Liar Liar

What's that famous saying again? Liar Liar, pants on fire? Self immolation sure did sound nice every time I finished an episode of this utter garbage, it was a struggle getting through that for twelve straight weeks. In the same vein as Classroom of the Elite, Tomodachi Game, The Irregular at Magic High, etc, we have a new addition from the Summer 2023 line up.

Written by Haruki Kuou, this is their first work to get adapted and it'll be their only work I will watch going forward, that is for certain. I suppose you have to start somewhere, but my goodness, are there a ... lot of recent first timers getting adaptations which have been dreadful. They are obviously staking it all on this series, as it's been the only thing they've worked on since 2019 and maybe the original source is a different deal, but the anime stank on all levels.

Liar Liar is set inside a special school where only the most exceptional are allowed entry. Sound familiar? Everything meaningful there is decided through games and every person attending the academy has a ranking of sorts, depending on the amount of stars one has. You win a game, you earn a star, so to speak. Our protagonist, Hiroto Shinohara, just so happens to meet the strongest student on the Island on his first day, the six star ranked Sarasa Saionji, a girl who has never lost a game. Hiroto miraculously ends up beating Sarasa and becomes the strongest student in her place, the incredible seven star, except that, you guessed it, it's all a lie.

That's the main jist of the show (there is an overarching story which is hardly developed), him trying to survive and deceive everyone on a day to day basis, getting challenged to all sorts of games and this would be all well and good, until you quickly realize that the games they play are fucking lame and/or confusing. The vast majority of the games are either poorly explained, incredibly convoluted exposition, coma inducing to watch or poorly executed with the way they develop and end. It's usually a combination of these things.

What was supposed to make these games "exciting" to watch, were the addition of abilities one could use in the games. You are given three slots and can access a wide range of different abilities or powers through your phone, that will do different tasks for you and become useful once the game starts. The more stars you have, the better the abilities you can access. For example, there's a detecting ability that let's you see where students or the objectives are on the map, there's a jamming ability that does what you think it does, etc. Unfortunately, with the way they speed run through the rules and regulations of the games, the powers themselves are barely given another look after we've been introduced to what they do. It all happens very swiftly. I compare it to something like World Trigger, where everything is meticulously detailed and you learn so much interesting things about the specific power system and their games before hand and afterwards, Liar Liar absolutely fails in comparison. There's no room to breathe here, you're playing constant catch up, like you've been away from School/Work for a couple days and are thrown in the deep end once you get back.

That's not even the worst part about these games though, it's the way they are completed. If you're expecting top notch ingenious and smart tactical plays being employed, then I've got bad news for you. It's mainly luck based and/or full of deus ex machina ploys that he finds from fucking cheating. There's nothing interesting or amazing about it. The visuals can't save it either, there's no style over substance here lol, it's full of stills, ugly background artwork, shoddy fighting sequences, etc. At least the main cast looks pretty amirite? Probably the only reason why this thing got the green light.

Liar Liar is about someone who goes to a special school where everything is settled through games and defeats the highest ranked student on his first day. But secretly he isn't as great a player as everyone thinks.
The Title of the show now comes into play, as the protagonist and the girl he defeated are both liars. And because of the nature of their lies they have to work together to conceal them.

While this may sound interesting, make no mistake. Liar Liar is nothing special. The animation quality is OK at best, the characters, aside from maybe the protagonist himself, are little more than the ... standard tropes and side characters fit on a single index card.

But what brings Liar Liar down for me the most are the games. Because the animation quality isn't good enough to distract you, like in No game no Life or Kakegurui, you only have the game itself to bring your attention to. And they aren't good. While the games have more variety to them than I thought, the rules are barely and badly explained and the show always has some extra rules up its sleeve that it only reveals once the characters use them to give the audience a contrived gotcha moment and make the protagonist seem smarter.

For my rating, I use a few charactaristics of the show and rate them from 0 to 5. I then take the average and multiply it by two to get a MAL score. Keep in mind that this rating is subjective and only represents how I personally felt about certain aspects of the show.

Visuals: 2/5
They weren't horrible, but nothing to write home about.

Characters: 1/5
Like I said, they are barely more than one note or a trope.

Music: 2,5/5
It wasn't good or bad enough to be noticable, so right in the middle.

Story: 1/5
Sadly there wasn't anything interesting beyond the intriguing introduction.

Worldbuilding: 2/5
The setting is interesting. But as of episode 3, nothing is explained well enough to be believable. At the moment it feels like the whole world is just used to get us to the "cool games". Which isn't bad for this kind of anime, No game no Life and Kakegurui did it as well, but it also isn't enough to more points for me.

Overall Score: 1,7/5 --> 3,4/10
A better production quality could have elevated this to a 6-7/10 just because the premise is pretty fun. But because the animation quality isn't enough for me to turn my brain of, I'm forced to bring my attention to all the other aspects of the show which, well, aren't great.

Keep in mind that while my score can seem rather harsh, I just try to keep my average at about 5, so a score of 3,4 just means that it is a bit below average but I would still consider it watchable for people who think the premise is fun.

Imagine if someone asked ChatGPT to create a mad-libs script based on Kakegurui, Classroom of the Elite, and No Game No Life, and then they presented that script to their local anime club. Each episode's worth of prompts is filled in by different people, and none of these people can communicate with each other in any way; reading the previous sections to see what was going on is completely optional. After a plot is created, one guy creates characters based on the advice from a slightly shitter chatbot service that is trained on Mal’s top 100 most popular anime list. After this, the members of ... the club get together and recite the script, and having had their fun with it, they throw it away at the end of the day. Suddenly, a worker for the Wednesday morning garbage discovers this script, and promptly submits it for a local essay contest, where the winner gets their story published. He figures that he will never win because this story is nonsensical at best, but through sheer happenstance, he is declared the winner. The rest is history. The series was relatively popular despite being critically slammed, so it spawned a light novel, a manga series, and an anime. The garbage man became rich and married a supermodel, and since he gave a bit of credit to our lowly anime club, they all became rich and got all of the women that they could ever want. Everyone lived happily ever after… Now luckily for you, there’s no need to imagine this absurd scenario because Liar Liar exists!

