Deatte 5-byou de Battle

The survival game genre feels like a disease that just doesn't seem to go away these days. Sure, they're not as popular in the anime medium compared to the video game industry. Yet, some of them still lands a spot on television. One of them is called Battle Game in 5 Seconds.

Now I could argue that the anime industry has been dominated by the isekai trope in recent years. But once in awhile, there's an anime about survival games. Battle Game in 5 Seconds was chosen to be adapted into a 12-episode anime series despite the manga having over 17 volumes and ongoing. Yes, it ... would for whatever reason, they wanted to showcase an anime about superpowers that draws the line between fiction and reality. And it all begins with protagonist Akira Shiroyanagi.

Akira isn't your typical protagonist as he is protrayed as a prodigy. He's quick to learn on his feet and has a calm composure despite being thrown into a death game along with others. From the first episode, it became clear that Akira isn't a pushover or someone that can easily be intimidated. To add on to his character attributes, he's also got a clever mind and takes full advantage of his ability, the Sophist. With strategic thinking, it became obvious that Akira possesses intelligence beyond his age. When you have a character thrown into a survival game with all these traits, it makes Akira a key figure to watch out for, both for his allies and enemies.

The rest of the character roster consists a wide range of backgrounds. Among the most prominent is Yuri Amagake, a 17 year old girl with a history of bad luck. And by adding her to show, it really brings in the question how much value she can contribute. To be honest, she's one of the most normal characters in the show with a rather abnormal ability (Wrath of God). It would appear the anime wants to show how a misfortunate girl can fight against bad luck and be who she is. However, the anime does a poor job at developing her character beyond the surface level. She's just too normal, with really nothing unique to describe about her.

With those two out of the way, the rest of the character roster starts to stray from normalcy. For instance, the seductive Rin Kashii is introduced in one of the team battles that shows her manipulative nature. Shin, the quiet giant, is protrayed as an enemy of injustice. We also meet the delinquent Madoka who never lets anyone or anything gets in his way. But perhaps the most unusual among the cast is the catgirl, Mion. She plays the role of the administrator for the survival games. And believe me, she's about as cruel as a character can get in the show. Unfortunately, the anime doesn't adequately develop or reveal her true purpose. It's up to the viewers to decide on why she exists and what she truly wants to put all these characters into survival games with their lives on the line. Yes, that is the main drawback of the show. It seems the anime just drops everything to suddenly and expect us to be invested into the story.

Meanwhile, the anime also appears to forgot or never really wanted to develop its character cast this season. Besides Aki and Yuri, most of the characters in the show are overshadowed by them. The overemphasis on Aki's goal as well as the survival theme itself tarnishes the legacy of this show. Given the survival game context, they should at least try to make one other character in the anime more memorable besides our two leading protagonists. Even for the two main leads, their character development is limited and for what's worth, very underwhelming. That it say, this show can easily be described by one word....underwhelming.

Looking back, I never felt the show was visually appealing from the very start. There's obviously some violence and action given the themes of the series. However, nothing else really stood out whether it's the character designs, settings, or even the backgrounds. Somehow, they made a talking cat-like girl the most distinctive character in the series. While you could say the anime isn't about the art, it certainly deosn't enhance the overall viewing experience. Studios SynergySP and Vega Entertainment need to step it up.

Battle Game in 5 Seconds took a hit for the team and I don't mean that as a compliment. It means it took a hit for itself by creating an underwhelming story with an equally underwhelming cast. With a manga running over 17 volumes, this served little more than an advertisement. It practically wants you to throw money at the franchise. Do yourself a favor and save your money. There's better investments you can make.

The death game genre has reached a pit of mediocrity in modern anime standards. Most shows in this genre usually turns out to be god awful from the start, or has a decent beginning but crashes and burns in the end. So when I saw a new death game anime in this season, my immediate reaction was “Not another one” a saying DJ Khaled would be really offended by. But I’m honestly surprised to see this show hold up pretty well, enough to get me to watch the whole thing, start to finish…or it did at first. Does that mean it’s great? No, not really.

The ... premise is pretty straight forward like most death games. Kill or be killed situations, surviving a platoon of super powered people and be the last man standing. It starts off with a giant, 8 foot crocodile ass looking man attacking our mc. Our mc manages to escape his assault and trap him in an abandoned building and manages to kill him. A bit unrealistic, as the more typical reaction would be to shit your pants when you’re attacked by a large menacing figure than to go full Tom Cruise mission impossible on the guy. He then proceeds to get transported by an overtly annoying cat girl with a top hat, and brought into the death game, where he’s given the full explanation of things. Sort off at least.

The remainder of the story we see our mc in various fights and precarious situations. The premise is straightforward and not gunna lie kinda boring. The death battle genre is one that I rarely like, but even without personal dislike, it doesn’t have any uniqueness to it, or any factor that sets itself apart or grabs your attention. The powers and in this show feels unrealistic in the sense that there’s so much flexibility in them. There’s no borderline for how overtly unusual powers could be, and since we as viewers are in the dark about several rules of the game, it gets frustrating to see one dumb power coming out of nowhere. There’s no balance in that sense which leaves you confused and kinda annoyed.

