Reviews

Jul 6, 2022
Recommendation: Absolutely terrible. Mildly entertaining if you like to laugh at really bad anime, but you're really better off skipping it.

Tomodachi Game is a stupid person's idea of clever writing. You are very clearly supposed to be impressed by the intricate mysteries and Yuichi's 12 dimensional chess cosmic brain plans, but it's so incompetently executed that it simply comes off as laughable instead. Mysteries are either insultingly obvious (if you somehow haven't figured out who the traitor in the group is immediately, they helpfully tell you straight up who it is through narration in the 3rd episode) or are technically solvable but require leaps in logic that no one would ever make unless they already knew the details of the plan. One example, which I'll keep vague to not spoil, is how the group's nametags become significant at one point, their presence or absence marking whether someone is allied with Yuichi, the protagonist. It is in fact possible to notice that some characters are missing their nametags in earlier scenes, but no reasonable person would ever connect that to what it ultimately means. This extends to Yuichi as well, whose plans are so ridiculous and all-encompassing that they make Lelouch look like an amateur. Everything is always exactly according to his plan all along, even when it looks like he's in a bad spot.

Not so helpfully, we have the Tomodachi Game management to serve as perpetually impressed audience surrogates to make sure everyone knows what an edgy badass supergenius this kid is. Every episode has at least 2-3 instances of one of them shouting that he's a genius or a devil or a monster or some combination of the three when he unveils whatever his wacky rube goldberg machine plan to outsmart everyone all along was. In between all of this, we also get treated to some of the worst armchair sociology for brainlets that you'll ever hear from Tomodachi Game management. The whole series feels like it was written to impress a 13 year old that calls himself a nihilist because he watched a bunch of youtube videos. It gets deeply cringeworthy at points, as they try desperately to impress upon the viewer that Yuichi is a terrifying dark sociopath genius. There are constant hints of him having twisted, edgy secrets like being a murderer, but none of that ever gets revealed.

Which brings me to the next major problem with this show, the completely idiotic pacing. If you're hoping for answers to literally any of the deeper questions or mysteries that are introduced here (who exactly is running the Tomodachi Game and why, what happened in Yuichi's past, what Shiho's connection to the Tomodachi Game is, etc.), you aren't going to get any of that, because the series literally ends in the middle of one of the games, with no resolution to anything. It's almost like this was supposed to be a 24 episode series and they just didn't make episodes 13-24, because it makes zero sense to end it the way they did otherwise. Most of the second half of the series doesn't even involve the majority of the main cast, as it's tied up in a long and punishingly boring digression into a game of hide and seek that Yuichi and Tenji play alone against a different friend group that's never been seen before. Aside from flashbacks, the other 3 are barely seen again in the series except in flashbacks until Yutori is involved in the last episode of the season.

I could go on about the hundreds of other problems this series has, like the tasteless way it exploits its female characters' sexuality or how it brazenly cuts corners with terrible CGI for scenes and characters that would be hand drawn in most anime. That's really just piling on though, something I don't mind doing too much because this show's stupidity frequently made me angry or frustrated, but it's not really necessary to say more at this point. This show is godawful dreck and I will be happy to never think about it again except to consider it as part of my shortlist when someone asks me what the worst anime I've ever watched is.
Reviewer’s Rating: 1
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