Obviously, that introductory paragraph is a lie, but I honestly wouldn’t be surprised if some part of that was true; in fact, it probably serves as a better explanation for some of the shit that happens in this anime than any other explanation the author could've given me. Liar Liar is the most confusingly ass series I have ever had the displeasure of consuming. It makes so many narrative, character, world-building, and production mistakes in such a short amount of time that it honestly is impressive. The question we are going to attempt to answer today is as follows. Is the author of Liar Liar actually incompetent at writing any sort of narrative story, or did his own or his editor’s greed lead them to make the most generic anime possible in a genre that thrives on creativity?

Fortunately, the myriad of mistakes that this series makes doesn’t necessarily begin with the premise. Granted, the premise is pretty generic: the “transfer student into elite school” trope has been done to death, but this isn’t necessarily a move that damns the series. Now having generic ass characters in a “psychological” anime, a genre predicated on well-made characters in a mentally engaging narrative, is a much more puzzling move that serves as the first major error that this series makes. You see, almost every character in Liar Liar is either a worse version of a better character in a better anime or can be described with a single adjective or noun.

Hiroto, our main character, is just a standard generic self-insert protagonist. He doesn’t have any discernible character traits other than the standard “I want to be successful,” “I want to protect my friends,” and “women fluster me.” From the introduction, you wouldn’t think this as he came off as a cocky, early SAO Kirito-level asshole, but after that scene and the maybe 6 others that happen throughout the story to lesser extents, he says some shit like “Oh golly, I hope that lie was believable”. This robs him of his only distinct character trait and turns him into Ryouta from Kakegurui, or just any other isekai protagonist from a series that has a title that's like a sentence long. Now if this was action anime, this wouldn’t be that big of a deal, but this show fancies itself as a thought-provoking “psychological” anime, a genre where main characters are typically charismatic or intelligent enough to make the shit they pull believable. Considering Hiroto’s character traits, he doesn’t live up to that in the slightest.

Noa gets the honor of being the most developed character in this series, granted, that might be an award she gets by default considering that she is the only developed character in this series, but I digress. She is introduced as a watered-down Kushida from Classroom of the Elite: an overly friendly and popular girl that is revealed to be an asshole that wants to see everyone suffer. After she is defeated by our main character, she becomes a fawning fan girl for him as she sheds all the personality that she had up until that point. Now this is borderline misogynistic and patriarchal writing, but that’s beside the point. Having our best character effectively eliminated from the story halfway through means that we have to rely on Hiroto’s generic ass to carry the story, a situation that definitely isn’t ideal.

Fortunately for Himeji and Sarasa, they don’t have to worry about their character development being struck down in the middle of the series as they never received any in the first place. The former is just your standard kind maid: almost identical to Rem from Re: Zero. The latter is just a tsundere: almost identical to… any tsundere in any anime ever. In practice, these girls aren’t bad characters, in fact, they are definitely the best characters in the series. But the issue remains; neither of these characters can stand by themselves. They’re both solely attached to Hiroto, and since Hiroto is such a bland character, any romantic subplot comes off as vapid at best.

You might have picked up on this by now, but this anime has aspects of a harem romcom despite also masquerading as a big-brained psychological anime. Now to Liar Liar’s credit, only maybe 8 percent of each episode is dedicated to romcom bullshit, but the presence of it at all damages the anime. All of the comedy is romantically charged, and, wouldn’t you know, it’s some of the most generic rom-com comedy I’ve ever seen. I don’t think it made me chuckle even a single time, and if it did, it certainly wasn’t worth massacring all of the female characters to do so. Oh, and to the surprise of nobody, the romance is completely dead and teeters on SAO levels of trash.

At this point, you might be questioning how I can call Liar Liar a psychological anime even though it lacks the strong characters that make psychological anime actually good. And yes, you are completely right. It isn’t a psychological anime, but its narrative likes to pretend it is, well, at least sometimes. The question governing this section is as follows. Was Liar Liar originally intended to be a visual novel or was always supposed to be an anime?

There are only a handful of anime that can shove 8 minutes of info dumps or typical conversation down my throat and still be entertaining. Unfortunately, Liar Liar is not one of them. These info dumps, mostly unnecessarily in-depth game, situation, or side character descriptions, are probably some of the most boring and inconsequential sequences in anime. They happen almost every episode and they definitely don’t have the substance to be 8 minutes long, it’s more like they stretch 3 or so minutes worth of content into 8-minute intervals for some reason. Oh, and since our characters are so bland and everyone in the room has to be fully involved in every conversation like a visual novel, the discourse becomes simply groan-inducing as it genuinely seems like each character is an AI chatbot trained on what archetype that the character is supposed to be. What’s worse is that there is almost nothing happening on screen whenever these sequences take place, maybe just some lazy animations or DVD logo-esque camera panning around the screen. If this was dubbed, I honestly could close my eyes and listen to this shit like an audiobook and I wouldn’t lose any of the impact of the story.

However, even with bland characters and a mandatory 8-minute info dump every episode, a couple of good games and a good narrative surrounding them could make this series watchable to some extent. Sadly, we don’t even get that.

You see, Liar Liar considers itself a “strategy game” anime, yet its games may be the worst thing I’ve ever seen in media. Yes, media. Not just anime, I’ve seen better games in books, movies, American tv shows, fucking gameshows, it is completely asinine. Liar Liar’s games are so bad because they are all fairly simple while being described as the convoluted things on planet Earth. This is where our 8-minute info dumps come in. I've seen this series provide an 8-minute tutorial for a card game where the objective is as simple as getting more cards than your opponent. It’s almost like if I had 5 minutes to teach you how to play chess, so I try to teach you the Sicilian defense instead of just telling you what the pieces do. Occasionally, there is a complicated game, but it’s almost always explained rather poorly in a way where you don’t really know what’s going on until it’s happening. This is a problem considering cheating is a major part of this story and at times, you have absolutely no idea if the main character is cheating his ass off or if he’s just abusing an aspect of the game. This is to such an extent that the main character actually has to remind the audience that he’s cheating so they know what the hell is going on in the story.

