The show’s name almost seems like a perfect precursor to what lies ahead, as you can ask “The ones within what?” just like you’d ask “where did the rest of the episodes go?”
Story - 3/10
Unlike many of the other reviewers here, I haven’t seen any similar anime that deal with a game like this, outside of maybe High Rise Invasion. So my review and opinion will come from a fresh and unbiased view of the genre, and not how this show relates to others like it.
A group of popular game v-tubers are transported into the beta test of a brand new game that combines the attributes of many different top selling games. They’re immediately informed by the head of this project, a man wearing a large Alpaca head, that their task is to amass one hundred million viewers, which will allow them to then exit the game world and return to real life.
They now take on each task, which usually causes the players to have to confide in each other and reveal some past trauma, which possibly may be the motive of the game master as a way to build viewership.
Unfortunately there isn’t much to it beyond that. The games they have to play aren’t really massive, and more or less are just puzzles; and while there are risks involved in each, they never actually felt risky. They do start to build back stories for each character, and for the game world itself, but with so few episodes everything just feels rushed. They end things on a completely pointless episode that, while a bit funny, adds absolutely nothing to the story and makes you wonder what the whole point of this was.
Animation - 5/10
The animation for the series is pretty good, though nothing out of this world. The characters are pretty basic, there are a few cute elements, and the chromosome rewards are meant to look sparkly and pretty, but hardly groundbreaking.
Each character is also supposed to look like a specific type of gamer/game character, though they all still appear very similar. Again, nothing in this area is bad, but also nothing better than average.
Sound - 5/10
I did like the English actor choices for most, if not all, of the characters on the show. Notably Justin Briner just has the perfect voice and delivery for a character, like Iride, whom you expect to say “GeeGolly guys, let’s go out and do our best!” and Ben Phillips really captures an authoritarian game master, who can be equal parts sympathetic and psychotic. The only weird thing is I swear I’ve heard both these voices before, but at the time of writing this they don’t appear to have worked on any of the shows I’ve watched.
The other VO Artist are main stays in many of Funimation’s recent products, and while they’re all good, no others really jumped out as much much as those first two mentioned.
The opening is….interesting. It fits the series well, but the music sounds almost like an eighties Whitney Houston song, with Nu Metal style rap rock over it. The ending song is pretty standard anime fare, though more for a shoji style slice of life show, not what we have here.
Characters - 7/10
The characters are all supposed to cover the various anime and gamer tropes, and they’re done in a somewhat mocking way. I like that they do attempt to make the characters deeper than just what they appear.
Since this was such a big ensemble it’s hard to say any character really Is the lead, but I guess you can give that to Iride, as he’s the one to volunteer for the most games within the show. He’s also easily the most likable, as he’s basically just a nice kid who enjoys games and wants to help people. None of the other characters are any worse than him, but some are just supposed to be sort of brooding downer characters, which might play in to their larger story, if we were ever given a full larger story.
Like everything in this show, the characters are all promising, and you want to watch them grow and figure out their problems, but unfortunately none of that ever happens.
Overall - 5/10
While I did enjoy the show, and think it’s an interesting concept, it just didn’t feel like a complete show, or even a complete season. Be it the overall story, or that of our characters, nothing moved past its initial plot. Each character had a little bit of their real world life touched on, but it was barely enough to know them. The main story was no different, we get what is happening, and what the desired outcome is, but all the important bits in-between are missing. To top it off the show’s ending appears almost as if the series was canceled without allowing them to even wrap up the season, as it was a throw away episode with no nod to a followup season.
This was a really promising show, and was enjoyable to the end, but once it’s over you’ll feel like there was no reason to have watched it in the first place. They add things that make you believe there will be some bigger story, some amazing twist, or a shocking secret, but it never actually comes.
Positive Reasons for Score:
* A fun and funny take on the high stakes game concept.
* All the characters are very likable.
* The story, if actually completed, could be very intriguing.
Negative Reasons for Score:
* It’s not a complete show or story.
* Nothing is really explained as to the larger picture when it comes to what’s happening.
* Don’t add new, and fairly interesting, story lines when they don’t get even an episode of development.
Ways to make the show better:
* Just finish even a minor plot.
* Seriously, any story being completed would mean a lot.
* At least trick us thinking you’re going to explain something by ending on a cliffhanger, not a “lets go to the beach” type filler episode.