The not-really-a-death-game-but-actually-a-death-game anime has come to a close as Tomodachi Game ended with a cliffhanger. Let’s look back at the show and see what it got right and wrong in this review!
Tomodachi Game Overview
Tomodachi Game, or Friends Game in English, is a psychological strategy anime belonging to the Death Game genre, a kind of anime that pits several characters against each other in a bid to make one of them outlast them all. It is based on a manga written by Mikoto Yamaguchi and illustrated by Yuuki Satou. We covered this series episodically, and if you want to go back and read through those reviews, you can do so by clicking here. They are great for rewatches!
The anime adaptation was developed by Studio Okuroto Noboru, a studio with only two full-length anime adaptations in its catalogue, Special Training in the Secret Dungeon and the second season of How Not To Summon A Demon Lord. The show was directed by Hirofumi Ogura, the director behind several well-known shows such as Black Butler and Cells At Work. You can read our review of the final episode here!
– Friends Game Review does not contain any spoilers –
Tomodachi Game Review- The Plot
Tomodachi Game is an anime that failed to elicit many expressions either way. It wasn’t good enough to warrant continuous and unending praise like some other anime this season. It also wasn’t bad enough to actively criticise every aspect of it. It lies somewhere in the middle of the road with how good it was, getting some things right and some things very wrong. One could say that this makes it even more of a disappointment, but I hope that we’ll be able to draw a conclusion about this by the end of this review.
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The show is very much a tale of two halves, with the latter half being demonstrably higher quality than the first one. The start was as inauspicious as it gets, with the start of the games and the first game itself being not very good. It felt like a dozen other shows of this kind that we had already seen before and didn’t do enough to stand out. The show’s core concept, the Tomodachi Game itself, felt wildly inconsequential and not interesting enough to base a whole show over. Who wants to see petty squabbles and whiny teenagers complaining for 12 episodes?
Then the show did something interesting a little before the halfway point and revealed the identity of the supposed “bad guy” of the show. The series became a game of cat and mouse between them and someone else who got a great reveal about them- our protagonist Yuichi. The games would have been improved massively just with this addition, but the series didn’t just stop there. It kept increasing the stakes for which the friends were playing, the games became better, and an internal conspiracy that caused the death of multiple people reared its ugly head. Whoever said this wasn’t actually a Death Game?
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Tomodachi Game genuinely became must-watch television in the final leg. Every episode was better than the last one as we ended the show on a very high note. However, it getting good doesn’t excuse how bad the start was. No one would blame you for dropping it after the third episode, but you would be rewarded for sticking around. As we discussed, the show is a mixed bag in nearly all aspects, including the plot. The conspiracies and the uncertainty created by the increase in the quality of the games help bolster the quality of this season by a lot.
Tomodachi Game Review- The Characters
The main characters of this show are the five friends who are stuck playing the game by themselves. They all have their reasons for being the show’s bad guy, making it a lot less predictable than it otherwise would have been. However, one issue threatens to destroy the entire concept the show was based on. The show only works when the characters it puts into the game are actually friends and like each other. They do not like each other, and one would be forgiven for assuming that they hate each other’s guts.
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The games, which rely upon the fact that these people are friends and are supposed to test their friendship by putting it through a series of rigorous examinations, can’t work properly if the show isn’t able to convince everyone of their friendship. We don’t get to spend enough time with the group when they like each other, resulting in us not caring when the doubt is cast. We didn’t get to see the moments where they had fun or shared their intimate details (except in one notable instance). Hence, the connection between them and the audience never really got started to begin with.
The main character, Yuichi, is unique in that he is deceptively dangerous and highly mysterious. He is introduced as someone who cares a lot about money and his friends, which wasn’t much to go by. However, as the series progressed, he was fleshed out and given a lot more abilities and nuances that made him extremely interesting to watch. The other friends weren’t very consistent in the way they were written. Kokorogi was very whiny and annoying, and Shibe was a non-factor until the final episode.
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Shiho and Tenji were the duo that most of this season revolved around, as multiple reveals about both of them were what kept the show afloat during the painfully slow middle episodes. Tenji was written to be a conflicting character who operated upon his own whimsy, and Tomodachi Game threw several misdirections about his characters, only a few of which stuck. On the other hand, Shiho was a total mystery from the beginning to the end, and I’m not sure what to make of her character yet. If there is a Tomodachi Game Season 2, don’t be surprised if she is explored more. Overall, quite the mixed bag here.
Tomodachi Game Review- Art and Music
Like everything else about this show, the animation and music were inoffensive but unimpressive at the same time. It looked like every other anime that has been released in the past 10 years. It relied on many closeups and reaction images during its runtime and came out looking quite low effort as a result. The movement was fine, but there wasn’t much to do here since the show was so psychological in nature. The few times there was action in the show, it looked comical in how slow-paced and unnatural it was. Add that to the abundance of static backgrounds, and the animation ends up being highly uninspired.
The music was a little better, but not by much. The opening theme was nothing special and didn’t set the show’s tone very well. The ending theme was great, however, and the few times it played as the episode ended, it made the moments hit much harder. The OST was pretty forgettable, and so was the voice acting. Manabu, in particular, could be highly annoying, but his case was different as he was probably written to be as annoying as possible.
Verdict
Tomodachi Game was a series that could have been much better than it was had there been more effort in the character development and production department. As things stand, it is perfectly watchable but not much else.