The extent of cheating cheapens the main character’s accomplishments. When your main character wins all of these “psychological” battles with the help of a nameless company that can cheat in any way that the author fancies, it doesn’t really feel like he’s doing anything special. It’s almost like watching a streamer kick ass at Call of Duty with aimbot. This is where that asshole arrogance displayed in the intro could’ve come into play, as watching our main character relentlessly taunt those around him while cheating his ass off sounds at least somewhat interesting, but we get generic main character number 11037 who everyone adores. This also cheapens the admiration he receives because it is all ill-gotten, but he will not receive any punishment for that because this is simply not that type of anime.

The worst offender of cheating has to be the author. Like a game of tag on the playground, everything in this story from the characters to the games to the narrative surrounding them is subject to change at any moment, for no previously defined reason whatsoever. This is best personified by the skill system: a simple perk system in which a player can assign 3 before a game. Instead of previously defining the skills so they can be wielded like Chekhov's guns, they stay hidden like a Chekhov’s Assassin's Creed hidden blade: in reality, they function as get-out-of-jail-free cards for whatever outcome the author wants. This leads to asspullitude that I have never before seen in fiction. There's a sequence in this series where in the 8-minute info dump, the author establishes that there is no way to tie a game, before introducing a card called Trojan Horse that allows for that exact thing to happen. Our main character is about to lose a game? Surprise surprise, he equipped a card called pinch hitter, which means that he didn’t lose, his partner did. Liar Liar’s skills are also explained right after they are used like magic attacks in generic isekai (this is the worst in the final arc where everyone throws out abilities like there is no tomorrow); this is a comparison I don’t wanna have to make in a supposedly psychological anime.

Yes, I’m bringing back the psychological anime comparisons, but this is where shit gets a bit confusing. You see, when Liar Liar gives you an 8-minute info dump and tries to pretend like the main character just did a genius move by using his aimbot, it genuinely can seem like it’s trying to be a psychological anime. However, when the author just makes shit up or tramples on basic, anime, or his own logic, it doesn’t really make sense in the context of everything else. By the way, the author also asspulls explicitly with no sort of underlying reason. At times, It’s almost like he sets up the next arc, but he needs a decent reason for that to happen so he just makes up some bullshit and hopes that the audience goes along with it.

“I need a reason for Himeji and Hiroto to fight, so let me invent an evil app that would blow up Himeji’s phone and get her expelled if they don’t fight each other.”

“I need a reason for Noa and Hiroto to fight, so let me give Noa instant transmission and allow her to sprint behind Himeji in heels and take her hostage, tying her hands behind her back with one hand and a rope. Then, if Hiroto wants her back, he must play me.”

In the final arc, the author just flat out gives up on trying to keep it the least bit subtle, so he just allows the rules to be bent and broken for 4 episodes straight, in a way that makes you question what the hell you’re actually watching. This, and other examples like it, obviously doesn’t make any sense, but the author shoves this down our throats and expects us to go along with it. It’s almost like the author doesn’t respect us as viewers, so he thinks he can pull anything at any time and the viewers would still eat it up. It almost follows the same principle of how children's shows are so haphazard in plot because, at the end of the day, the kids don’t care about plot inconsistencies. Story-wise, this is horrible and it actively undermines those bullshit 8-minute info dumps that you have to sit through.

To continue to beat this dead horse, I’m going to have to talk about the production. The “famous” studio Geek Toys really does a suboptimal job here. The only compliment I have for them is the way that they drew background characters. Making them literally two-dimensional Paper Mario style was a nice touch. Otherwise, the character design of the 3D characters is generic and lacks personality. Conversational scenes are lazily animated. Action scenes are lazily animated with an abundance of beams and particle effects to keep them “interesting”. Animations such as sword slashes or running are reused in a single episode to an extent where it is kinda obvious that the production team focused on one animation for the week, so they decided to make it as detailed as possible and reuse it 10 times in an episode. On top of the myriad of mistakes this series makes, this certainly doesn’t help its case.


Let's try to answer some of the questions asked throughout this review.

Is the author of Liar Liar actually incompetent at writing any sort of narrative story, or did his own or his editor’s greed lead them to make the most generic anime possible in a genre that thrives on creativity?

Probably both; the author shows incompetency with the inconsistencies in the plot, but he also makes everything else in this story laughably generic, so I wouldn’t put it past him.

Was Liar Liar originally intended to be a visual novel or was always supposed to be an anime?

I would say anime, but considering the audiobook-ass sections of info dumps and the inherent need to let every character chime in during them, I honestly wouldn’t be surprised if the former was true.

Does the author actually believe that all of his viewers are under the age of 8?

I honestly couldn’t tell you, that’s up to you to decide.


Overall, should you watch Liar Liar? Probably not. It’s either laughably generic, unfathomably boring, or actively not taking itself seriously with the level of asspullitude it attempts. It wouldn’t say that Liar Liar is a part of any genre; sure, it tries to be a psychological strategy game anime with aspects of romantic comedy, but never really commits to embodying any one of these genres. Any attempts it does make are struck down by it being generic or by the author’s incompetence. The only reason I could see anyone watching Liar Liar is because its own ineptitude was kind of interesting at times. Interesting in the way that a dumpster fire is interesting to passersby, but hey, at least that’s something.

Thank you for reading and for the love of god don’t give this series a second season.

No Game Zero Life.

Imagine if you will No Game No Life, but only the protagonist cheats instead of everyone exploiting the ten absolute rules of the world in creative, subtle and ingenious ways. Imagine No Game No Life where all the characters have been dumbed down to the level of morons just so the protagonist can appear smarter like in Classroom of the Elite. Imagine the first season of Yu-Gi-Oh where rules can be made up AND broken at any time. That’s Liar Liar. A convoluted mess of situational conveniences and contrivances.

Set on a fancy high-tech island academy (like Classroom of the Elite) where the ... students settle their disputes and differences by wagering stars on games (like season 1 Yu-Gi-Oh) in order to become… the best at games?… honestly, I don’t understand the point of this system or what benefits the students get for being the best at staring contests or racing. Our protag-kun beats the red-haired tsundere, who is also the best gamer at the academy and is also the daughter of someone rich and important, at a game, by accident, making him the best gamer. Now he has to pretend to be the best gamer by posing as a Lelouch vi Britainna type character so he doesn’t get found out for being a normal gamer and also so he doesn’t in trouble for reasons. It’s nonsense. Literal nonsense.

