No Game No Life Critique ~ Doujin Manga Society

No Game No Life Critique

No Game No Life(ノーゲーム・ノーライフ Nōgēmu Nōraifu or Noge Nora) is a Japanese light novel written an illustrated by Yū Kamiya with an anime series adaptation by Madhouse .

No Game No Life

The plot of the series centralize on the NEET step-brothers Sora and Shiro , both of them having amazing skills that together makes them practically invincible.

One day an entity that claims to be a god , transports them to a fantasy world called Disboard ; where every major event has to be decided with a game.

The siblings waste no time and set their goal to gather the 16 race pieces, corresponding to each of the sentient races that inhabits this world , and challenge god for his title of One True God.

As my first critique I will start by explaining the points I will be covering and how I will evaluate them. So the first point I will focus on would be the Plot (No..the real plot) , basically what the story is about , next the Development which is basically how the story progress with time and how the characters grow as they face each problem , then we have the Back Story that is how the details and surrounding world helps the viewer immerse in the world the writer is presenting , after that we have the Script which is basically the dialogue of every character and how that can help us understand the character itself or the situation, finally we have the Art which I believe I don't have to explain.

And before anything I would like to remind you that this is my personal opinion and it's ok if you disagree with me.

As shown above the plot of No game No life it's pretty simple , a pair of NEET siblings (NEET:Not in Education, Employment or Training) that spend most of their times playing games. Because for some reason in Japan if you are an introverted genius master of video games you wont have friends and you will be rejected by society. Well independently of what the author had suffer in his childhood or anything , one of the main problems I have with this anime is that instead of taking the characters out of their comfort zone and make them have to face their problems...they are simply taken by some type of god that for some reason it's surfing the web at that time , guess even gods like to check their Face Book once in a while. Another thing that bothers me about this series is that in most cases the main characters will have little to no difficulty in beating their opponents and even if they were presented as sort of invincible since the beginning , it's constantly shown to the viewer to the point that the author almost rubs it in your face .

As for the development, is almost minimal. We don't see the characters grow or develop much at least in the first season of the anime , Neither Sora or Shiro show some degree of development during the first season or even a point were we can get to know them more in deep ; like why they change so drastically when they are apart of each other or how they ended up hating the real world..what caused they hatred towards reality and more.

The anime does do a good job showing us the world of Disboard , it is explained how the world of Disboard works and at least a little of the different sentient races that lives in it are explained or shown. Even if I would have liked the series to explain a bit more the fantasy world Sora and Shiro end up in , for what they did it's decent.

The world of Disboard

For a manga that was published on a seinen magazine , the script of No game No life it's really lacking of emotional bonding with the characters and mature topics (For mature topics I mean , complex or controversial ideas that requires a more mature audience to understand ) most of the times the characters are either trying to do some sort of comedy (mostly involving Sora's virginity and how desperate he needs a girlfriend) or Pseudo science that they use to win the games against their different opponents.

Sora's expression is just priceless~

On the Art section the series does an amazing job , the characters are displayed with vibrant colors and the art itself its really enjoyable. The backgrounds and places are often really detailed and beautiful , and each of the other sentient races that are shown are very detailed.

The visual effects are nice and often uses 3d animations that goes well with the animation style.

Jibril was a really interesting Character...of sorts..

So to finish my critique , even if I understand the authors intentions of making the audience relate easily to the main characters the fact that they are “Mary Sue” type of characters it's something that at least in my opinion it's bad for a character.

I hope you have enjoyed my critique and be sure to leave any suggestions , questions or death threats on the comment sections and I have my Personal Evaluation Table(Trade marked~) below.