"No Game No Life" is 50% Awesome by Volume

Anime Review

No Game No Life

The problem is the other 50%.

Sora and Shiro are sibling NEETS - "No Education, Experience, Training" - huge nerds who spend all day in their house dominating an online MMORPG. One day, they receive a mysterious email and beat the sender in a game of online chess. And suddenly, they're falling out of the sky into a fantastic world where every conflict is solved with games that follow a set of 10 rules. The siblings, loving games and only having each other, quickly abandon all ideas of going back to the real world and strive to make their new home a dream come true by attempting complete world domination.

No Game No Life's most striking feature is its art style. The series' palette is a saturated, multicolored frenzy that manages to look stunning without being overwhelming. It's the prime example anime to show someone photos from when they say "all anime looks the same to me."

Sora is an interesting protagonist, if lacking in flaws. He reminds me of Yami Yugi in the first season of Yu-Gi-Oh! He's smarter than everyone around him and always has a plan. His only weaknesses are the real world and his sister, Shiro, who is his only intellectual equal. Shiro and Sora's bond is the real heart of No Game, No Life, moreso than any romantic plotlines the series constantly teases and then throws away.

In fact, No Game No Life's treatment of its female characters is the 50% I mentioned was the problem before.

The series' pacing is completely marred by fanservice of the highest caliber. The short, 12 episode series manages to squeeze in multiple hot springs scenes, constantly uses master/slave relationship jokes, and strips female characters as much as possible whenever possible, always at the expense of the story that is trying to unfold. Sora is constantly frustrated with being an 18-year old virgin (the horror!) and is willing to be with any girl he can get close to. I don't know why anime is incapable of showing its own most dedicated male fanbase in a complex light. While Sora has his moments of depth - primarily to make female characters fall in love with him, stereotypical perverted NEET and super-smart Xanatos gambit creator are his two main modes.

When you have characters like Sora and Shiro, who are so limited in their flaws, in a world that runs of being as over the top as possible, you expect them to reach their goals. Instead, they get about 1/16th of the way there. Between this and all the buildup, I felt like I was promised something that wasn't delivered. Every time the series started to get real, it was all too quickly resolved and another half episode was spent on girls in the hot spring.

Maybe No Game No Life would have had time to satisfy more of the story it promised and ties more of the loose ends together if it hadn't spent half of its screentime showing girls in their underwear.

Story Rating: B
Content Rating: D
Not Recommended

No Game No Life is available on Crunchyroll.