Why wouldn’t it be nonsense though? This is based on a light novel and as we all know 99.9% of light novel writers who focus on psychological thrillers and tense, dramatic, strategic play-by-plays can’t actually write about them with the plotting and skill needed in order to make something as intense, exciting and satisfying as early Death Note as an example. Liar Liar not only draws from the lazy “I knew you’d do that” style of writing which allows the writer to ass-pull solutions to problems out of nowhere without the need for a satisfying setup, Liar Liar introduces the concept of the red star which the protag-kun won after his game with tsundere. This star allows him to lie and see past lies… which is something only he can do… even though there's nothing stopping anyone else from opening their mouths and telling a lie or calling someone out for lying.
With this he and the hot maid he acquires cheat in every single game he participates in. And not by cleverly bending or exploiting the rules, I mean he literally cheats by hacking the school computer systems, sabotaging motorbikes, and whatever is necessary to win. There is no tension. No strategy. No epic gameplay. Just deflated balloons and wet party poppers. None of his opponents cheat by the way. He is the only one. Honestly, I wanted him to get caught. I liked his opponents. They’re the right level of weird, quirky and camp for a show like this, but they get done so dirty.

The lies don't stop with the games though as the main characters are constantly lying to each other about all sorts of things. By episode three I had basically given up on getting to know any of them because I felt like I didn’t know anything about them. When the big lie of episode three was revealed I didn’t even care. Why should I? That might be a lie too. The lies extend OUTSIDE the anime too. MAL has tagged this show as ecchi, but except for maybe one wet shirt scene there has been no ecchi content to get me through this trite.

Along with its poor art and animation Liar Liar truly has its pants on fire, but the pants are filled with doodoo faeces which gives off a strong scent of shit whilst they burn. Whilst I did enjoy some of the character interactions it is overall an anime trying to do too many things at once and succeeding at none of them. Poorly animated, poorly executed, poorly made. The story is so convoluted I’m not even sure I got most of the story explanation correct. Maybe I’m the Liar???
However, I’m not lying when I say this anime is fucking shit mate.

2/10 Bad

Years of waiting for a No Game, No Life Season 2, and people were thinking this would be similar to that. Well, let me just say, if you thought NGNL was stupid, this will be some abyss fiction to you. With a title like Liar, Liar, you’d expect that it’d be all about cheating and lying through games, and while there’s plenty of that in this anime, it’s done in a very underwhelming way, with contrivances up the wazoo. Powers come out of nowhere, twists come out of nowhere, and in the end, it’s just a trashy harem show with no real spice whatsoever. I’m ... not usually a fan of ecchi, but I’m not gonna lie, maybe some more ecchi could have at least kept my attention on the screen more.

The premise in a nutshell is that Shinohara Hiroto goes to Academy Island, where everything is settled through games, with the strongest student having the ranking of “seven stars”. Hiroto beats the strongest student on his first day, and took the name away from her, becoming the strongest himself, albeit in a fake sense, thus the anime name. The anime started out decently, as something I could call dumb fun at least, but as the show went along, it became heavily contrived and overly complicated, yet bland because of the numerous info dumps throughout the show. That said, the explanations and the world building just wasn’t up to snuff, as sometimes the games just contradicted themselves or an extra rule would be thrown in last minute. It kind of reminded me of Classroom of the Elite, with the rankings and competitions, but just infinitely more stupid.

The production quality looked fine at first, but like the plot, declined in quality as the show went along as well. The animation was mediocre along with the character designs, and the voice acting had some hiccups too at points, as some of the louder, more epic lines (with big mouth flap movements, mind you) were delivered in such a lackluster way, like the VAs were just bored out of their minds reading their scripts. The best part of the entire show was probably the OP and some of the music, in terms of the technical aspects go.

Character wise, they were very tropey and one-note. You got the tsundere, the OP protagonist, and a maid. Harem hijinks ensue. Whoop-dee-do.

Overall, this anime was exactly what I feared it would be, though I was coping that after a very solid premiere episode, it would keep up the fun times, but unfortunately, it fell off relatively quickly due to the poor writing and characterization. Just another schlock suspense anime that will be forgotten quickly, not even turning off my brain was able to allow me to enjoy it, though in my opinion it is still minimally watchable for anyone who enjoys the premise and has a high tolerance for buffoonery.

this show has an interesting premise but it is executed extremely poorly. the main character cheats and lies which is to be expected but he also has unreasonable luck which ruins immersion. the rules of any and every game can be ignored if it benefits the plot in any way whether or not it makes sense. the writers pull random abilities out of nowhere every episode that can change the rules so wildly that they might as well not exist and if needed the rules will be ignored without explanation. there is very limited romantic build up for characters in the show and most of ... the time any attraction between them seems forced and unnecessary. if you want something with a similar premise but properly executed I recommend classroom of the elite or tomodachi game.

Liar Liar, sounds like a good show about deception right? Except it isn't. Because the whole premise is about cheating, and not even in a smart way. Let's begin with our main character.

Our main character is secretly a very intelligent person, like Senku from Dr. Stone, and uses subtlety to... I'm kidding, the main character is literally just a background character. He has no special ability and basically beats the end game boss on his first day through sheer luck. And through a series of convoluted reasons, she and him now have to keep up the mask that he's actually a really great player. ... And the way they do this... is through cheating.

However, this cheating is absolutely dumb and is literally just deus ex machina. In fact, this whole show is just ass-pulled "abilities" that we don't get introduced until the game actually starts, and you have to try and play catch up with what's going on. Each game is different, has different rules, and abilities aren't recycled, so watchers will feel like they're just watching some random stuff happening, then a "MC WINS!".

If you want a comparison to what this show is basically like, then Iseleve would be the reference point.

Oh yay, it's No Game No Life, the sequel which fans have been expecting for well over a decade now...oh wait, it's (literally) No Game No Life, the shittiest version possible. Or how TwoSet Violin easily puts it this way: "If you can play it slowly, you can play it quickly!"

