Greetings, readers! Tomodachi Game is a Spring 2022 anime of 12 episodes that follows five friends as they are forced into a series of high-stakes games that test their bonds to each other. I finally got around to finishing it, as well as completing my series review. In case you're not familiar, my anime series reviews follow a standard structure. I examine five categories (visuals, audio, story, characters, and enjoyment) and give each a rating from 1 to 10. Then at the end, I take the average of the five numbers to get the overall score. Without further ado, let's begin!
Visuals: 6 Average
The visuals are fine. They are nothing special, but adequate. The expressions of the characters get pretty crazy, which can be a good or a bad thing depending on what you like. The female characters are objectified and hypersexualized in the way they are drawn, which is pretty standard for anime. As for the character designs in a general sense, they are also nothing special. They probably won't stand out in my memory. I'd go so far as to say the designs are boring. Occasionally, there is some creativity in the visuals with certain colors and lightings. It really isn't much, though. Overall, the art and animation were not terrible, but not good, either.
Story: 6 Average
The general plot of Tomodachi Game is decent. It's an interesting enough premise to have high stakes games that test friendship and tempt traitors with vast amounts of money. The pacing of the plot is also pretty good, with a lot of cliffhangers and suspense. The second game dragged a little bit, but it could have been much worse.
With the elements I mentioned so far, Tomodachi Game's story would probably deserve a score of 7. The reason I'm giving it a 6 is that the series attitude and the believability aspects of the plot are low. Tomodachi Game is a pretty absurd anime. It's hard to take it seriously with how overblown everything is. The series attitude takes itself too seriously, and various parts of the plot feel forced or stupid. In addition, there really isn't any good humor to be found in this anime. A little bit would have helped with the content balance. These issues made me bump down the story category to 6.
Audio: 7 Good
The audio category is the only one where Tomodachi Game actually impressed me. First of all, the intro song is a banger and I love hearing it every time. (It's "Double Shuffle" by Nana Mizuki.) While I haven't thoroughly explored the OST, I recall noticing good instrumental music at several points during this anime.
Finally, there's the voice-acting. It's excellent. I could geek out about the Japanese seiyuus for 3 paragraphs, but that would be serious overkill. Just know that the main cast members performed their roles excellently, in a way that might make the characters actually stick in my memory. The voices of the three Manabus were also wonderful, since they were veteran voice-actors with huge history behind them. Clearly, the sound category was commendable in Tomodachi Game.
Characters: 5 Mediocre
This will probably be the category where I see the most disagreement from fans. There are a lot of young viewers and people relatively new to anime who are under the impression that the characters in Tomodachi Game are amazing. Obviously, I disagree. I will admit that Yuuichi was fairly interesting for a main character. Still, he wasn't so cool that I thought he deserved all the hype and the way the show built him up as super fascinating. the character concept was good, but it's going to take better execution to truly impress me. (edited)
As for the other main characters, they largely disappointed me. They were mostly one-dimensional. There's the stupid one, the pretty and earnest one, the conniving one, and the sweetheart. There wasn't much else to them. The character interactions, especially during the second game, drove me up the wall. It's this kind of teenage drama shit that I simply don't care about most of the time. Even Tenji, whom the show had more time to develop, ended up weak as a character. They tried too hard to make him seem evil in the middle of the series, and then made him too much of a saint in the last game.
I am utterly unimpressed with the character category in Tomodachi Game. That being said, because Yuuichi's character was mildly interesting, I decided not to give this category a 4. It's more balanced to give it a 5.
Personal Enjoyment: 5 Mediocre
I ended up giving a higher score than I originally intended to the the personal enjoyment category. That's because, despite how I may downplay it, Tomodachi Game does a good job building suspense and hooking audiences. Even though I wasn't invested in the characters or super interested in the games, I kept watching. That means I was enjoying it on some level.
My appreciation for the suspense aside, there was much more in Tomodachi Game that I did not enjoy. Like far too many anime series, this one included a lot of casual, relatively mild misogyny. (And however mild it might be compared to worse anime series, it still annoyed me.) Another thing that aggravated me was the way the show handled the kiss scene. They basically used Tenji as queer-bait and a stunt for more views and discussion. If the writing had at least been consistent and kept Tenji gay, there would still be some problems. But it would be better than taking it back in the next episode and saying "Just kidding! I'm not gay! No homo, man!"
Other than those grievances, I also felt annoyed with how seriously the anime took itself, the over-the-top nature of the games and reactions, the teenage drama, and the way the female characters were drawn and animated. As you can see, I had a lot of issues with Tomodachi Game in terms of elements that took away my enjoyment.
Overall Score: 5.8/10.0
As I mentioned in the opening, the overall score is the average of the five numbers given for the categories. Tomodachi Game came out with a score of almost 6, which isn't terrible, but would qualify as "average/fine" in my book. My opinion of this anime is pretty low compared to what I've seen online. On MyAnimeList, for example, Tomodachi Game is currently at 7.71/10.0. My response is that viewers need better taste in what they watch. That wraps it up for today.
Thanks for reading~