The trouble with 12 episode anime not meant for school children is that they often go a bit too far to make it more “mature”. Which is exactly why I felt the rape scenes, sexual assault and abuses were completely unnecessary; they were included for shock value and judging by the positive reviews of how realistic this anime was, they worked.
I’d have given the anime a solid 8 if not for the extremely annoying female MC. Blonde, blue eyes, big breasts and a chubby face – the animators thought it’d be enough to make men swoon over this sniveling piece of mess, but nah. The girl was a plot device who showed courage and instantly switched to becoming a damsel in distress whenever the plot required here to do so; there was no consistency in her character development. Also for an anime aiming to be realistic, blue irises 1/3 the size of your eyes and breasts 3/4th the size of your face don’t really make the cut. Nor does the fact that your breasts are so cushion-y that a bomb just happened to BOUNCE off them. Wow. Just, wow.
Apart from that, my issue with the anime was how a lot of time was wasted on the flashbacks regarding that one high school friend (which didn’t add anything to the final arc) and the fatty’s (who tagged along with Sakamoto) hallucinations. The doctor too was given an inordinate amount of screen time while characters like the psychopathic boy (the most interesting character, in my opinion) was given very little screen time. And then there’re the other players – what happened to them? There were scores of people on board the plane and none of their stories were touched upon. I mean, you didn’t have to show them in depth but a 1-2 minute explanation for every 3-4 characters would have sufficed. A 10 second preview of who was left barely did them justice. Then there was the question of the disappearances of these people back in the real world – why didn’t we get to see the police involved and media creating a storm about so many people disappearing at the same time? Why were the games created in the first place and why did they have multiple rounds to them? Also, what’s up with the ending? It went completely over my head + it was too rushed. It was almost as if in the middle of animating the 12th episode, the animators were told,”Hey, we’ve run out of our budget so better end the series here”. A lot of people will defend it as being out of the box or some BS, but truth is that it was ill conceived.
But I’ll give where credit is due. The dub VA for Sakamoto did an excellent job. Kudos. Second, despite people complaining about it, I actually found Sakamoto’s character development quite believable (even though his switch to a selfless good guy was a little too much to digest). The only issue I had was the fact that when he met the annoying blonde for the first time, he was tempted to rape her, which seemed VERY out of character for a NEET like him. I mean, you have to show his moral development but do you HAVE to do it by showing him as an almost rapist?
Anyway, some of the maneuvers and battle moves between the participants were excellent, especially when cunning strategies were used. A lot of them made my jaw drop (which doesn’t happen very often). The music was pretty forgettable while the art did drop in quality from time to time. I expected better from Madhouse, to be honest. But it’s still worth a watch if you’re tired of watching 14 year olds as protagonists in probably 99% of the anime out there.
