A Great Batsu Game - Tomodachi Game

 Back in action!! I recently came back to watching anime after a year, and I left some seasonal anime. A few stood out to me, this is one of them. Mostly spoiler free.

I always knew about the manga from a friend, but never actually got into it until the anime aired in April last year. I was always meaning to get into psychological anime, but I forget to because I focus on my huge backlog of shows I must watch or already started from seasonal anime. This anime has always stood out to me because penalty games anime are a small trend, although still quite a few of them. However, this trend is full of anime that always fall flat on their faces during the runtime, but Tomodachi Game managed to keep my interest really high throughout the whole show. The anime is about a small group of friends, when things go astray and money is stolen by someone, that makes them get put into a batsu game with a live audience to repay their debt. The catch is to test their friendship by games based on truth or lies.

The concept is very original to me which made me very invested in the show, Batsu Game (Penalty Game). It does the batsu game concept perfectly in a very unique way as it uses the psyche around lying to pass the game. It doesn’t always tell you when someone is lying but is eventually found out resulting in it being exciting and tense while watching. Our protagonist Yuuichi is a very smart and cunning individual. I find him very interesting because he is the hero of our story; he is always one step ahead of the traitor, even though you never know until the last moments. It’s very clever because the liars think they are ahead all the time, so their plans seem like they're breaking apart the group. Until, the main character spoils their fun and humiliates them; he is so convincing at seeming normal, until he gets a dark aura around him when he stops the evil plan, which makes it super enjoyable to see him like this.

The pacing is very good as well, there’s always something going which never makes you lose interest in watching for me. This creates an on-the-edge of your seat experience throughout the duration of the show which not a good deal of anime do for me; also the pacing is great for me because I find I get bored easier when there's slower pacing, additionally it helps with enjoyment as well which combined with the next paragraph makes it amazing. Therefore, I would rate this anime really high because of the intensity of the anime, making it fit the psychological genre perfectly as it even gets inside my head because you don’t know how they can overcome the schemes.

The animation in this anime I find to be astonishing because it’s spotless and detailed anime style, which goes perfectly with the 3D CGI game runner that is always in the anime. Clearly a lot of budget went into this anime, which shows a lot and is put to good use for this watching experience. You can’t complain about the animation as its very fluid and makes everything phenomenal for anyone to watch with the pacing and psychological suspense throughout. They also add in the manga onomatopoeia like “jiiii/stareeee” which shows how much the studios cares about the anime to appease the manga readers. A lot of care and consideration was put into this, which shows how good it looks. That makes me thrilled to see when animes are like this, which gives me hope for future projects, as many times studios are greedy and don’t care for the love of the creations they are adapting.

Yuuichi Katagiri being my favourite out of the entire cast because he is a mastermind at deception for all the right reasons. He isn’t someone who is pretentious or trying to prove himself to anyone, which works in the game, as he doesn’t try hard to get anywhere. Instead, he uses careful planning and thought process, to carry out underhanded plans to win the game, this makes him super genius as he thinks of everything even fooling the observers sometimes. When he is revealing his ultimately final blow on the enemy, he has super confidence and a threatening aura that is shown to be black smoke while he is grinning menacingly to scare the soul out of his opponent.

This makes him a very interesting character and perfectly done which cements him as a main character, even though he is not always talking he does stuff when the camera is focusing on him. The anime making the villain have more screen time than anyone is clever for psychological genre, results in the audience being in peril about the uncertain nature of what’s going on. When Yuuichi true words come out and his scary persona is shown, makes me super excited as I know that he is going to destroy the liar, it gives satisfaction after having nerves stand on the back of your neck for so long; which might guarantee it being in the top percent of my favourite psychological anime so far.

It’s the best game show anime I've had the pleasure of witnessing because the games are based on lies. It surprises me how creative the games can be which work perfectly with the game aspect, like when there’s a board and everyone has to move steps to the goal by being truthful. The way they give truths or lies is from an audit box that puts a written piece of paper that is written away from everyone. The games are amazing because you also focus on the outcome and scores of the game, while having suspense from all the drama, this makes the anime not boring for me which made me watch without wanting to stop. On top of that, the game runner puts mystery elements into it, like secret lies to trip up their plans. The level of creativity from the anime is remarkable, which gives a unique approach to the anime, which others failed at. All of this combined makes Tomodachi Game very recommendable to anyone new or old to watch anime to watch, as it is very easy for anyone to experience and you will definitely enjoy it. There are twists and turns that make it interesting, there’s never a dull moment when watching, so it’s one of the better anime I have seen in a while.

Thanks for reading!