No Game, No Life, No Thanks

I was looking forward to this – even more after all the positive reviews and extremely high ratings from viewers, but I’m sad to say it was an extreme disappointment.

I have absolutely nothing good to say about the show. I did not like any of the characters introduced (especially not the siblings, which were just annoying and self-insert as fuck), I did not like the poorly handled shoehorned in fanservice (let alone the high detailed panty shot of the 11 year old sister at the start) which given the manga is an ecchi series and gets ten times worse as it goes will do the same in the show, I did not find a single “joke” in it to have any actual comedic value to the point I didn’t even realize there were jokes until I read some threads mentioning them, the music sucks, the art is painful to look at because the color overlays, everything about the show was boring, uninteresting, and as bland as it gets. Even if the game gets “better later on” – the fact is it’s just not going to be enough to help it for me, there is so much bad and empty about this show that no matter what changes I don’t see myself being able to enjoy watching this.

The brother and sister feel empty and are extremely uninteresting characters to lead the show, and the rest of it felt boring as well. I ended up just wishing it was over, and whenever I’d check how long was left it had barely been ~30 seconds since last I checked and not even to the halfway point (it didn’t change past that either) yet felt like it had been hours. The entire time I just wanted to skip through the rest of the episode and very seriously had to force myself through the last half. This was made even harder by the fact the second half was worse than the first, which was already pretty bad as it was. Even the few times the show could go in an exciting direction, the viewer is reminded very quickly that the MC is just another Kirito level Gary Stu. I seriously have not felt so deeply that watching a show was a chore or ‘homework’ as much as this show made me. That’s another issue, the pacing is shit – but the main issue there comes from the fact the show itself is just so bland that no matter how fast or slow the pacing is the content will still feel like a slog to get through.

Some other complaints I have are questions that seem to just be explained with nothing. How is an 11 year old girl a NEET hikikomori? Where are the parents? I can understand a teenage boy, but not a kid who isn’t even a pre-teen yet, even the most neglectful parents wouldn’t allow this. And why are they together – I’ve been told it’s due to them having a “fear of being apart” which is akin to the author saying “w-well, because!”. Why are they so unrealistically portrayed? I can handle lack of realism in fucking anime, but “I’m playing with my feet and hands on like 8 characters at once” is just a tryhard way for a poor writer to show someone is gifted at something. I could keep going about them and plenty of other things, but overall it’s just not worth watching at all – especially knowing that the further it gets the more pointless fanservice and nudity shows up while the quality of the writing never gets any better if the manga is anything to base things on. A perfect example of a show that’s so vapid yet very sellable due to panty shots of children and big tittied bimbos flashing their breasts all day.

I do not think this show is complete shit or the worst ever, but it’s definitely not good whatsoever and is one of the most fucking boring and uninteresting things imaginable. I say if you’re interested, give it a shot – just don’t expect much, let alone what everyone is promising (the best thing ever). I’m not trying to be edgy or go against the grain, this show was just not for me on any level and had plenty to it that was genuinely poorly written, poorly paced, and just plain boring.

I do have to give a lot of praise to Rie Kugimiya though, even in her best “not loli tsundere” roles in the past she hasn’t done this good a job at masking her voice while maintaining such a high quality of acting. I also have to praise the series for not making the sister or brother incestuous (at least at this point there were no hints it was going that way).

And for the record, I AM watching shows from this season and enjoying them very much, as well as have some more to try out. I just prefer to wait and write “early thoughts” on those when they are a little further along, which is why the only things I’m writing about are the shows I’m dropping after genuinely being interested in them that I feel disappointed enough to warrant a post about.