Darwin’s Game First Impressions

“Make a family with me.”

Killing game series are a tricky prospect. Much like with isekai, the genre tends to come with much of the premise prepackaged. What’s that? You’re in another world with one notable gimmick in place? Well, you know what to do. What’s that? You find yourself in a bizarre competition where you need to kill other humans? Well, you know what to do. In order for such a title to work, it needs to be capable of distinguishing itself either through the mechanics and intricacies of the core game or through interesting characters and world building. Darwin’s Game has a few interesting ideas at its core, but frankly it doesn’t succeed in elevating its otherwise basic premise and production quality. Ultimately, if I were to try and summarize Darwin’s Game as briefly as possible, I’d say it’s not unlike if the journals from Mirai Nikki had microtransactions. On one hand, the idea of a microtransaction type of mechanic in a killing game is a fun, if not entirely unprecedented, concept, but at the end of the day, you’re still watching Mirai Nikki.

The show follows a high schooler named Sudo Kaname who finds himself invited to join a free to play mobile game by a classmate. Unbeknownst to him, the game, Darwin’s Game, is a life or death game which his classmate had been involved in. I use “had,” because the episode starts off with said classmate getting murdered by a panda mascot for a baseball team. It’s that type of show. Subtlety is for series like Danganronpa and Btooom! (Comparatively speaking, of course). This series doesn’t have the time to gradually build up to the crazies. I may be holding this show’s shortcomings against it more than I normally would on account of its double-length first episode. I was at the ten-minute mark when I noticed I was watching an extra long premiere, and I audibly groaned at the realization. It takes the first half of the episode for Sudo to actually beat the panda mascot, and it isn’t until the last third of the episode that he starts getting an explanation of the basic mechanics that the world operates by. Of course, even then, only the mildest details are provided over the course of 45 minutes. Edgy and slow is not a great combination, and, aside from the premise, there is little else present that can boost this show. The production certainly isn’t up to the task.

Nexus is the production studio behind Darwin’s Game, and between this title and last year’s Grandbelm, I get the feeling that they’re starting to bite off more than they can chew. They were also the studio behind Chivalry of a Failed Knight, and this is only the fifth series they’ve produced. Yet they’re trying to animate this series with much more flare than they’re capable of delivering upon. There are plenty of dynamic camera movements and flashy abilities, but they come across like the dollar store version of something you’d see in Demon Slayer or Hero Aca.  It only serves to highlight the show’s limitations rather than immerse the viewer in the action. The character models are also pretty lackluster and are often inconsistent. The locations of the eyes and mouths of characters shift from one shot to the next, and the spacing of the eyes never looks quite right. Most of the characters, especially when viewed from a distance, seem as if they have a large empty area in the middle of their face with their eyes and mouth crowded towards the edges of their head. As for the characters themselves, it’s hard to get a sense of Sudo’s personality. From moment to moment, he can be cocky, lazy, headstrong, cowardly or aggressive. To put it bluntly, he’s inconsistent as hell. The only other character of note would be our female lead, Karino Shuka, but she might be even worse. She somehow goes from playful, violent sociopath to lying naked on Sudo and asking him for a family over the course of this episode, and I have no idea how that happened.

Before I wrap up, a few Notes and Nitpicks:

• The opening plays at the end of the episode, but it frankly goes in one ear and out the other, and the visuals are just as forgettable.
• I swear, if this show had ended at the midway point, it would have gotten away with a very middling rating from me.
• This show features a gang leader who looks like an elf and pickles human fingers so that he can have his followers drink from the container. I think that speaks for itself.
• For all its attempts at edge, the show is rather toothless. The bloodier moments are notably censored, which just feels odd given the central concept.
• I was a little surprised to learn that this anime isn’t based on a mobile game, but a manga by FLIPFLOP. I’d been aware of this previously, but it’s amazing the information you can learn AND forget over the course of preparing for a new anime season coming out.