Game-centric psychological works aren't so much common in the AniManga space, much less featured because there aren't much authors willing to put in the effort to write a rather gothic series that in one way or another, have a Jackie Chan "mind-blowing" emitting meme effect of "How is this possible? What gives?". You see, works ... like novelist Shougo Kinugasa's Youkoso Jitsuryoku Shijou Shugi no Kyōshitsu e a.k.a Classroom of the Elite has a fanbase around it due to how well-written the LNs are that the anime adaptations are a pale of comparison, or even dubbed the unfaithful versions of the source material. Or even mangaka Yuki Sato's Tomodachi Game, where the psychological thriller of a premise is so intricate, that it will take seasons' worth to even take the story to whole new level...that you would've seen it in Kakegurui back in the day.

Or, that's I want to stress the most, for clearly in the vein of novelist Haruki Kuou's "Liar, Liar", a mash of both Classroom of the Elite and Kakegurui, that wants to play its rules like No Game No Life, but in many ways, failed to address and embrace the logic and psychological aspects that make this show a decent game of brains and brawn, and literally, going for broke with the mind games of lies and bluffs.

Everyone can play it in one of two camps: be honest and truthful, or in the case of the MC, transfer student Hiroto Shinohara, gamble it big as the premise's big boss, which on this Academy Island, everyone wages stars in all sorts of games. And Hiroto stumbles onto the big fish of the school that he went to: Eimei Academy's Empress, Sarasa Saionji. Him defeating her in an unexpected game is noteworthy, but it also hides the true premise that this red-headed girl isn't who she really is, and since her defeat also acquires him her star, that Star in various different shades of colour, has hidden properties one can utilize to his/her strengths, but that only being able to be acquired from students of higher power. It's up to Hiroto to discover what's the true premise behind the mind games, and figure out ways to deal with the onslaught as the pseudo-strongest claimed "Seven Star" student, the strongest on the island.

In this arena of mind games filled with lies and deceit, it's literally survival of the fittest not just in strength, but in intellgence as well. And although this premise that's suited by Sarasa's family, made into an organization that has a monopoly on whatever is being done on Academy Island. But just when you think that the games are played fair and squarely, you're entirely wrong, such as with Hiroto having Ami Kagaya and her entire "Company" has his back as a guarantor when the games prove disadvantageous against him, and only having the objective to win by hook or by crook, because that's the name of the game. Couple Hiroto together with the tsundere Sarasa, his personal maid and kuudere servant Himeji Shirayuki, and prominent characters like the Little Devil of yandere Noa Akizuki, Hiroto's juggling many issues at once on a whim, though the only thing going for him is his confidence and wit of a double-faced character who has to display confidence on the outside, while trembling on the inside. I love confident people, but they must back up with the skills and expertise to know the game, but Hiroto to me, feels like he's a goofball of sorts to get by even the lamest of badly explained rules that just contradict the seriousness of the games that could make one elevate or drop his/her position. Clearly, this was a case of negligble disconnect, but it happens with each progressing game, that I could not be bothered to learn how the games work, but just to see who comes out on top.

I'm not a fan of shows having 2 directors, and in Liar, Liar's case, this is the extreme Achilles' Heel of how badly the LN has been adapted towards the small screen. For one, director Matsura Naoki has some considerable work done, though most of his jobscope is only mainly on storyboarding, and thinking that he's capable after a lone experience on Attack on Titan's Final Season episode directing, is just a mere sin to atone. Even worse is Satoru Ono, whose experience can just be chocked up to those of only music, even with an unremarkable half-length anime back years ago. I have said it before, and I will say it again, works which have reputations on the line, even one less qualified director who know what they're doing is better than two who have completely different views on how to take the show forward, and in this case, Liar, Liar truly suffered in the vein of a less-than-stellar adaptation. As a debut directoral work for the former, it feels like an insult to injury of the choice of the staff team involved in this show. That said, Geek Toys has suffered much of their reputation being a 3rd-grade studio, and Liar, Liar adds to the studio's now growing list of butchered adaptations, so much that things like error checking and unrefined details are left in the episodes, if you look hard enough. Truly subpar, worse than decent.

I'm pretty sure that the main VAs of Hiroto, Saionji and Himeji are all trying their best to give their effort to the adaptation, but with an average of 3 years experience between them, and in a cutthroat industry climate that even newer VAs, when casted right, earn their reputation faster than those being no names and all, given the range of their abilities, it's quite average to be honest. The only thing I liked about the show is its OST, which May'n has got a pretty good comeback with her OP song, and PuraOre!'s Smile Princess idol group, coupled with the Roblox-type animation and the somewhat rather energetic ED song, makes for at least a unique point that unfortunately, feels miniscule.

Yes, it may feel like we're not gonna get another season of No Game No Life for eons, but trust me when I say that Liar, Liar is absolutely NO substitute for the sophisitication of the former, which was fun and enjoyability, none which can be found here as the direct opposite of highly questionable and confunded decisions just to make white lies be proven right. It's such a shame, that can be said for many shows with potential that it missed the mark so bad, and "Liar, Liar" is one of them.

Just go watch/read No Game No Life instead.

Liar Liar basically has no redeeming qualities. If you're looking for a well-written show centering around epic mind battles where the protagonist is constantly outwitting their opponents, then avoid Liar Liar because none of that is present here.

Liar Liar centers around "games" that characters have to play and win to gain stars and level up. Pretty standard stuff, right? Well, it's actually not because the games are so hilariously convoluted and over-complicated, while at the same time being so simple that if you think about how they would play out for five seconds, you would realize that the game doesn't work on a fundamental level. ... And that's before you throw in the show's "abilities", where characters can just cheat by throwing out whatever bs the writers think sounds cool. Every episode spends a painful amount of time trying to explain the rules to that week's game, and then it is always undone by these cheats, making the entire endeavor pointless. (Not to mention that the protagonist can literally cheat outside of the normal cheats allowed in the games, adding an extra layer of stupidity). There's also no tension to any of the games because you know that the protagonist will whip out some crazy excuse and win at the last second, while pretending he knew what was going to happen the entire time.

