If Death Note and Code Geass have taught us anything, it is that there is something intoxicating about protagonists who are too smart for their own good. There is an undeniable and indescribable appeal to watching someone psychologically destroy all opponents in their path regardless of how questionable the logic they use to do so truly is. However, unlike its two predecessors, No Game No Life is not a show that demands to be taken seriously. It is light-hearted, comedic, and fun as opposed serious, dark, and intense. This approach, in theory, is a much better way to tackle the “super-smart” protagonist concept because it avoids any possibility that the show comes off as pretentious or overly-serious, which were big knocks DN and CG. For this reason, I was very excited for what has become the most hyped anime of the season, and while I found certainly found it to be entertaining, it has a large number flaws that prevent it from living up to the unreasonable hype that the fan base has created for it. It does many things well, but for every thing that it does well, there is something it does poorly.
Synopsis: Two siblings named Sora and Shiro are brilliant NEET, hikikomori gamers who have become legends on the Internet due to how good they are at playing video games under the codename “Blank”. One day, they are summoned by an androgynous being named Tet to an alternate world. Tet, who claims to be God of this world, has prohibited war and declared this to be a world where everything is decided by games, and I mean literally everything. In this world, humanity is only one of 14 other races, all vying for world domination though the act of challenging each other to games. Sora and Shiro, excited by the concept of the world, set off on an epic journey to see just how far their gaming abilities can take them.
The appeal of No Game No Life comes in the form of how fleshed out and imaginative the setting is, but it is the depth of the world that ultimately also creates significant flaws in it. To elaborate, the plot of this anime can easily be described as tedious; there is SO much explaining that needs to be done. There are 14 different races, some of them can use magic and some of them can’t, they all have a designated “rank”, they play games with each other to decide everything, they can’t murder or cause physical harm to one another, what constitutes a game needs to be specified, the games must follow 10 rules, those rules are called the pledges, some of the pledges have loopholes, some of them don’t, also there’s (*MIND EXPLODES). Top all of this exposition off with the fact that each individual game played in the series has its own unique set of rules that you need to remember and the logic that Sora and Shiro use to win the games they play also needs explaining and what you have is one massive information overload. It is 100% impossible to coherently follow everything that is happening in this series, and that is a fact that has both pros and cons. The cons are obviously the fact that the oversaturation of explanations make the show feel hectic and chaotic at times, but on the pro side, they make the show a lot of fun. Watching Blank massacre their opponent’s using ridiculously unreasonable logic never gets old, and while there are many words to describe the games played in NGNL, “boring” is not one of them. I applaud the show for establishing key plot points and never seeming to lack direction; this is a show that knows exactly what it wants to be in terms of tone and themes, but I’m not a very big fan of the themes they chose to include. At times, the show feels like it is nothing more then shameless otaku pandering and fanservice filler. I cringed as the show used one contrived plot device after another in order to incorporate as many anime fetishes as it possibly could and took every chance it got to throw in a pop-culture reference. The fanservice is also gratuitous, albeit mostly harmless considering the type of show we are dealing with. Overall, NGNL’s plot can best be described as mindless fun. That may sound weird for a show that is grounded on the concept of logic, but it is the simple reality. The series can be flawed and stupid times, but it’s effective.
The characters of NGNL are fun, but horribly unrealistic. Our protagonists, Sora and Shiro, are too overpowered and not good representations of socially inept NEETs. Drawing comparisons to why I am not a big fan of most shounens, the MCs are obviously protected by plot armor and that takes away from the suspense of the plot; they are simply too perfect. To be fair though, the show does a good job of giving Sora a personality and making him entertaining, but he is a mary-sue. How are these protagonists supposed to be anti-social? If anything, they are charismatic! Sure they have a 10 second comedic panic attack every now and again, but the show does a very poor job of representing what their characters are supposed to be. Shiro, for example, did not impress me at all; her only real traits are that she’s cute and unreasonably smart, so again: mary-sue. She can be funny with her bluntness every now and then, but her entire presence just feels unnecessary; it’s like they wrote this show with Sora as the only protagonist and then the editors added in Shiro to provide loli appeal. The side characters are nothing spectacular either; the only one that I think was well done is Steph because she successfully provided two things that are instrumental to the show’s tone and themes, those being comedic relief and fanservice. Then you have characters like Jibril who are just awful and unbelievably one-dimensional. Jibril is a walking plot-device in every sense of the word; she serves no purpose other than to advance the storyline with her seemingly unrestricted magical powers. Oh, and she also provides fanservice (shockingly). The strange thing is that even though the NGNL characters aren’t all that special, they work decently well. The reason for this phenomenon is that they have good chemistry with one another; you can really sense that Sora and Shiro legitimately care for one another and the show is filled with funny interactions between Blank and the side characters, especially Steph. So in short: the cast of NGNL is far from perfect, but they turned out all right.
Does NGNL live up to the hype? No, not at all actually, especially considering the fact that this show has been hyped to the point where it is dubbed as a masterpiece for the ages that will be talked about for decades. It’s still a solid anime, but I can’t fathom why this show has become so beloved. It’s funny, over-the-top, way too convoluted, yet fun: nothing special. It’s probably worth a watch provided that you disregard the hype train and go in with reasonable expectations.
Aschente!
