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I think that the strongest point of this show is its ability to use death games to dig into the human psyche. The first episode of this show is honestly one of my favorite episodes of anime because of how well it used the tools at its disposal to convey the complexity of the human experience. It had twists and turns that were relatable. The suspense and mystery was addicting and the ending was ambiguous enough to linger in my mind. What made that episode so good was that it was more about the game and the contestants than the hosts themselves. It should have ... just leaned as hard into that aspect as possible instead of trying to humanize and develop the hosts, because that is where this show fails tremendously.

Opening that door lead to more questions than this show has time to answer. It was doomed to fail the moment that creative decision was made, because the focus wasn’t entirely on the contestants anymore. It became a narrative mess of judges being judged on the way they were judging the contestants while also trying to build a coherent world and diverse cast of characters. All of which it failed at in spades. Everything became so disjointed and unorganized because of how much they try to pack into this short series. This results in the narrative of this show losing its spark and becoming more and more dull as the story progresses.

The death game concept delivered enough complexity on its own that there didn’t need to be anything else and the lack of answers was originally a strength, not a weakness. Leaving the world and the judges a mystery helped play into the mystery of the narrative. Adding a cast of judges, trying to build a world, and give all these answers only weakened the mystery that made this idea so interesting in “Death Billiards” and the first episode. It’s over ambitious goals ultimately ended up ruining the potential this show could have had.

It’s a shame too, because I wanted to like this show. I want to make that clear. I know there are people who watch this and defend this because they are capable of seeing the complex themes about human nature that this concept taps on. Those ideas are not lost on me. I see them, I understand them, and when this show does deliver on those ideas…it does a good job at conveying its message, but only during the death games. Never outside of them. What it does good is not enough to overshadow the over-ambitious goals that it fails to deliver on. When I review something, I feel that I am obligated to point out the flaws more than what makes it good because more often than not, it’s easier to absorb what makes something good rather than accept what is objectively bad about something.

With that being said though, not everything is bad about this show. The music is fantastic, atmospheric, and, at times, downright beautiful. When the show does settle back into its death game roots, it almost always delivers on an interesting and complex concept with twists and turns that I found very engaging to watch. Also the animation, character designs, and usage of gloomy color palettes contrasted with bright ambient lighting makes for some very nice eye candy. Realistically, it is good at everything it does outside of world building and character development. Which you could blame on its short run time, but I blame it on bad creative writing decisions. Those two flaws should have never even been a factor to begin with. Nobody asked for it after seeing Death Billiards. All we wanted was more Death Games that explore the human condition. If this had just been a collection of stories where Decim forces people to play games with no overarching story. It would have been infinitely better. Alas, this is another prime example of “We get what we get, not what we want.”.

I personally wouldn’t recommend it to someone, but I also wouldn’t deter someone from finding and watching it on their own either. I still think it’s worth watching if you haven’t seen it. What it fails at isn’t enough to make watching it an offensive experience. There is still enough good moments and ideas to keep things interesting and entertaining. Plus it’s short run time doesn’t make it a huge investment either.

I love experimental stuff. I feel like most things can fall into either an inspired concept or an innovative concept. With very little things capable of doing both. This is one of those things that manages to fall into both. Inspired by the themes of anxiety and escapism the story is told through the lens of multiple people who are all loosely connected to each other socially in a post world war 2 Japan. Each episode could be its own standalone episode, but they also connect to one overall plot…Little Slugger/Shounen Bat. A boy on golden skates who attacks people who are on the brink ... of despair with a bent golden baseball bat. The overarching conflict of the story is whether Shounen Bat is real or a figment of people’s imagination, spread by word of mouth, and born by a desire to escape the despair of their lives.

Looking into interviews with Satoshi Kon, I found that this concept was born from two things…
1) A kid who would lie about having a stomach ache to avoid school and the struggle of whether or not to believe such things vs the possible reactions of ignoring it. What is escapism and what isn’t? Could someone lie something into existence or was it always there to begin with?
2)After World War 2 Japan massively downplayed their involvement in the war to the people and would use news, media, and merchandise to distract people from the truth. Forcing mass escapism to all its residents. This idea is present in the show from the first episode with Maromi being a massive maskot and the industry wanting to force out new mascots quickly. It is also present by the spreading of the Shounen Bat urban legend via word of mouth and medi, as well being shown in the opening via a huge mushroom cloud in the background of the characters laughing

All of this is a very inspired and unique concept that is fleshed out enough without overstaying its welcome with a modest 13 episodes that explore different perspectives on the struggle of the human experience and how running away from your problems will only make them worse. It will often explore these concepts in a psychological/horror/thriller style way which which mirrors the fear a person can have from anxiety. The characters all have unique personalities and motivations, the music is atmospheric and captivating, the animation still holds up today, the production of how the show was made is almost as interesting as the source material itself, and the episodes, philosophy, and mystery are all very memorable.

There isn’t too much to gripe about without being nitpicky or this genre/idea just not meshing with whatever your personal taste is. For instance if you are a fan of big spectacle action sequences or isekai power fantasies then maybe this isn’t what you are looking for. If you are a fan of those kind of things then I can respect that as well. I’m not trying to make this seem like it is some masterpiece that can only be understood by only the highest IQ Rick and Morty watchers. I’m just trying to give an unbiased opinion based on as much objective facts as possible. I also try to base my review on what we got, not I want.

For instance, some people could say that the short run time leads to more shallow characters in this series. While that is a valid complaint that I wouldn’t argue, my counterpoint would be that each character is fleshed out enough to be humanized and although there may not be much character development with certain characters, the ability to humanize a huge cast of characters with such time constraints is a writing ability worth praising on its own. Too many reviews these days are written by people who seem to believe that if something doesn’t align with their own niche, personal, contrarian opinions then the show is garbage and you have shit taste for liking it. Im also aware that not everything needs to be this complex to be enjoyable(for instance I am a huge Lupin the 3rd boomer fan), but this is something you will need to read between the lines on a little bit. However, the mystery and concept should be enough on its own to carry you through. Whether you watch it at a surface level or whether you want to dig deeper into it like I have, it’s something I feel like could entertain and relate to anyone regardless of age or gender.

With its short runtime it is a low risk, high reward show that I would recommend anyone to watch at least once.

So this is a anime concept so simple that you would think it would be hard to mess up, but here we are with a very mediocre anime. The dialogue is so over the top that it turns basic conversation into a cringe-fest. It’s so overwhelming that listening to these characters talk can be a endurance test of patience at times. It’s very clear that the fighting was supposed to be the focus here and, to be fair, there is salvageable ideas about these fights that are interesting. You can tell that the mangaka did their research and put most of their time and effort ... into rebooting certain historical aspects to fit the plot and coming up with fights that would be entertaining. There were twists and turns in every fight that made me wonder who was going to win each encounter. The problem is that the studio that animated this didn’t take any creative liberties into ambitiously animating these fight scenes. At each and every turn of every fight you can visually see the laziness and lack of care put into animating these fights, which is absurd because that’s all this manga really had to offer. It’s like they did the bare minimum just to get it over with and get their paycheck. It’s honestly a bit of a shame, because despite the awful dialogue, if the fights had at least looked nice then that would have helped this anime pull itself out of the hole of mediocrity that it has dug for itself. However that isn’t the case and the whole series suffers immensely for it.

So all in all the lack of ambition from the anime studio combined with the god awful writing from the mangaka just overshadows anything this series was trying to accomplish.