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Feb 16, 2021
This review is written after watching all three seasons but the numbers reflect the first season (my overall rating would probably be a 1 or 2). The first season has some interesting world building and creates the impression that we might eventually see some character growth from the titular character but that never materializes, and I think it became worse with each season. There are some vague spoilers below.
If you enjoy watching an overpowered psychopathic protagonist, who often comments that he feels nothing for the humans he casually and cruelly slaughters, this is the anime for you. The titular character's underlings are programmed to fawn
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over him and are even more sadistic and evil and really pretty pathetic because of it. The protagonist and his minions eventually commit mass murder of civilians in the 100,000+ deaths range that he feels no remorse for but the story keeps that off camera so you can ignore that the titular character and his minions are psychopathic mass murderers. We also eventually get to see him cruelly murder a group of decent people we're given backstory on because, well, the titular character an evil murderous psychopath.
I can understand a story doing cruel things to nice people if it serves a point in the story or is done by villains (see Goblin Slayer), but much of it is done in this anime by the protagonist and his minions and it doesn't produce any empathy or character growth because, well, the protagonist and his minions are psychopaths and psychopaths are incapable of feeling real empathy or compassion (there is one exception, that gave me some hope, but it wasn't allowed to override the programmed loyalty and produce any actual rebellion against the titular character).
I watched it through to the end, hoping there might be some redeeming character development or growth, developing empathy, or maybe the defeat of the evil titular character by the few decent side characters that are left helpless against him to make the time I put into watching this mess worth it, but that never happened.
I wish I'd never watched it.
Reviewer’s Rating: 4
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Feb 16, 2021
If you enjoy watching an overpowered psychopathic protagonist, who often comments that he feels nothing for the humans he casually and cruelly slaughters, this is the anime for you. His underlings who are programmed to fawn over him are even more sadistic and evil and really pretty patchetic because of it.
No, they didn't actually show the 100,000 civilians his underlings slaughtered to fool people into thinking he's a hero nor do you get to see what are likely the humans that an underling strongly hints he's farming for parchment for scrolls (they get mentioned in passing because the author and anime producers are too cowardly
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to actually show that because it might make too many viewers unable to ignore how much of a loathsome villain the titular character is) but you do get to see him and and underling toying with and cruelly killing a group of decent adventurers because, well, he's a cruel murderous psychopath who was the last person on a game server as it shut down because he was probably too much of a scumbag in real life to have real life friends.
I can understand a story doing cruel things to nice people if it serves a point in the story or is done by villains (see Goblin Slayer), but much of it is done in this anime by the protagonist and his minions and it doesn't produce any empathy or character growth because, well, the protagonist and his minions are psychopaths and psychopaths are incapable of feeling real empathy or compassion (there is one exception, that gave me some hope, but it wasn't allowed to override the programmed loyalty and produce any actual rebellion against the titular character).
I watched it through to the end, hoping there might be some redeeming character development or growth, developing empathy, or maybe the defeat of the evil titular character by the few decent side characters that are left helpless against him to make the time I put into watching this mess worth it, but that never happened and the end was total garbage.
Why I rated even the individual elements a 1:
Story: A few of the side characters are interesting but they have zero impact on the overall story and there is no character growth from the titular character. It's pretty much a straight-up psychopath power fantasy where the main character always thinks they're right and never has to face mistakes.
Art: There are many scenes where obvious and cheesy computer graphics are used. Cost cutting was pretty obvious.
Sound: The soundtrack is used to try to make it feel like the protagonist is some sort of hero. It couldn't make me ignore what he really was.
Character: The main character is a psychopath who shows no character growth. His minions are fawning NPC bots, most of which have personalities that can be summed up with one or two words because there is no character depth to them. There are some interesting NPCs but you get to watch many of them get cruelly murdered without any empathy from the protagonist (and some by the protagonist), lose all personality to go along with the protagonist, or they're helpless to do anything to or about him. And many of the other people are also evil garbage. There is no reward in caring about any of them.
Enjoyment: I wish I hadn't watched it. Really.
Reviewer’s Rating: 1
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Jan 17, 2021
"THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS"
Overall, I thought the main story plot was interesting and fairly well done. The setting is quirky and unique in ways I thought were often good but the disparity in power between the various species in the setting was, frankly, unbelievably and unnecessarily absurd. But what hurt my enjoyment of the story the most revolved around the story being unbelievably biased toward the protagonists and the protagonists engaging in behavior that I found not only creepy but at times downright cruel and evil. More details on that below.
I'm a fairly generous rater and would have rated this anime a few points
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higher without those problems, but they bothered me enough to drop the rating and want to write a review to explain it. The spoilers below the *READ MORE* line, as per the review guidelines, deal with specific plot and character elements to explain what bothered me but not really spoilers about the overall plot.
*READ MORE*
There were 3 big issues had with this story that account for me knocking seveal points off of my score. I'll try to keep this as vague as I can, but the details I'm going to talk about will spoils some parts of the plot but they shouldn't spoil the overall plot.