In terms of plot, there is no plot. The protagonist ostensibly has a reason for coming to the gaming island, which is that he is trying to find someone he knows. However, that's not actually important because it's brought up like a couple of times in the first few episodes, and then never again. No progress is ever made on this goal. The protagonist never even thinks about how he can go about finding this person. We don't even know why he wants to find them. He has no motivation outside of "gotta keep playing games so I don't get kicked off the island", which is kind of pointless when he doesn't act like he has an actual reason for being there.

The writing is just insanely bad. The dialogue is horrible and cringe-worthy. The characters all fall into "super badass genius" or "clearly evil maniac" (or if it is a female character the options also include "harem member who will devote their entire being to the protagonist after he was nice to them one time"). None of the jokes land. The setting and world-building falls apart before you even have to think about it. Nobody has any motivations that make sense. There's a ton of moments that the writers clearly thought were shakespearean, but are just basic and hallow.

3/10 don't put yourself through this torture. There's lots of anime out there that are actually intelligently written that you would be much better off watching.

I'll be honest. At first I was intrigued by the premise because it seemed like the first few episodes looked like a mix of Classroom of the Elite and No Game No Life. But I was wrong. VERY WRONG in fact.

The premise being that the main character has to pretend to be the strongest student is fine. Even the cheating is fine because it was necessary for him to keep up the facade and the games that were introduced along the way were intriguing enough right? Well just throw all of that out the window. Rules? What rules? Who cares about the rules of ... the game when there's some kind of McGuffin that suddenly gets introduced halfway or toward the end of the game that suddenly changes everything and decides the victory.

Practically everyone just pulls something out of their ass and every viewer is supposed to believe that was part of it the whole time. It was like watching Yu-Gi-Oh Season 1 all over again except everyone cheats and everyone introduces some new mechanic to the game that we've never seen before.

You're gonna get lost with the rules. I was lost with the rules. What's the point in rules? There was one where everyone had a certain number of spaces to take but it seems like everyone can run in any way they want and as long as they want.

I don't have any particular opinion on art style, music, animation or anything. They were good enough. It didn't excel in any part but it does the job.

Still, I don't think I would recommend this to anyone unless you're in the mood to turn off your brain and not care. Like I said, this isn't like No Game No Life and Classroom of the Elite. More like Yu-Gi-Oh Season 1.

This is one of the most dull, abysmal shows that got adapted this year so far.
The story is simple and straight forward in terms of writing however the atrocious pacing, unlikable characters and animation leaves nothing to be desired.

The games always have the same structure, knowing Hiroto is the strongest student on the island, others challenge him to take away his status. Using any bullshit ability and granted help by a maid Himeji and a computer hacker that control results. Making him invincible.
You don't feel any real stakes that challenges the MC that much, games structures are confusing in some parts whilst overall not ... engaging at all.

The technicality side of things is really bad, along with the production which overall feels soulless.

I suggest you to skip Liar Liar all together since the experience is dreadful.

One of the worst shows I’ve seen this year. Liar Liar started as a somewhat overdone premise of a school that bases your rank on the games you play with a twist of the main character lying about being the highest rank at the school. The anime could have gone in many different directions but decided to go in the most bland, generic, and uninteresting route possible.

The plot revolves around the main character playing games and trying to keep his real rank hidden since his lie will be caught if he loses one game. These games don’t mean anything at all. It devolves after 3 ... episodes to who can cheat the most. Hacking, abilities that change the rules, who gives a fuck at this point? Oh Im losing by 100 points? I’ll mess with the rules so the person with least amount of points wins!! Amazing writing!!! It just eliminates any sort of tension knowing the mc will bullshit his way out of any game by cheating.

All other aspects are trash as well. Horrible animation, annoying characters, forgettable music. I can’t remember a single characters name other then Noa since she says her own name all the time in the most annoying way possible.

Do not watch this show. Do anything else with your life.

I never liked battle academies. But, ever since the isekai infestation, where even conventional fantasy shows have been morphed into the same soulless formulaic isekai template shows, I've longed for a return to simpler times where at least what your MC did had meaning. Unfortunately in my search for a good comfort food battle academy, I stumbled upon Liar Liar, with its dazzling opening and interesting premise and first episode. I strapped in, and as the weeks went on, I understood why the genre died out.

Liar Liar commits the biggest sin in any visual medium. It's boring. Really boring. No one is going to care ... or pay attention to endless exposition for a confusing or poorly explained game where the MC is going to cheat in the most asinine way. There are ways to do this well, hell, No Game No Life made this shit entertaining a decade ago. But here, there is no chemistry between characters, no real stakes for the protagonist, no real goal even. Just them playing some bad games and moving on to the next one. Every episode feels like it's sapping your energy, and as the weeks went on and the games get more complicated, I just failed to pay attention anymore. The animation quality took a huge nosedive, and the dialogue spouted by the characters feel like it's taken wholesale from an AI recreation trained on battle academies from years prior. I've seen these things a hundred times before, but Liar Liar lacks that comfort warmth or nostalgia I get when watching even old battle academies from years prior. It is a soulless product with only a passing resemblance to shows from the past.

Why didn't I drop this? Well, sunk cost fallacy for one. That and I was watching this show with a bunch of friends, and usually even for the worst shows we'd still have a good laughing mocking the show for whatever deficiencies it had. This show was the first show my friends and I stayed silent throughout most episodes. It was so bad you couldn't MST3K your way through the episodes.

Oh and remember that main objective of MC-kun where he wanted to find his lost childhood friend or whatever? What happened to that?

2/10

I've watched a lot of garbage, but this one takes the cake here for the new trash of this season. If you're someone like me, who went to MAL and looked at the poster of Liar Liar, it looks like a legitimate anime that delves into the themes of psychological manipulation and the characters are also playing games (and mind games). And that's all there is, a cool concept that has been obliterated by poor characters and a boring story with no legitimate stakes, You could call this a snorefest. Here I will note some of the warnings that might be too tough for those ... interested to come by if you guys want to try it out despite what I've said.

