No Game No Life

Despite reading this series before I even discovered this site existed, and watching the anime way before I even read manga or manhuas or manwhas, I never get tired of this series. To those who’s this is their first time experiencing NGNL, you’re in for a wild ride of plotting and mind games and fan service. There’s a reason you always see people begging for season 2 of the anime. This series is a classic from a somewhat lost era of anime culture where series didn’t get canceled on Facebook and Twitter for fan service and shows like “to love Ru” and “Highschool DxD” could go ham with fan service.

Out of isekai animes, this one is definitely top tier if not the best in many people’s lists. This time it’s basically “that time I got reincarnated into… (shuffles deck and draws random card) a world where everything is solved by games!” As violence is completely not allowed by the rules of the world, same as physics or chemistry in ours, the only way to solve conflicts is through games, be it from black jack or chess to dating simulators or mecha fights, with countries borders or even citizen’s free will at stake. With 12 races, humanity (or should I say imanity) has always been at a disadvantage when trying to play games against races of elves with complex magic, or Ex machina who are supercomputer hiveminds capable of solving problems that would take our earth decades to solve with all our computers combined, to beast men who’s senses are so sharp they practically read your mind, to Flügel that are beings with enough magic power to wipe cities off the map with a single spell.

Now with our two brother and sister neets from another world, they’ve been summoned by god and must defeat practically superhuman beings with brain power alone where the odds are always against them. Every single fight these two participate in always makes my brain explode from the sheer amount of neurons and iq being used that still leaves me grasping for more.

Alongside how intense and complex even simple games such as rock, paper, scissors and coin tosses become, Kamiya’s art style is absolutely beautiful and iconic with how rainbow and intense colors are, especially prevalent in the anime, movie, and LN illustrations. The animation is absolutely mind boggling in the anime as well as movie. With how much brain power he spends crafting his mind battles, there’s no surprise that his story telling and world building are equal in finesse.

While we are at first thrown into this world, “Disboard”, where everything is ruled by games and the single god Tet, we get the backstory and lore of the entire world(this is covered in LN book 7 and the movie: No Game No Life Sero) and how this game world came into being after these twelve races fought a multi-century long war destroying the planet to try to make their god the one true god, where simply walking outside could kill a human in seconds and cities are completely demolished between the feuds of other beings without even knowing humans had lived there, yet somehow still humanity survived.

I apologize for gushing so much about this series, honestly my longest rant yet here, but if you asked me what my favorite series is, no game no life is a top contender despite how indecisive I can be with that question after being immersed in anime for so many years. It really encapsulates that nostalgic era of anime that I miss from 2010 shows, alongside my personal enjoyment of intense mind games where you almost feel your own iq rising and then suddenly dropping when the fan service kicks in. While this is an amazing series like monogatari where you can’t recommend it to watch with family or people who aren’t used to “anime culture” and fan service, for any weeblets or more even more experienced weebs, this series is absolutely 100% worth your time as a personally recommendation from me, and thousands others who’ve seen no game no life and are begging for season 2, and afterwards you will too.