王様ゲーム(King’s Game) – Really just a round of losers including the viewers

Oh man where to even begin with this. Like, there’s a lot going on here and after my initial high of watching it, reading some comments brought me back to earth. I mean, a deadly virus game of suggestions with punishment games involving a bunch of high schoolers and a lot of people die really fast. Okay, alright. Let’s move forward.

A rousing game of “Guess the main characters” ensues.

Story: Nobuaki Kanazawa has transferred from one school to another, where he seemingly lost all his friends. Immediately, Natsuko Honda sets herself up to be-friend him. Then one day a text from the ‘King’ comes in, with a punishment game if the orders are not complied to. The class wants to play it off as a joke, but Nobuaki has played this game before and he was the only one to survive.

Characters: I’m not going to lie there’s too many of them, although most of the non-important ones get killed off pretty quickly. Don’t sweat it, and using the usual anime tropes you can identify the main characters of which I’ll mention just three. None of whom I actually realized, were any good.

Honda Chiemi

I expected more of you girl.

She’s a character from the first seen King’s Game. She seems cheerful and happy, but desperate to save Nobuaki Kanazawa. Overall, she could have been a great character but she majorly lacks depth, her only motivations are living (obvious) and Nobuaki. That’s it. While really cute, her back story is more interesting then she is.

Honda Satsuki

I hated her with a passion but honestly; she should have killed him right then and there.

Now, she is the most straight up yandere girl I’ve ever watched. I usually can not stand them at all and I would have, normally, dropped the show when they’re mentioned. She had some depth, and her motivations made clear by the 5th or so episode. I did not hate her character as much as Chiemi, but I would have killed her off first if I had been in the class.

Nobuaki Kanazawa

He has this face a lot.

He was annoying for a large combination of reasons. I get friendship, maintaining hope, etc especially in a situation like this. But could he shut up about it for 10 minutes and let someone else talk? He’s annoying as he is passionate, and just could he stop being a damn male mary-sue for one episode? I mean, he has a lot of likable qualities, but it gets drowned out by how under developed he is as a protagonist and he’s been in two games.

Animation quality: It’s so-so. Not as good as it could be, but nothing absolutely glaring.

Other thoughts/Overall: I really like this genre of anime/manga. I find it interesting to picture myself in the same situation, but this was poorly executed. If there were going to be two classes; make it more distinct with one in color and the other in black in white. Spend some time actually developing the characters; I shouldn’t NOT know who the final 5 are when 2 of them were throw away characters. I get that Nobuaki is the main character, but for the love of god let someone get more then two sentences in before he starts talking again.

Additionally, while the pacing was good could we be given a timeline. I could not for the life of my keep track of how many days went by or was it weeks?

I don’t regret binging this anime, it was fun for me at least. But unless you like splatter-punk style deaths, some sexual assault, and just no closure I would not recommend anyone watch this. Not to mention the large implication at the end… we’ll see what happens.