeared to be covering countless more scars.

Where's the enormous burn? Those scars are pretty countable. I see plenty of unmamrred skin. Yep, I'm nitpicking now. Please give my apologies to the mangaka; my expectations were simply too high. Ultimately, I am grateful that Elmer's scars have finally been depicted in an official publication.

(Quick! Enami! Draw Elmer shirtless as a 20th anniversary treat!)

Defying Description

Context for Narita's comment: DMDP is a reverse isekai in which a protagonist reincarnates in someone's body in Shinjuku, Earth (another world). Narita is playfully invoking this premise.

Original Story Ryohgo Narita Anime!　It's an anime!　I am very happy to make this announcement! It's been 20 years since I made my debut, and the fact that Dead Mount Death Play has been reincarnated in the new world of anime is due in no small part to the blessings of our readers! I hope you will follow the growth of this work for many years to come.......!

Fujimoto context: Prior to DMDP, Fujimoto collaborated with Narita on a 2010s Baccano! manga. Prior to that, he wrote and published his original manga Red Raven, his most representative work.

Original story Shinta Fujimoto This is the first time a work I've been involved in has been adapted into an anime, so I'm very happy! Thank you to all the readers who've supported me this far! I am looking forward to seeing the characters in action and listening to the dialogues that I think will be fun to hear voiced. As a viewer, I am looking forward to seeing it.

Translation ??? on below: I cross-referenced several machine translation iterations, tweaked them w/the machines, and then took liberties in (re?)phrasing the whole bit about Ono screaming, seeeing the images, and thinking about DMDP for readability. I think the gist gets across, but I admit it doesn't quite reflect how Ono phrased it. JP doesn't have a strict sentence order, so... Eh, you get my gist.

Director/Series Composition Manabu Ono The other day I had a gastroscopy for the first time at a thorough physical examination. When the camera was inserted through my nose, I screamed, "Absolutely impossible!" in a monologue upon seeing the image of my esophagus and stomach on the monitor. "This will be a great reference for making Dead Mount Death Play!" I thought, in the midst of my suffering. I had undergone a purification and the results of my physical exam were good. I will do my best to create shocking drawings, action and horror!

Elmer’s goal in pursuing his own happiness, after all, has always been concomitant with pursuing global happiness. “What do you suppose I’d have to do to make everyone in the world happy?” he asks Esperanza, well before his arrival in Italy, His modus operandi—making individual people smile with his own power—is not the be-all and end-all. In other words, if he somehow verified his own happiness before making everyone happy, I think it likely he would continue pursuing that goal, whether despite or because of the inherent selfishness he, others, and the narration see in him.

Huey knows of Elmer’s global desires; his 1705 conversation with Elmer leaves him sick with the realization that Elmer will use any means to achieve his end; “he would make [others] his pawns and change their very fates.” (Oh, the irony.)

Now, Huey knows full well that he cannot preserve the world, nor does he want to. Time will change the world beyond his control, until it is unrecognizable to the world Monica once knew. Though this itself would not be an issue for Monica, Huey might care on some deeper level about the kind of world that ought (not) to greet her. He cannot abide decisions based on uncertainties; the more certain the outcome he works toward, the better. Anyone with reason understands that extraordinarily drastic change is required for a world such as ours to achieve global happiness; anyone who knows Elmer understands such change could be as terrible as it could be wonderful.

Again, whether and to what degree Huey is deliberately or incidentally pushing back Elmer’s ‘world domination via happiness’ plans is unclear and merely speculation. Nevertheless, when one conducts an experiment, one contends with both controls and variables. In removing Elmer from the global equation (while allowing the memory of him to influence his own experiment), Huey has one less variable to track.

What led me to think that Huey might have had the world on his mind? What of textual evidence or support? 

What strikes me—what directly influenced this train of thought / this post—is how Elmer seems to put his “global happiness” pursuit on hold post-elixir, though it remains a primary occupation of his mind three centuries on. As he famously says in 2001, “For the sake of a happy ending, I’d sell everyone in the world to the devil without a second thought.”

