Victreebong Some minor character spoilers occur, but no actual plot spoilers.There's been a strange transition for anime in the last 10 years. Gone are the gritty movies that showcase violence, sex, philosophy, and push the envelope for standard movie conventions. Instead, series are now being pumped out an alarming rate that attempt to do these things at once, but never truly do.No Game, No Life as a whole exemplifies this trend, magnified threefold. Not only does it not quite hit the hardcore market, it winks and nods at every turn to these fabled classic creations, and then makes it's own parodies about them. A meta of a meta, almost too meta for anyone to take seriously. Instead, we're left with a masterfully vibrant and colorful vehicle, completely saturated with fan service that may appeal to the 14-year old demographic, but quickly looses anybody who's past puberty.The ensemble in this series is a cast of over characterized buxom women, constantly swooning around a single (virgin) male protagonist, making obnoxious anime facial gestures, and seemingly defying both gravity and genetics with skinny well endowed bodies that loose articles of clothing for almost no reason. Ironically, not a single nipple or pubic hair is shown in this series, despite just how much time is spent looking at panties under skirts and making drawn out jokes about breasts. A trope that is now beating the horse that was beating the horse to death. You'll see all the skin and shiny bosoms in the world, completely naked men and women, but without actual nudity anywhere. What's the most irritating part is just how much plot IS actually there, as well as the amount of time spent on explaining real-life math theory, physics, chemistry and even vocabulary in this series, through some drawn out exposition usually by the protagonists.The two main protagonists in this series are a pair of nihilist (and possibly incestuous...) siblings Sora and Shiro, whose sole mission in life is to play games to the point of exhaustion and then explain to everyone around themselves how superior they are for knowing the inner workings of the formulas involved in said games. (Where they get the money to pay for rent is never made clear, but hey this is anime we don't need details!) For example, the 9 possible outcomes and random ratios involved in a two-person game of Rock, Paper, Scissors. This is fine the first time or two, but when it eats up an entire 22 minute episode and the same stunned look is on the opponents' faces every time, it gets dull. Like watching Goku continuously and inevitably beat every opponent he ever comes across, there's no potential for defeat, and therefor no REAL risk. AKA, boring.The other members of the cast are a spectrum of female anime tropes who we've all seen over and over and over again; submissive, skinny, sexualized big-eyed nymphos seemingly destined to hover around a lucky know-it-all virgin male who spends all his time playing games. They may be pretty to look at, they may be fun to watch interact, but ultimately it's done. For example, an omnipotent angel-God woman in this series has a Library of Congress size volume of encyclopedia at her disposal, but doesn't know where the erogenous zones are for humans that have the EXACT same body parts in the exact same areas she does... What? Or, what an Ipad is... It's really just an excuse for fan service.The back story in this series isn't clear until midway through, 16 types of humanoid tribes are fighting for ownership of a region based upon 10 laws played out into real-time games, all of which are governed over by an androgynous child being known as Tet. Violating these rules forfeits the battle with the violator losing, unless you aren't caught cheating. This is a theme the lead antagonist uses through-out the series, finding loopholes into situations where the rest of the denizens have no concept of what math is.For all it's flaws and tried tropes, this series does break ground on something I've yet to see, just how freaking vibrant, colorful, and eloquently drawn a series can possibly be! This is a step in the right direction for series anime; this series is the sharpest I've ever seen. Gorgeous is a gross understatement. Every facet of every object has an infinite color gradient, with pinks, greens, violets, blues engorging every single frame. It is jaw dropping saturated with color, and the animation doesn't miss a beat. Having this series on mute playing in the background is just as impressive as listening to it's expositions. Sentai, MADBOX, and all the other firms associated with this franchise clearly brought out the big guns for this franchise. The animation is worth the rent alone.But for all it's colors, and interesting anecdotal information, No Game, No Life just doesn't quite do what it sets out to do. If you're going to show naked women experimenting, show naked women. If you're going to put heroes into vulnerable life threatening situations, have some consequences! If you're going to have virgin men surrounded by overtly sexual concubines... You get what I'm saying. Quit beating around the bush, and actually push the envelope you're attempting to push. I have a feeling that the creators avoided too much detailed sexuality and nudity due to Shiro being an 11 year old girl, but the fact that she's completely naked in the series several times, they show gratuitous pantie shots of her, and the other characters interact with her in alarmingly uncomfortable instances totally voids this caution.TL;DR, worth the rent for it's animation, probably not worth the cost ownership for the Blu-ray.