Are you someone who wants to have girls flock to you at every angle, well... You're in luck because this anime will shoot every trope it can think of and make them converse with the main character by any means necessary. So the first character this generic man met was a redhead tsundere? CHECK! Next up, give way to whose name literally translates to Snow White and she's a maid too? Where for some reason she's listening to every word this random man has to offer? Fine by me. You thought that's it? Don't worry, there's still a talkative extrovert whose lines need to have the sound nyan, or else she would evaporate to ashes if she didn't do it. And even if you don't like it, there are still plenty of choices you can have in this one. I don't hate 'basic' or 'simple' characters, but these characters are made up just to feed the audience a ton of fan service, and it's obnoxious to go through. To add more, the visuals are also mediocre and dull to watch, it's the epitome of "All that glitters is not gold", so there's a lot of color for a generic-looking anime.

Remember when I said the first character Hiroto met was a redhead tsundere? So it turns out, she's one of the most skilled players in this world they have established and for some reason lost to him in the dumbest way possible? Not only that, but the writers took the time to establish that there's a ranking system and the man himself became the most wanted man in the academy after he mistakenly got a special star from the redhead himself. So if you don't understand what just happened, this is just the prologue to the anime Liar Liar, which establishes itself as a 'Suspense' show to bullshit his way out of trouble. This anime's storytelling is godawful and painful to sit through, not to mention the pacing of the story is also dogcrap. It's more interested in the action without building any meaningful stakes to make the suspense reach a level of intensity for the audience to care about the characters. How are we supposed to root for the characters if we don't have the time to digest what's happening?

Speaking of action, let's talk about the real reason why we'd click on this anime in the first place and it's to look at how our characters would play the games in order to survive in such a dog-eat-dog world. The games these characters play have the most confusing rules, so because of that, get ready for a 3-minute tutorial on how to play the game. Every. Single. Time. But games can be fun to watch, it's just a creative way to show our characters going through conflict and winning, right? Not only do these games are overly complicated on their own, but with the addition of extra power-ups that allow them to bullshit their way through the game, it comes off as convoluted and mind-numbingly stupid to even think of. Imagine you're battling against a child who has no idea about the game, only for them to make a dumb move and say it's justified because their powerups say otherwise, that is what the majority of the games happen. The worst part? The main character uses cheats to win the game anyway. So Hiroto is nothing but a player who requires a modder to ruin his foes' chances of winning. It sounds like something a bad mobile game would do, which is not a surprise though, they are playing with smartphones, what a coincidence.

It's definitely not the worst product you'll find in this endless sea of trash, but it has been quite a gamble to my soul to stomach some really bad fanservice and edgy-level storytelling. Spare yourself the pain and don't watch this mess.

Liar liar was like someone spitting in your face. If you are a fan of the gamble/game genre and kindly decide to give an oportunity to this anime, you Will only get a big deception. This anime was so generic, predictable and lacking of emotion and intrigue that instead of a good anime to watch, this Is a masterclass of how do not write and script or background for your characters.

Starting from the beggining, you maybe get caught for the well developed system of game and star ranking that this school has. You can see the potential and imagine in how many ways this system ... can give you interesting and plot twisted battles. Pitifully, this great battles could only live in our collective imagination. The system often gets ignored and people involved modify (trough "hacking") the game rules, making useless the great system that they have.

Characters are so forgetable that you can reach the end of the anime without learn a single name. The MC does not have what a good Gamble/Game MC need to be considered good. This Is abilitiy to stand by yourself without the help of third forces. Even in Kakegurui the FMC can win games only relying on her own force or luck. If you put in the equation other good MCs like Kaiji or Katagiri Yuichi, Hiroto became as good an useful as the letter P in "Psychology".

My final thoughts about this attempt of anime are:
1.-Do not be like me, have self love and please do not watch this.
2.-If you are a fan of gamble/games anime, believe me you can live without even know the name of this anime. Yo do not need it.

Let's be honest, everyone went to Liar, liar knowing what they would get. Waifu bait, some ecchi, the mlg edited trailer with air horn sfx, mind games. I started watching this show with anticipation to get entertainingly trashy show, but it turns out to be extremely boring inferior version of The classroom of the elite.

The main character arrives at Island as a new student. Then, he stumbles upon the granddaughter of the director of the school he attends. Later, they decide to conduct a battle between each other and mc accidentally beats her. But he was a complete washout, and so as to save the ... reputation of Empress they decided to make look like she was actually defeated by the highest ranked student of school. The premise of the show is packed into the first episode, which is admittedly the best episode because it's, in fact, trashy entertaining.

With every single episode the anime becomes more and more boring. The plot of the further episodes can be summarized to this: the mc competes with other students to make them believe his lies ( didn't expect that the second season of Oshi no Ko would be out so soon ). These fights are extremely determined mind games with zero skill requirements and results relay on probability theory. But every student has some sort of abilities, which are, in effect, magic. At this point, the mc turns from an idiot with the lavish amount of luck into a goody-two-shoes bland generic anime protagonist. He also becomes super smart and it allows him to beat every rival by the right choice of abilities and, of course cheats.

The biggest obstacle to enjoying this show is a tremendous amount of exposition in every episode. The characters are constantly jabbering: it can be an explanation of game rules, an explanation of abilities, an explanation of characters' motives, an explanation of the mc's victory, an explanation of an explanation. The world building has a lot of plot holes e.g. any higher rank student can see an information about a lower ranked student but, for some reason, not in case of main character, or the mc can easily use cheats without any consequences but other characters almost never use them.

The opening and the ending are fine, I guess. The ost doesn't have any memorable tracks. Certain elements of visuals like holograms or high-tech interfaces, per se, look good, but with bleak everything else, the art style looks very half-assed. The animation doesn't exist. There are an inferior version of Pokemon with battles done with Powerpoint. Perspective in some scenes is so broken that it sets my brain on fire.

Liar, liar isn't ridiculous or stupid enough to be amusing, as well as it isn't just a good show. I haven't written anything about characters or plot because there are literally nothing to write about. If you are here to get some guilty pleasure I don't recommend to watch further than the first episode. I haven't watched The eminence in shadow, but given everything I've heard about it, this show seems to be The eminence in shadow at home.

