Veronin

New Game is a joy to watch, medicine for the mind, the perfect cure after a long day of work. It doesn't do anything too notable, but at the same time, never really needed to in the first place. Where most slice-of-life anime fumble and stumble in an effort to figure out what they want to be, New Game knows from the very start what it is. It is a cutesy tale of the mundane, a cross of sorts between Shirobako's look into the world of production, and K-ON's more fluffy elements. It is heart-warming when it decides to takea more meaningful turn, and never ventures into the realm of melodrama. Even if it may not contain the same depth and insight into the industry as Shirobako did, it very much succeeds in being simple, yet well-crafted entertainment. Cute slice-of-life anime are a dime a dozen, but ones like New Game are noticeably rarer. We do not often get anime with exclusively adult characters. It is something the industry needs more of, too, as high school and middle school club activities are inherently less interesting than those of a working adult. Rather than focusing on the video game industry from the eyes of a bunch of kids who play Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy after school, it takes an insider's perspective as a result of the setting, a glimpse into the art of game production. It just never really develops beyond that glimpse, with the vast majority of the anime focusing on Aoba and friends' daily adventures rather than their actual job as game developers. More often you'll see the girls fight over pudding or air conditioning rather than, y'know, developin'. It would have been nice to see New Game do something more substantial with the setting, as it can sometimes feel more like a stage than a real place. Even as incompetent as they all are, they still end up producing an excellent, finished product by the end. If New Game were an accurate representation of game development, their game would have gotten delayed so hard it would give The Last Guardian competition. If there is one issue with regards to the characters, it is that they never truly behave like adults. Heck, most of them could even pass for primary schoolers, a fact that New Game does not hide away from, what with most of the cast dressing as kindergarteners in the ending sequence. If lolis are your thing, hey, enjoy! But if you are expecting ladies in their early-to-mid twenties to have an interest in the opposite sex and actually behave their age, you may find yourself a bit disappointed. I think, to some extent, it is justified, as the worries and the activities of the average adult are at odds with the light-hearted, relaxing nature of the genre. To ask for change would be to ask for change entirely. And I don't think New Game needs change. I say this because New Game is more than just pudding fights and lolis-who-also-happen-to-be-adults. There are some honestly beautiful moments throughout the show - frequent enough to be notable, but never incessant to the point that it feels like it is beating you over the head with themes of friendship and healing, as some (many) slice-of-life anime do. What is there in New Game is subtle: in one early episode, Aoba is speaking to her friend about her recent experiences with game development, and the movements and crossing of her legs suggest that she is actually very excited about what's been going on, despite her casual tone over the phone. It doesn't sound like a whole lot, but subtle moments like these are effective and heart-warming all the less. It demonstrates a great deal of talent and effort on the animators' part, and makes the case for why the quiet often rings louder than the dramatic. You don't need crying and arguing and death and angst to make us care for the characters-- you only need to show that they are human beings like us. As idealised as New Game's characters are, they feel more human than the vast majority of anime characters today, even if they may all be lacking a wee bit in the brain cell department. New Game has ample amounts of cuteness and sexiness, if that is your sorta thing. Occasionally there will be moments such as Aoba changing clothes in the bathroom, but rather than zoom in on butts and boobies to the point of blindness, it will focus on more tasteful (and less creepy) areas like the neck and the legs. The fanservice does not ever reach the point of feeling desperate, so I think, maybe, you can watch it without feeling too bad about yourself? Aoba is also, without a doubt in my mind, one of the cutest anime ladies my eyeballs have witnessed. Her adorable smile fills me with joy and sunshine. If it weren't for miss Yazawa Nico, well... As I've gotten older and more experienced with anime, I've started to ask myself what it is I truly look for in an anime. There are some absolutely beautiful stories out there, and there are also fun little shows like New Game which provide a laugh and a smile after a long day. There are many anime fans who swear themselves to one or the other, or battle, much as I did, over which is more meaningful. I think the answer I've come to is a bit simpler: we need both in our lives. Nay. I should rephrase that: I just need Aoba in my life.