1) The setting lets the heroes get away with things they shouldn't reasonably be able to get away with for no reason but to let the characters do what they want. The heroes are a brother and sister team who are, together, unbeatable at games, but individually have weaknesses. At multiple points in the story, opponents let them both play together as one opponent or swap out at will without objection, which seemed like a ridiculous fudge to let them win in a world where players decide just about everything by winning games. No sane person would let an opponent tag-team with someone else like that. Basically, they're given a supposed disadvantage but the story rarely makes them have to deal with that disadvantage because it would break the plot. That's poor writing.
Another example is that one of the main pair wins a bet against another character who gambled for an unspecified "small favor" (how it's described in the English sub version), which will be enforced by the setting and the "small favor" the main pair character demands is that the other character love him, which the story treats as essentially giving the main pair complete control over the other character to do perverted and cruel things to her for the rest of the series (not a "small favor"). That's akin to a story letting a character get away with wishing for more wishes and, again, is poor writing. And the purpose of it isn't even necessary for the plot in this case, which brings me to my next and perhaps biggest complaint...
2) The character Stephanie "Steph" Dola is the granddaughter of the previous king. From what we see of her, she's not the wisest or smartest girl but she's good and sincerely wants to help her people. She's a decent and nice person. After the main character forces her to fall in love with him as a "small favor", the 11 year-old sister of the pair states that her brother will be able to lose his virginity with her and then shoves him into her, where he proceeds to grope her vigorous until she shoves him off. While the brother declines to lose his virginity at that point, its not because they morally oppose the idea of compelling her to have sex and it's a potentially compulsion hanging over her head that she couldn't refuse if he decides to act on it. He can force her to have sex with him whenever he wants. The threat of rape isn't amusing.
Later on, they make her wear a skimpy maid outfit and the 11-year old sister tells her not to wear panties under it, humiliating her. When she loses yet another contest, they make her dress like a dog on a leash in front of her people and then as they take advantage of her stupidity leave her wearing nothing but a cloth wrap around her chest, a skimpy apron, doig colllar, and a dog tail shes wearing to cover her and the 11 year-old weaing her panties on her head because she wants to, implying what she has on doesn't really cover her privates via censorship circles. Further on, the brother records her and other women bathing and uses the images to humiliate them. Not only has Stephanie Dola done nothing to deserve the cruelty shown her, but the story goes way beyond anything that could be written off as innocent or careless lewd hijinks and into cruel sexual humiliation.
I get that people want "fan service". There is a scenario later on where she loses clothing down to her underwear during a competition and where they all lose their clothes but it's clear that their bodies are not lewdly detailed, and if the rest had stayed at that level, it would have been a lot better.
To drive home how vile the brother and sister can be with regard to sex, the brother wins a game by promising male participants the right to "bang" any woman they want to motivate them, presumably not caring if the woman actually wanted to be banged or not. Are the protagonists fine with rape or at least indifferent to it? Sure seems like it.
And that scene also raises my first complaint. The brother simply promises that he'll let them bang *any* woman they want. He doesn't qualify it. That's exactly the sort of loophole the protagonists would use to do something vile. Of course we never actually see the protagonist have to make good on that promise because that would have illustrated just how horrible the protogonists are. Was it just a throwaway line meant for laughs? Maybe. But a very cringe-worthy one in light of their other sadistic behavior toward another main character.
I get that sexual naughtiness can be amusing and joked about, I get that they're anti-heroes, and I can even understand abuse of characters happening at the hands of villains, but this wasn't any of that and I couldn't overlook it. I pretty quickly reached the point where I wanted a real hero to rescue Stephanie Dola from the main characters as villains. The author make her moe and then has the main protagonists abuse her. Watching the main protagonists abuse, often sexually, a nice girl just isn't something I could enjoy and it spoiled much of the story for me since there is so much of it (it's not a minor one-time thing but a running theme).
I also get that the hero pair are supposed to be hikikomori with no social skills but is the point that obsession with anime and video games inevitably make hikikomori into amoral sadists like that? Do they really have to be depicted as narcissists or psychopaths? Do the author really want to hand that sort of depiction to critics and censors?
And I get that maybe the point is that the story might include the main characters growing into decent people, and we do see some signs of compassion for Stephanie Dola later on, but the story puts them in a pretty big moral pit to dig themselves out of to find redemption and the way the characters are depicted, I don't see humility and penance bore being so nasty eing part of how they end up given how narcissistic they seem to be.
3) My last point is pretty much that the sister is 11. Beyond the sexual banter between brother and sister, which I don't get the appeal of including in so much anime, even if it's just for shock or comedy value, she's the source of a lot of the sexual torture of Stephanie Dola, presumably because she's jealous. I realize she's a drawn character and not a real little girl and I think there is some room for honest debate over how minors are depicted in anime, but the 11 year-old is prepubescent and her active participation in the sexual torture of another characer just went way too far into icky, creepy, and distasteful for me. The depiction of a childlike female character in the No Game No Life: Zero prequel was less creepy to me for a few reasons that would require spoilers to explain, but still made me wonder what the author is doing and I can kinda understand why this story has been targeted by censors in Australia, for example.
If you want to write me off as a prude or insensitive to Japanese culture, so be it. But I don't find watching a decent character getting sexually abused for the amusement of the protagonists endearing or amusing and the sibling love and sexualized prepubescent character are creepy. I've lived in Japan. A lot of people there think stuff like that is pretty weird and creepy, too.
Reviewer’s Rating: 5
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