Plot is a term that comes up a lot in writing; it is the foundation that spectators can latch on to and it provides a continuous direction to keep people enticed. Joker Game does not have a plot and this causes viewers to become disconnected from the standalone stories. And because there is no plot, a central conflict does not appear, and a climax is non-existent. This deviation from the standard storytelling formula can be especially off-putting as there is no real development even at the anime’s end.
Characters are the main players in a story. They are the stars that people become enamored with and provide stories with heart. Joker Game does not have “characters.” The spies have fake names that change and a new spy is explored each week. Additionally, the spies are designed to look somewhat similar and without actual dedication to remembering the spies by face or voice, they all conglomerate together as one entity. The only real character is Yuuki, who is not explored as much as a character should be and did not develop throughout the course of the story.
Despite not having many conventional aspects of writing, Joker Game is still an atmospheric anime that is set in a time rarely explored in the medium. The animation is fluid and the art is beautiful. The individual stories are cleverly concocted and many of them take literary risks not normally seen in anime. Joker Game does not make political statements; there are no real morals woven within its episodic stories. The spies all mesh together to stay faithful to a novel that provides no visual or auditory cues to the tie their identities together. There is no plot tying the episodes together. It is simply a twelve episode anime dedicated to telling artistic stories. And ultimately, whether our enjoyment and appreciation is dictated by our expectations of what Joker Game should be is up to us.