HaXXspetten

The CGDCT (cute girls doing cute things) genre is something most people should be quite familiar with by now. It has been one of the most time-tested and consistently successful types of anime in recent years, very rarely leading to disappointment. In particular the most popular ones tend to be those adapted from series published in some edition of Manga Time Kirara, and once again this trend has been upheld with New Game. In fact this anime isn’t just very good by CGDCT standards, but it’s possibly the best slice of life anime I’ve seen in the last year. First and foremost, what really separates NewGame from most series of its genre is that it takes place in adult society. Specifically it takes place at a fictional video game company called Eagle Jump, where 18-year-old Suzukaze Aoba seeks employment as a character designer after having just graduated high school. The show follows Aoba and her senior coworkers in their daily lives at the office where they’re currently working on the third installment of one of Aoba’s favorite childhood games. Of course seeing as this is a CGDCT anime, naturally all the employees at the company just so happen to be female. Does that seem a bit overly convenient somehow? Maybe, but who cares. New Game never tries to be an accurate representation of what working in the multimedia industry is like. If that’s what you’re looking for, go watch Shirobako instead. New Game is simply about a group of lovable characters interacting with each other in a somewhat unusual setting in order to keep things a bit refreshing, and it accomplishes that goal almost flawlessly. Aoba is extremely cute and fun to watch with her bubbly and enthusiastic personality. She’s perfect in the protagonist role for a show of this nature as she’s naturally able to generate amusing interaction between the girls, even if she’s not the one doing the talking all the time. In other words she helps the other characters shine as well, and it really shows. As far as the other girls go, there’s Aoba’s mentor Yagami Kou, who acts somewhat boy-ish a lot of the time, sleeping half-naked in the office instead of going home after work and always poking fun at others whenever possible. Then there’s her counterpart: the art director Tooyama Rin, who is a very sweet and caring person who also has a rather blatant crush on Kou. We also have the quiet girl Takimoto Hifumi who always feels uncomfortable talking face-to-face with other people, but instead is surprisingly talkative in chats, spamming emojis whenever possible, as well as a couple other girls. All-in-all, it’s a pretty diverse but wholly enjoyable character cast who pretty much never fail to entertain. Another thing that tends to happen almost unavoidably with shows like this is subtle yuri shipping between its characters, and New Game is no exception. The most obvious example is, as briefly mentioned earlier, the relationship between Kou and Rin. While they’re supposed to be best friends who joined the company at basically the same time, the way they act around each other always seems to suggest something... more. Especially Rin always gets incredibly jealous and/or upset at little things that make it pretty clear that she isn’t looking at Kou the same way as she does the other girls. The show also provides quite a few scenes with a rather lovey dovey atmosphere just for the two of them. There are also a few other potential couplings with how Hifumi and especially Nene tend to act around Aoba for example, but these reactions feel a lot more friendly than romantic in comparison. Something that definitely surprised me with New Game though was the unexpected amount of fanservice it has. I’m not talking about the typical moe-type fanservice you’re used to in CGDCT shows, but rather the ecchi type. These girls actually aren’t afraid to show some skin on camera. However, while I’m usually against the idea of throwing in ecchi scenes in anime where it doesn’t feel like it belongs, in New Game’s case it actually only makes the show even better, because this is honestly some of the best usage of ecchi I’ve seen in a long time. First of all it’s not very explicit (most of the time), but most importantly it actually feels natural. You never get to see a service shot when it doesn’t make sense. It’s only going one step further than they normally do in CGDCT anime by actually putting the camera inside the shower or the dressing room etcetera instead of outside it. So it never interrupts the story progression or feels forced, it just provides some eye candy along the way, and it does so without devaluating the characters at all. It doesn’t make them appear like sluts or cheap cash-ins, all it does is show off the fact that these girls are actually quite attractive physically speaking on top of being likable in person. That’s never a bad thing. Also, though this is more of a personal matter, I’m pretty sick of seeing so many physics-defying watermelon boobs flying everywhere in your average ecchi anime, so getting to see some skin on girls that actually look like normal people is actually pretty refreshing. That’s a bit of a sad realization when you think about it but oh well. Speaking of which, another factor that makes the fanservice scenes so enjoyable to watch is how good the art is. Doga Kobo has in my mind always been one of the absolute best studios at drawing cute girls, as they’ve shown in the past with shows like Yuru Yuri, Mikakunin de Shinkoukei, Plastic Memories and Himouto, and they’ve done a great job with New Game as well. Their art always looks so clean and shiny, truly emphasizing both the cute and sexy sides of all the characters at the same time. On top of that we also get easily the catchiest OP of the season and the only one from Summer I never skipped once, so there’s an overwhelming amount of good points for this anime all-in-all. It’s hard for me to label a CGDCT show as a masterpiece given the simplistic concepts of the genre, but New Game comes close enough. Or at least there really isn’t a whole lot left to ask for from an anime of its kind. It has a fairly original setting, an overall great character cast, fantastic art, catchy music, and some surprisingly impressive usage of fanservice. I guess you could argue that it isn’t very realistic and provides a rather skewed image of what working in the video game industry is like, but honestly I can’t think of that as valid criticism because the anime was never about that at all, nor should there have been any reason to believe it would be given the manga’s origins. So ultimately I can only give this anime a full recommendation for fans of slice of life, comedy and/or moe... and who knows, maybe even ecchi. PS: That ass shot of Kou in episode 6 is still one of the greatest things I’ve ever seen, holy- O///O