No Game No Life was an amazing adventure! Everyone considers it as the anime that "made the difference" for the past one year, because it over-passed everyone's expectations and even managed to be compared to the mainstream series, and eventually, got better than some of them. It also broke the record of making an enormous amount of fans in just two and a half months. Bad opinions about it are also rarely expressed and almost the whole amount of the viewers that have watched it had fun and enjoyed watching it. Well, that seems legit, because that is why I'm reviewing it and I'm really sorry for reviewing it so late, I just wasn't getting the time to complete it!
Story
The story of this anime centers around two NEETS a brother and a sister - Sora and Shiro - who together make up the “Blank” - an undefeated gaming group that goes from game to game, mastering it before moving on. In the real world, they are shut-ins who view real life as a crappy game with poorly designed rules and too many players. So when they are drawn into a fantasy world where games are the central aspect of life, the two, unlike the other characters that are “trapped in a fantasy world” stories, don't want to leave; they like this new world far better than ours!
Characters
I think that the characters were the real award winners here in this show and they were the ones that made this anime one of my favorite anime of this spring season. Undoubtedly, the vast majority of the focus in the character section was on Sora and Shiro, and I certainly don't think that they were disappointing. So, I'll try to explain the pair to the best of my abilities alongside the other characters of the anime. Let's start off with Sora, who is an extremely charismatic and cunning person. He uses tons of deceitful tactics and strategies planned out way in advance in order to direct the flow of events much more than that meets the eye at first glance. As he likes to say, no matter how the game turns out, his victory is already assured from the very beginning as "Only an idiot starts a fight he cannot win" as he says. Of course, that doesn't mean that he's the second coming of Light or Lelouch, as Sora has no sinister ulterior motives and instead he is a very humorous and enthusiastic person that just likes to have fun. Shiro on the other hand, looks like a moe fan-service loli at first glance, and to some extent I cannot say that this part is wrong and In case you didn't realize, it really is an ecchi anime in the end.
Anyways, Shiro's quite fun to listen to with her almost expressionless voice, and yet has a very blunt choice of words. Also, in reality her level of genius is way above than that of her brother, but in a very different way. Shiro's mind works sort of like a supercomputer, capable of unmatched amounts of logical thinking and data storage at any given point. On the other hand, this makes her less adaptable than Sora. However, what this means is that the pair of them perfectly complement each others weaknesses. The supporting cast primarily consists of Stephanie Dola, who at first also looks like the obligatory fan-service character. But, before long you'll realize that she's much more than a comic relief character or rather the butt of everyone else's jokes. Now normally I might be a bit skeptical to that idea but this girl fills that role absolutely PERFECTLY. There is also the other so popular Jibril who is just all around awesome in every way, but I'll avoid talking about her as she is introduced later on in the story.
Animation and Sound
The animation and artwork of this anime was stunning and the word "colorful" might not even scratch the surface on this one. Animated by Madhouse, the art direction goes out of its way to use bright colors for almost everything. Even the character outlines were done in red instead of the typical black. That made for a world that looked vibrant and alive - and, more often than not, exceedingly beautiful. Thus, later in the series when there was a sudden art shift alongside a major plot point, everything seemed bland, drab, and more than a little surreal. It's anime like these that show the unique qualities that an anime can have over books or live action films!
For the sound, If you look on it at its own this was definitely the part which I thought about the least while I was actually watching the series. But, when looking at it in retro-perspective it's actually pretty solid. The OP of the anime never particularly blew me away but to be fair I mostly ended up skipping it all the time because I was so eager to get into the new episode every week, The ED was a better albeit but still not amazing, although the full version of it was a lot more enjoyable. That parts aside though, the OST for the anime itself is one or two levels above that and the best voice acting in the anime was the one done by Hikasa Yoko in her role as Stephanie. The role she had as the character constantly got abused by the two siblings simply for their enjoyment and that resulted in her having numerous different comedy roles at the same time, yet Yoko absolutely nailed them all in an absolutely hilarious fashion!
Enjoyment
I'm just going to straight-up say that this was without a doubt one of the most enjoyable anime I've seen to date and it was simply due to how much fun every single episode was to watch! Also, the concept of the anime as a whole was extremely appealing and interesting to follow, and due to the unlimited potential of the games themselves, every episode was completely different from the last one despite following the same ideals and there was just so much charisma poured into the characters' over-the-top settings, that it never failed to keep me hooked.
Overall, No Game No Life is an anime that never left me disappointed. All the episodes, centered around one game or another, and were always exciting - but those that served as downtime between battles were full of comedy and helped to flesh out the world! This anime had smart characters, great humor, and games that were just fun to watch ; though you may need to occasionally watch the rules twice to keep up. The only real turnoff I saw in this one were those moments of fan-service with Shiro at its center. But other than that, I highly recommend it and every gamer should at-least give it a try!
4 STAR ANIME.
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