[Soulmate～っ☆]

Written by Soulmate～っ☆
Contains spoilers for No Game No Life Episodes 1-6

No Game No Life

For those who have not heard about or watched it, No Game No Life is an isekai fantasy anime about two siblings who get transported into an anime world where all conflicts are resolved by games. Sora, an 18 year old NEET, and his loli sister Shiro (age 11) who doesn't go to school spend their days playing video games, mostly MMOs and other multiplayer games where they are considered to be the best and most powerful "team". They go by the name BLANK or [] because they don't fill out their username field and therefore their identities are hidden. One day, BLANK receives a strange invite to an online chess game. After beating the player on the other end, Shiro and Sora are transported into a fantasy world by the owner and God of that world, Tet. The rest of the anime follows the duo as they explore their new world and meet strange characters, discover the different races of the inhabitants of Disboard, and of course play games. Prior to this, the only other isekai I've watched was some episodes of Goblin Slayer and SAO here and there and I'm generally not a big fan of the genre. However, I do really like gambling/game type of anime which is what drew me in. I thought the artstyle would throw me off with the pastelgoth color palette but I got used to it pretty quickly and the bright or faded pink and purple became nice to look at after a while. Here is an example (albeit a bit drastic) of what I'm talking about:

Right away I'm going to say that this anime really surprised me and it was not what I expected at all. I expected a much more serious anime about games and tactics where what I got was some nonsensical games and a lot of ecchi. Similar to Kakegurui and Kaiji, the opponents always cheat and the heroes of the story win by exposing them and foiling their plans, not by actually beating them in a fair match. I guess I expected a lot typical games such as poker, chess, etc where instead what I got was games that only relate to the world of the anime. It's of course much harder to follow this and the viewer is not rewarded, nor are they able to deduce the outcome on their own. For example, somewhere in the middle of the anime the characters play a "materialization game" where if BLANK thinks of something from their world it will come to life, same as their opponent. What ensues is a ridiculous result of the main character stripping away the world's core and exhausting his opponent of oxygen, while winning due to open mouth kissing his sister and breathing air into each other's mouths.

Speaking of kissing his sister, there is a lot of references to common tropes in anime such as lolicon, incest, hentai, etc which I assume is supposed to be parody and there's a lot of "jokes" about Sora cuddling with Shiro or kissing her not being weird because it's sister. I'm really not into ecchi, the only other ecchi show I've watched was Monogatari which has a similar feel. However, I feel like this show can't compare to Monogatari as the execution on that anime is way better. The show is so riddled with sexual scenarios that it could basically be an incest hentai about a brother and sister going to "another world". Take for example about halfway through the anime when Sora encounters Jibril, a conqueror-turned librarian who has a thirst of knowledge. Her species' wings are their erogenous zones, and the main character proceeds to make her orgasm by stroking them. Of course there are many more moments like this but I'd like to move on from talking about ecchi now.

Something else I noticed with this anime is that in some aspects it strives for realism and reliability. The main character especially, Sora, is meant to be the personification of a typical Japanese high school graduate which turns into a NEET due to not having dreams or aspirations and having a cynical outlook on life in general. However, at 18 years old there is still a lot of time to turn around and change perspectives on life, which is why I feel like the characters are not very relatable. I could be wrong though, maybe the target audience are Japanese high schoolers. For a more realistic outlook into the NEET culture and dealing with lost youth I would reccomend watching Welcome to the NHK or ReLife. That's not to say this show does a bad job of relating to the NEET/Otaku culture though as the characters stay up for days gaming without sleeping or leaving their room and surviving only on ramen and epic gamer protein bars. However something that bothered me right away was how MMO they played online was depicted. The fights in that game was basically just random shit flying across the screen when the characters used their "abilities" and there was no way to tell what was going on. Not only that, but when BLANK won the fight the opponents recuperated and started complaining about how they used cheats to wallhack, aimbot, and "manipulate their hitbox" to win MMORPG fights which just sounds like something a boomer wrote after playing one CSGO game against someone with aimware.  Anyways, that is really all I have to say about this anime but I'm open to discussions, this is of course all my opinion so if you have a different one I'd love to hear it. Also I will leave a tl;dr below and some recommendations for similar anime that do this style better IMO.

Tl;dr Very well made guilty pleasure anime, otherwise completely braindead. 7/10

Recommendations
Welcome to the NHK - More accurate look into NEET/Otaku culture
ReLife - Burnout gets a chance to start his life again from high school
Monogatari Series - An ecchi anime which I liked more than this one
Kaiji - Gambling anime
Kakegurui - Similar to NGNL but it's a high school for gambling instead of another world

[Weebex]

Very good review!
Still waiting for them to make a second season on this anime, but the movie they did was great.

[Elweth]

Very good review!
Still waiting for them to make a second season on this anime, but the movie they did was great.

There's the movie if youre into the series!

[int]

no game no life is pretty good, but its very slow to update

[Roky]

No Game No Life was a mad anime, ngl