Animation is basic and kind of lame. It's fairly cllean, but not very detailed. Action scenes are kind of just the bear minimum, and leave a lot to be desired. Characters are often annoying and universally shallow in depth and detail. Even the somewhat likeable characters lose what little charm they had after a couple of episodes. The story is similarly empty. It lacks world building and a interesting story. A lot of occurrences are just nonsense, I win game because I win game. Pacing is average, but the miserable plot makes is feel a lot slower than it is. Voice acting is not the ... worst, but often grating and never impressive. In a surprise twist the op/ed are great, and the soundtrack is fine, but not particularly memorable. Overall, it's a slightly below average unpolished turd of an anime. It's boring, basic, uninspired, but the ed though... that's pretty good. 4.85/10 Dubbed

This is a anime about Games, but it doesn't bother to explain all the rules of the game until the MC reveals a secret rule to suddenly win a game when it appeared he was going to lose. I'll explain in detail.

Game animes are fun and I enjoy them, No Game No Life being like one of the best examples of all time. Typically the formula is that the rules of the game are explained, then the MC and Antagonist try to figure out ways to play the game to their advantage. This might involve a loop hole, or unspoken rule, or some clever ... trick, etc.

In Liar Liar the rules of the game are almost never explained. They explain the basic rules to any given game, but it's established that both players have Three ability cards that they can use at any time during the game to change the rules of the game. These cards are never revealed at the start of the game, and are only revealed once it's relevant to the state of the game. It is impossible for the viewer to ever know what the cards are going to be in advance, and new cards that have never been seen before are used every game.

There is no list of cards or abilities given, each game usually means a brand new ability is being played that you never heard of and is revealed as the MC was about to lose, then suddenly wins.

Not only are there rule changing cards that aren't disclosed at the start of the game most of the time, The MC just actively has a harem of girls that cheat at any opportunity. They hack into the game he is playing and will just literally cheat so that he wins. In the third game they couldn't hack into the game, until they could at the very end as he was just about to lose. There was no build up to this at all, it just happened.

Not only that, but there's ANOTHER plot device used to to change the rules of any given game! Students bet Star medals in games, more stars you have the higher rank you are and that's important for plot. Well there's special stars that give special abilities to the person who has it, according to the principal there's 10-15, she doesn't even know the exact number of special stars. These stars exist, and the rules for them are never explained and they come up at random. There's a scene where the MC deduces that an antagonist has the Special Green star which gives super perception. This star has never been mentioned before and the MC just knows about it and casually mentions it even though it's never been explained to the viewer what that is.

Everything just happens and doesn't follow given rules and new rules are introduced constantly. It's just not very good as a game anime and you can't really get yourself into the rules of any game ever.

The MC and harem are prepared on what the game is in advance, but this never matters because every strategy meeting is just "Oh so these are the rules of game?" Then a harem member will be like "Yeah but remember ability cards? They can just change the rules of the game. So we're just gonna cheat."

The games are also just fucking boring.
Game 1: staring contest, where he does nothing and the opponent loses because of a broken sprinkler joke that he had nothing to do with. Also he literally loses the game because he literally is animated to be "blinking" but the show never acknowledges that he blinked, it's like the animators weren't aware he wasn't supposed to be blinking.
Game 2: 100m Race, where his harem just cheats and he does nothing.
Game 3: Scavenger hunt for number cards. Then you play 5 number cards at the end, if you had a higher number in 3 of the rounds you win. But don't worry the MC doesn't adhere to any of the rules of this game and just wins anyway because his harem hacked into the game and cheated, while he just did nothing, except lie.
Game 4: A card game. With two decks, one deck is worse than the other for.... no reason that's just how the game works. So You play cards with abilities to try to win. There's 4 different kinds of cards, each one of them has an ability, the rules get explained for over 10 minutes and also several ability cards get suggested to just drastically change the rules of the game. None of this matters and you don't need to remember any of it, because the opponent just throws the game and the MC does nothing. His opponent allows him to win the game for plot reasons. The actual game lasts for about 6 minutes, while explaining the game took 10.
Game 5: Basically Battleship? Except you have 1 piece and just move it around. Don't worry though the rules are irrelevant because new information and rules are literally presented every round. The final round is literally, the MC wins, but then the Opponent reveals their ability trap card that makes it so they actually win, but wait, the MC has a never before explained super rare trap ability card that was given to him by a love interest earlier in the episode then he just wins. Oh also apparently the Green Star gave this opponent mind reading abilities? But they had no idea about the secret trap card.

If you're expecting fivehead level mind games, stop right there. Because of its appearance, Liar Liar gets compared to No Game No Life and Classroom of the Elite a lot. This is the last time it should be mentioned together with these two. I also have no idea why the title is identical to a famous movie. Seems like a big marketing mistake to me.

The main premise is interesting. A supposedly ordinary guy coincidentally defeats the "empress" (the red head) and must continue pretending to be some big shot to keep the lie going. Too bad that it totally butchers everything else. The sequence ... of events that leads to this setup is silly, too silly. It is something I would expect from a comedy that doesn't take itself seriously, not a psychological anime.

Then there are the ""games"". They either get skipped (cuts to the next scene where the MC has already won) or are simply terrible. They basically have no rules, so I wonder if they even qualify as games. The author can't be bothered to actually portray them and tries to get away with it with hacking and special abilities. The level of BS puts early Yugioh duel logs to shame. At least those were funny.

Only watch this one if you ran out of cute anime girls to stare at this season, because that's all it has to offer. I would imagine the light novel has not much more to offer either, except Konomi's illustrations. It's unfortunate because the premise and the character twist revealed at the beginning aren't that bad. Only if the writer put in the effort into the games!

It took two episodes, TWO EPISODES for me to see that this anime is a real chore to get through. If you had to choose between watching this anime or watching paint dry. Please choose watching paint dry because boy oh boy does this anime suck the life out of you for all purposes. The characters are very one dimensional, lack of story at points, and overall a lack of game explanation rules really makes you consider why this anime has a low score to begin with. Read the reviews before going in, go outside, roll around in some mud before you decide to watch ... Liar Liar.