swanmj How can anybody, in the right mind, consider this to be any good? The two main characters, Sora and Shiro, parade Steph around like she is their dehumanized slave. They treat all of the other female main characters like trash. In one episode, they dress Steph like a dog and make her "dog for a day"; if anyone was to do this in real-life, he/she would be condemned as a sadomasochist - or worse! Considering that this anime is plagued with panty-shots, pornographic and perverted bath-tub scenes with the hentai-type tentacle thing that molests the girls while they are bathing (this is shown in a couple of the episodes), and the moe catgirl-type characters in the final battle with the Eastern Federation, I just did not see anything of redeeming value. There is no memorable or likable humor whatsoever in this schlock-fest of an anime. Only fanservice for fanboys to fap to. The only thing that I found even remotely interesting about this anime was that, in one of the episodes, they did a brief parody of "Castle in the Sky" when one of the protagonists made a reference about Laputa. Everything else was just pornographic, fan-service garbage suitable only for a complete loser. Please do yourself a favor and AVOID THIS ANIME LIKE THE PLAGUE!

Tweekums Eighteen year old Sora and his eleven year old step sister Shiro are hikikomori, total recluses, in the real world but when they play on line games together they are the unbeatable team known only as 'Blank'. They spend all their time on line until one day, after winning a game of chess, they find themselves drawn into the online world of Disboard. Here they learn that everything is decided by a game where the loser can't back out of any forfeit agreed beforehand and to be caught cheating means instant defeat. Sora is determined to win until he has defeated everybody there despite the fact that he and Sora are part of Imanity; the weakest of the races of Disworld. If they are to achieve their ultimate aim they will first need to rise to the top of Imanity then figure out how to turn the games so that it is possible for them to beat the stronger races such as the Elves and Warbeasts.There have been a few series recently where people get caught in an online world; this one is somewhat different though; here only two people are brought into the game and rather than trying to find a way out they relish the idea! At first I thought the fact that Blank never seemed to lose would prove to be disappointing but as the series progressed it became clear that the fun was seeing how they would turn apparent defeat into a real victory. Sora was a somewhat obnoxious protagonist but he wasn't too unlikeable and Shiro and the other characters who were drawn into their quest were fun to watch. The animation is pretty good and its slightly unusual colour palette gives Disworld a distinctive look which I rather liked. Overall I liked this series far more than I expected and hope there is more to follow; the final scene certainly left a possibility of a further series open.These comments are based on watching the series in Japanese with English subtitles.

Miloschouten No game, No life has a rather weird description but It's really worth watching and has a huge potential! The story is about two siblings who are hardcore gamers and are known as the Blank players. Legend says that they have never been beaten in ANY game, Chess, Online football, online MMO, shooters nothing. One day they receive a mysterious email about If they ever felt that the world they lived in wasn't where they belonged. The siblings agreed and suddenly teleported into a new world where the God stated that their be no War no Violence and no theft and that everything had to be solved with a game, their are a total of 16 races and Humans are known to be the least powerful up till now perhaps? No game no Life is a comedy/action/adventure/intellectual anime. The drawing style is very modern and looks rather well, similar to SAO or perhaps strike blood. The storyline is to early to say but I have to admit that I have never loved characters of an anime so quickly and that I was laughing on the floor most of the episodes I watched I truly recommend trying it out yourself!