You feel a slight repetitiveness in the shows storytelling. It revolves around a problem being created, mc using his intelligence to solve the problem, everyone else losing their shit tryna figure out how he did it. There’s no opposing force, there’s no “L” to our mcs “Light”. This sets up a rly plain sailing plot with no added tension or suspense. You see a situation occur but you already know it’s going to get resolved with no added consequences. Although, I was dumb to expect proper storytelling in a death game so it’s honestly bad on my end

The best part of the show is the mc. Most death games either have a mc who’s a complete whiny annoying character who’s scared shitless all the time, or someone who’s over confident, unusually strong and has will smith I am legend levels of smartness and survival tactics. The mc here is minimally intelligent and knows how to use his intelligence properly. He dosent have the whole “I can beat you, cause my friends are relying on me” bullshit. He knows a serious fight, plans ahead, and uses his brain to win rather than the friendship rocket launcher. His power compliments his intelligence a lot, which is one of my fav aspects of the show. Since it’s so vague what his power actually is, it gives him the liberty of experimenting and slowly figuring out the limits of his abilities, which is quite entertaining to watch.
Other characters such as Ruri is a recurring presence in the show. She’s a girl with a troubled past, due to lack of parental affection, and she finds solace in caring for her little brother. She has a decent backstory but we don’t see that implemented into her character that much. She’s always cheery, active and loud. We rarely see her past effecting her personality. It would have been refreshing to see her all quiet and anti-social initially, but Akira helps her come out of her shell and makes her bright and cheery.
We also have Walmart Bakugo, blue haired Joe Exotic, nerdy gamer girl, manipulating red head milf and a lot more. There’s an abundance of characters but all of them are super generic and extremely forgettable. They have their own parts to play but feel more like an NPC out of Skyrim than an actual character. The villain has the classic “Im the bad guy, I’ll kill everyone” look and leads the gang green gang of annoying misfits. The only character that’s remotely decent is the glasses guy that looks like he’s paid the subscription for every Onlyfans model in existence. His cunningness is somewhat amusing to watch in the last arc of the show. Besides that, forgettable, generic, annoying side characters.
But we all know the best character is the banana head man

The art in this show is not consistent. It starts off with a fairly vibrant art style, which was one of the things that made me curious about the show. But as more time passes, you notice CGI being used in most places. And if you’re wondering yes the CGI is horrible, almost comical. Im really wishy washy about CG in anime. When it’s well done, it’s actually pleasant to watch, like Beastars. When it’s awful, or combined with animation, it feels disgusting, like an unholy amalgamation of good and evil. It’s like oil and water, it just doesn’t mix. That’s the long term problem in this show, as even main characters start getting CG’d more often than animated. The fight scenes also has more CG than animation in the later parts, and most parts are covered with flashy lights, big explosions or smokescreens to avoid putting effort into their show. Like bruhhh, if a show that has “Battle” in the title dosent have its fight scenes properly animated, it begs the question “what is your budget going towards?” Characters also have their rough times, with disproportional facial animations that makes them look like something outta Resident Evil, and not even the good Resi games, like some shit outta Resi 6.

Not going into details about the sound. OSTs are fine, OP & ED was fine, and voice acting was generic yet well done. Although the cat girl was super annoying, like enough to make my ear drums bleed levels of annoying.

Even with its amplitude of flaws, I honestly think it’s one of the better death games out there. It’s not a good show, but it out runs its predecessors in most factors which is something I can appreciate. It was more like a rocky ride than a constant downhill that I felt watching Darwins Game. The mc is the highlight of the show, and outshines most characters and was the only reason I came back to the show weekly. Fun show overall.

So, to keep it short, the dynamic of the show was: bad premise, quite good continuation, and gradually getting worse second half. Despite having one of the most stereotypical and bad premises out of there (and also character introductions), the following episodes got way better and actually interesting, only for the growth to be completely thrown out of a window later, with the story becoming stagnant, typical, and boring. The characters don't really help either, not even the interesting back stories being able to save the show. The fact that it loses its realistic factor, that made the characters feel human, only makes it completely ... ruined.

The story starts with an arrogant loner gamer boy that's extremely intelligent and thinks other people are not worth his time (that's definitely the first time we hear of this, right?) getting attacked on the street by a buff mummy that gets out of a car right in front of him and starts chasing him. Luckily, because he's smart and an ace at playing games (including startegy games), he manages to defeat him, and a quircky evil catgirl with a high picthed voice abducts him. Where does she take him? In a room full of people where she explains that they are part of a game now and were granted super powers. A set of games, to be precise, with more stages, that put their lives on the line. Pretty basic and used so many times before, isn't it? But here comes the good part: our (male) MC's super power. That's where it starts to get better.

Unfortunately, the good part ends when we have to watch a single stage of the game go on for half of the episodes and it becomes all just a mind game that should have been impossible, actually. It has a little supsense, but not enough and it loses part of its meaning anyway, but I'll stop here for the sake of not giving that many spoilers. Point is, in my opinion the focus in the second half wasn't on what it should have been to make it a good show.

Oh, and the characters. Aside the annoying male MC that I already described, (that gets a little more tolerable after a bit but still could have been a little more original), that has the typical appearance of a brown haired boy with brown eyes as well, we have the female MC that looks exactly like Rei (Highschool of the Dead) and has pretty much the same personality. Her backstory was pretty interesting and her character is tolerable, but her design kinda pisses me off tbh. There are also some interesting characters, and their backstories are pretty interesting most of the time (even for the more boring ones).

To top it off, at the end the animation gets pretty bad on some parts (around episodes 11-12), especially when it comes to fighting scenes and one particular character, where the CCG is pretty obvious and doesn't fit well with the rest of the animation.

The sound is okay, the sound track not exactly what I would listen to. However, I'd say the ED went especially good with the anime.

Well, that's pretty much all I had to say. Too bad it had to go like this, the anime had potential at some point.