Yet Elmer has been more talk than action on this point for the last couple centuries. (That Narita has managed to convince us otherwise is to his credit). Elmer’s undertaking of alchemy in the 1700s is an example of a proactive if misguided step towards global happiness, but we haven’t seen Elmer take alternative macroscopic steps since. The absence of progress in his global quest is starkly puzzling in the presence of the progress made by Szilard and Huey, two men just as driven as Elmer. As far as we know, Elmer has mostly spent his time searching for Szilard while trying to make people smile along the way. 

(Notably, people like Niki, Mark, and Fil. And Huey. People not unlike him. I firmly believe this is rooted in his trauma and the series’ essential theme(s) of happiness—not just it is possible for immortals to be happy, but, I am of the opinion, is it possible for people like Elmer to be happy? This is something I will be discussing in one or two much longer posts. It is too off-topic here.)

Putting aside Elmer’s tendency to be sidetracked with aforementioned ‘smile projects’ like those above, the puzzle makes sense in the context of Huey’s promise. If Elmer puts so much significant stock in global happiness’ possible happy outcome for himself—i.e., he is optimistic that it may actually change him—then how can he continue to pursue meaningful actions toward that end without risking breaking his promise? For all that Elmer’s selfishness is underscored, and how self-centered he can be when finagling smiles in the short-term, is he not fairly willing to delay or stay his prospective long-term Happy Ending, time and time again, on behalf of another? 

Huey is making Elmer sacrifice his own theoretical happiness for what could be hundreds or thousands of years. Do not change. Remain just the way you are. Do. Not. Realize. Your. Happiness. Elmer agrees so readily, on the entire basis of a potential, not guaranteed, smile from Huey—as if he believes that seeing Huey’s smile will significantly bring himself closer to knowing happiness. What else can we conclude?

There are few other scenarios I can see that plausibly explain / justify Elmer’s conspicuous stagnancy in his global happiness pursuit when we are frequently warned he is a man to take seriously, a man proactive, a man who is not all talk. I say this despite my belief that Elmer’s repeated homing in on those who have been subjected to major trauma / abuse (Niki, Fil) to the point of despair / suicidal thoughts / etc. (Mark)—especially those who are children (all of the above at first meeting)¹—is more relevant to his desire for personal happiness than even Elmer realizes.

But that is another story. By which I mean at least one, possible two, lengthy write-ups on and related to the subject.

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¹ Note: I would include Czes, except Elmer isn’t quite aware that Czes suffered at Fermet’s hands until Czes tells him as much in 2001...not to mention he has not seen Czes since the 18th century. How much of his zeroing in on Czes is due to instinct, or merely a natural consequence of Czes being the most unhappy of the immortals? Still, what Elmer decides to tell Czes specifically in this news’ wake (personal jealousy, capacity for change), seems crucial to me if Elmer at all, in that moment, regarded Czes as not unlike him. “If you want to melt again, just let yourself feel the warmth of your environment,” Elmer advises.

Alas, in Elmer’s case, there is nothing for him to melt back into; he has no reference point. He can mirror the warmth, but Czes can let it warm the embers of all that is good within him. Moreover, since when has Elmer last spent significant time in the warmth of human connection? Not since the Mask Maker trio, and even then, the three’s chance to intimately connect (the prospect of Monica sharing her past with them, Elmer his with her) was sabotaged with Monica’s death. Elmer keeps eluding the most ubiquitous and emphasized of Baccano!’s paths to happiness: bonds with other people.

Note 2: “...few other plausible scenarios...” I ought to acknowledge that Elmer shares Szilard & Huey’s drive but none of their power, resources, and money. You know, the sorts of assets required for such a lofty goal as his. The sort of assets he originally hoped to obtain via using Huey and Monica. Of course, should the Mask Maker trio once more reform (ha...), perhaps then Elmer might have more of an actual chance. “Building the world” might also be all the cheerier if he were doing it with his friends alongside him, though I’m not sure whether he’s really thought it through like that. 

Waiting on a powerful connection like Huey is probably the easiest and most appealing option from Elmer’s perspective, as opposed to the Szilard route (using alchemy/knowledge to accrue money, then power and influence), the Victor route (honest employment under the leash of the U.S. government), the Maiza and Begg routes (illegal work via gang connections), or the Nader route (worming one’s way into the ear of influential people via a silver tongue, which Elmer decidedly lacks).