Ryuugayou Nanana: Despite the dumb setup with the cute gamer girl living in his room, they actually haven’t exploited it all that much. She’s more like an NPC in a video game. She gives information to anybody, regardless of who they are and regardless of the consequences. She can always be found in the same location, she gives out quests, she knows all the item stats. This entire world seems to be a game.
No Game No Life: While the world of Nanana looks like a fun game, the world of No Game No Life looks like a really shitty one. A game where only one player knows the rules is not very funny. And why is it that all the world’s rules seem inviolable except the cheating one? Also, this show completely fails at convincing the viewers that the two siblings are as great as they’re made out to be. The main character is supposed to be this great, charismatic leader, but this is only shown in how he inspires a bunch of chess pieces. This super charismatic guy can’t even make friends. He’s people-savvy only in comparison to Stephanie, who is a moron. I can buy that the sister is intelligent. She’s probably actually a computer though.
Fuun Ishin Dai Shogun: So this show obviously has no money. Most of the thing is barely animated. They seem to draw still character cut-outs and slide them around most of the time. But you know what? For all that, they still manage to express a story that I’m interested in watching. This is an excellent show as far as perverted harems go. It’s not about how well you animate the vibrations of enormous mounds of flesh. It’s what you do with the characters and whether you can move things along enough to keep people entertained.
Black Bullet: DISCRIMINATION IS WRONG KIDS! Don’t hate lolis!
Love lolis!
What an inspirational message, everyone should learn from it.
I am quite liking Nanana’s Buried Treasure a lot, and I am quite glad that they aren’t going with just the ghost girl and human guy romance (or the potential therein) and besides that kind of story really wouldn’t be good to go with the adventure quest plot.
Same! Not the greatest story by any means, but a bit of magic, mystery and adventure with a touch of romance, it’s a fun show. Not the usual boy and girl living together crap.
I was really disappointed with NGNL’s last episode too.
When we talk about cheating, I am thinking about stuff such as changing your cards in secret, or sneak a look at your opponent’s hand.
Not like this.
When you can convert your opponent’s pieces just by physical contact, isn’t that cheating in the broad day light? Why wasn’t she disqualified? Was it stated at the start of the game? That player can cast magic upon them? No, isn’t it? It’s just a game where the chess pieces have will of their own.
I think that the point is supposed to be that, since the pieces have wills of their own, you can’t prove that they didn’t just turn over spontaneously. Which ultimately falls down on the fundamental issue: the game has basically no rules at all (much like real war) and is just a competition won by whoever manages to bullshit his way to the end better. It’s quite unfair and makes no sense as a game really, but considering that it was basically set up by Kurami to trick Sora and that he accepted it, there’s not much he can do but win now.
Anyway, episode 3 has destroyed any semblance of seriousness that NGNL could have had as a “game” focused show, but it’s not necessarily bad imho. When shows try to be smart about strategies/games usually two things happen: either they’re actually good (and very technical), or they make themselves ridiculous by trying to sound all smart and cool while they lay down The 3 Year Old’s First Book of Chess (“Pawns move straight but eat IN DIAGONAL!” *le gasp*). I’m not sure NGNL could have lived up to the first option unless the writer had consulted an actual chess master (and even then, how many readers/viewers would follow through THAT?), so it’s not bad that it has taken this unexpected third way instead. In this way, it will never be a decent game show but it’ll at least manage to be a fantasy comedy with rather nonsensical moments.
I have to agree. This was a big improvement over the rock paper scissors game, where they actually tried to explain it and failed miserably. If they can’t figure out the simple game theory behind a variant of rock paper scissors, chess is a lost cause.
Still, you’d think they could manage to make a fantasy comedy where they put a little more effort into make the setting make sense. Mondaijitachi did the same thing: its games were pretty open ended most of the time. But at least they agreed to some set of rules beforehand. It’s a stretch to even call these things “games.” I don’t see how the person being challenged ever loses.
Actually, I don’t think anything about the game was stated at the beginning of the game. They didn’t even know how to play. So why couldn’t the games rules have just included magic? Obviously the implication is that using magic is cheating but I don’t think they thought this through all that well.
Honestly, I liked this episode better than the first two. 🙂 It was at least fairly entertaining, without too much incest. Still not a big fan though.
In No Game No Life, the cheating rule IS inviolable. The rule is that the game ends if you’re found out cheating (and I guess that means having actual proof, not just a suspicion), not that it’s forbidden to cheat. In fact, the God of Games seems just a huge troll to me. The main guy’s unrelatable, but I guess that’s also what makes watching him fun in a way, him being such an asshole-ish bastard.
What would constitute proof I wonder? When they never even agreed on a set of rules, it’s hard to prove someone cheated…
Sora’s just not Akagi.
Haven’t actually seen Akagi.
“convincing the viewers that the two siblings are as great as they’re made out to be”
What do you think they’re supposed to be great at?
I see games and relationship with each other, and different game skill sets tailored to their interests. For Shiro, it is logic capacity and deduction, and Sora is creativity and relationships. Sort of like the world god only know’s cousin, but with diversified games and split into two people. Their biggest strength however is complete and absolute faith in each other. That constantly replenishes their will to fight– which is most important of all. If you lose your nerve, you lose the game.
Their brains are wired differently, and obviously dysfunctional without each other. Shiro probably on the autism spectrum, and Sora has his own pyschological issues.
Sora’s a bloody magician on the game field though.. and it is entertaining for me to watch.
Rule of fun / funny overrides rules of logic for my entertainment purposes. NGNL is a fun ride for me!
Yeah, that the girl is good at logic, and the boy is good at dealing with people, exactly. From my perspective the boy seems pretty terrible at dealing with people though…
Still, I’ve been having fun with it as well. 🙂