Feb 19, 2024
I’ve just finished watching this series, and I decided to take a quick look at the reviews to see if there was a general enjoyment of the show. I was actually quite surprised to find that there are a multitude of reviews expressing their EXTREME dislike for this anime.
Of course, opinions are just that: opinions. And I don’t think there is a series, anime or otherwise, that is liked by absolutely everybody. But a lot of the criticisms of this particular one, I just can’t understand.
First of all, I’ll share my views on Tomodachi Game. As an avid enjoyer of thriller-type drama anime, I
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was quite pleased with its plot. I am a huge Classroom Of The Elite fan, and this was recommended to me because of that. I had no expectations to enjoy this more than CoTE because I truly believe that anime is a work of art, from its philosophical nature, and its array of characters that all have their own depth. (I’ll also point out that every single opening is a fucking banger.)
When I was watching Tomodachi Game, I didn’t really think the characters had much depth to them, other than maybe Yuichi, but there was absolutely no competition in that regard to CoTE.
I’ve seen this criticism in almost every review of this anime, and I definitely agree. But, I disagree on the point that “it is hard to believe they’re even friends because you never see them interacting as such, and they were thrown into the game too quickly to see their friendship.”
Yes, that is true, but personally I think that makes the watch even better. The point is, they barely knew each other, aside from a dirty secret here and there. I think that was the entire purpose of the game in the first place, to show the main cast they were hardly ‘friends’ at all; the fact that there were a huge lack of scenes between them before the game sort of cements that idea.
As for the pacing, it felt slightly too quick but I didn’t really feel aware of that while I was watching. It was only after the fact that I sat back and thought to myself ‘wow that was a lot in such a short time.’ This is just my own view, but I kind of enjoy a fast paced drama. It makes me really engage with what’s going on and if it were a 24-episode season, I’d feel it would be dragging on a little bit. Assuming that there is supposed to be another season— I have no idea if there is or not— I have no qualms about how quickly the season progressed.
Another criticism I saw a couple of times was about how convoluted the actual game was, and how difficult the rules were to follow, either because of how short-of-time the rules were on screen, or simply because they were too complicated. This is just how I saw it, but I didn’t think the rules were that hard to follow at all. Yes, the rules were on screen for a total of 2 seconds, but directly after that, the rules were explained again verbally by Manabu. After the verbal explanation, the games were pretty straightforward, at least to me. Besides, it’s quite common for rules or even other text written on screen in any anime to only be on screen for a couple of seconds, so it’s not really a huge issue specifically in Tomodachi Game.
I’d also like to quickly mention that criticising Yuichi for his ridiculously unrealistic intelligence and his engineering of other people’s psyche is kinda pointless… What are you expecting from an anime where 5 teenage students get kidnapped to play a torturous game, and absolutely no one questions why they disappeared for a certain amount of time? I feel like Yuichi’s manipulation skills is not the most unrealistic part of the show. Plus… it’s not real, if anyone cared to notice. I don’t see why realism is a factor in an animated fictional series. But maybe that’s just me.
All in all, do I think Tomodachi Game is an amazing, perfect story that is to be considered a 10/10 watch? Of course not, it’s rare that I rate anime a 10 unless I’m really biased (I’m only human).
But I wouldn’t exactly call it a shitshow either. I rated it a 7 because of that, it was pretty good and I’d recommend it to anyone that likes an interesting, entertaining drama anime.
To end my review, if you completely hated this anime that’s absolutely fine, no one is forcing you to like it. This was just my take on it. :p
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
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