Hmm "What does the basic 10-30 year old male like ?". Videogames.
And "What do a lot of Anime Fans like ?". Cute Girls doing cute things.
Both of theses answers combined give us the idea for this show called New Game. It's a comedic Slice of Life workplace Anime with tons of moe elements attached to it. For that it feels kinda refreshing since most moe shows have some kind of school setting.
Besides the workplace they chose for this show is rather "unique" at this point since it hasn't been done that often. (a other example for a similiar enviorment would be Shirobako which is more serious though.).
DISCLAIMER : As a work of fiction this anime does not need to be realistic, if you look for something realistic you may not like this. This anime needs a certain amount of suspension of disbelief to work well.
So without further ado lets get into this review
Story:
It starts of with Aoba Suzukaze our main Protagonist. She just graduated High School and decides to work for a company that makes video games. There she meets new co-workers and learns under her idol Yagami Kou what it means to be a good character designer.
The story itself is presented here in a episodic pattern, which means that you can easilly skip one Episode and still enjoy the following one. That way there are no major twists or anything similiar you should look out for. Also The main focus of the story lies with the diffrent characters. All of those are well written and get varying amounts of screen time. While some of this screen time is spend to focus more on indvidual characters the whole cast is mostly seen in each episode. With that in mind the most screentime obviously goes to our main character Aoba. Which leads us to.......
Characters:
As I mentioned before the biggest part of the story revolves around the characters. This is also necessary since we have quiet the large cast. Besides the 2 Main characters which are Yagami and Aoba there are 7 minor characters where atleast 4-5 appear in every Episode. However it does not feel overloaded because of that, which is one of the biggest achievements of the show.
On one side this could have been due to some well known charactertyps like the hyper-energetic and easy to fluster character, the "big sister" character or the extremly shy and timid character. Despite these types, which are nothing new, its nice to see their interactions. Its also nice to see our Protagonist build relationships with all of these indivdually. So lets now focus more on our main characters.
Yagami you could describe as a "boyish"-type of character. She is unorganised, a bit messy and sleeps under her desk when working overtime, while only wearing her top and panties. However on the other hand she is caring, especially for Aoba, shows a strong love for her work and is a absolute perfectionist. She also has a realy realy realy strong relationship with Tooyama.(don't imply anything here)
Aoba is talkitive and sometimes can be a bit disheartend, when she is criticised. However she is also a fast learner, always tries her best and wants to fulfill the expectations of Yagami.She also doesn't like when she is told that she looks small for her age. She still lives at home and is friends with Nene who she knows since kindergarden.
Both of which seem also not that special on the surface however they both have some underlying themes which elevate the anime above your typical generic mediocore moeblob SoL.
If its either growing into a leading position, despite not having the confidence to do so or trying to follow your idol and becoming good at what you do.
At last I still want to point out flaws I found even if they are minor. For me 1-2 characters are a bit underdeveloped. However since this is a SoL its not dramatic, also other shows(looking at you Mayoiga) did way worse in that regard.
Art/Animation/Sound:
The backround art for this show isn't to great we have most of the time similar backrounds, which are mainly in the office even if there are some alterations like the walkway to work or the train its mostly basic background design. The charcterdesigns however I realy liked, because they are memorable and easy to differentiate.(but maybe I just like them because I am somewhat tired of school uniforms). The Animation is above average as well with a decent amount of full body shots and some good motion work and facial expression.
For the Soundtrack the most parts aren't to memorable, however the Opening theme is outstanding because its quiet catchy and hooks you at the beginning of each episode. The ED isn't bad aswell.
Personal Enjoyment and Recommendations:
As you probably already guessed I realy enjoyed this show. The jokes are fitting and actually funny.
The setting is refreshing and the characters are realy likeable.
It still has some shortcomming.
I would have wished that it would have taken a bit more focus on game design itself. However maybe this would have caused it to be less fun, we will never know. Anyway for my recommendations:
I recommend this to:
people that like moe/Slice of life settings
people that like a sugar-coated workplace setting
people that like a character driven story
people that like episodic anime which are easy to follw
