The core premise of Tomodachi Game is not awful: five friends find themselves playing a high-stakes game in order to pay off the debt of someone in the group. For a high stakes game anime the premise is pretty basic but could make for some interesting character backstories and theorization about their true intentions.

The execution of this premise, however, leaves much to be desired. The editing in the show is filled with over-dramatic cuts and edits to emphasize each character's devious face, conniving personality etc. rather than just letting their actions speak for themselves. This in particular is a major pitfall of the show. Namely, the show spoon-feeds emotions and information to the audience to the point some scenes become redundant. For instance, the show contains administration figures that provide commentary on the game and the players and ultimately serve a dual role by making them a stand in for the audience. In certain contexts that can be a helpful story-telling tool to provide more clarity on situations that are a bit vague or confusing. However, there are instances where they will spend several minutes discussing a unambiguous event that we just witnessed or an event that has already been given sufficient exposition. In cases such as these it just comes off as either 1) padding out the material or 2) the author does not trust the audience to make their own inferences and therefore must spell it out for them.

In another lazy attempt at adapting the manga to an anime format, the show will at times splatter text on-screen that provides details on the game rules or background information on newly introduced characters. In a manga format this type of long-text is fine since the reader can review the information at their own pace. However, in this anime adaptation this text will flash for about one second before transitioning to the next scene, leaving the viewer little to no time to review that information unless they go out of their way to pause the episode. Rather than trying to come up with a creative way to breakdown large swathes of text (ie character exposition, anime-only scenes) the show is lazy and just seems to copy and paste whole manga panels without regard as to whether this works in an anime format. It’s not even like these long batches of text are always needed. For instance, in some of the games Manabu will verbally discuss the rules that were previously quickly flashed on screen. This makes you wonder, if you’re just going to have one of the characters verbally review the rules anyways, what’s the point of adding the large swathes of text? This is one of the many bizarre manga to anime adaptation choices that were made for this show.

Spoilers ahead
tw: sexual assault

If there are any positives, it was that I was never really bored when watching Tomodachi Game. There’s some intrigue there in terms of the character backstories and their intentions and the origination of the game. In addition, while certainly not intended by the creators of the show, the edgy editing and cuts made for an unintentionally hilarious watch. If it was just these issues then I would recommend the show if you’re in the mood for an ironic watch. However, it is not just bad editing and storytelling that makes this show abysmal but also its mishandling of sexual assault. It is revealed in the show that Kokorogi, due to frequent bullying and subsequently needing to pay people to be friends with her, would date older men in exchange for money. This eventually leads to her having to pose for suggestive photos and almost being sexually assaulted. These types of storylines need to be handled delicately to avoid coming off as exploitative. Unsurprisingly, the show does not handle her character well. Leading up to her attempted assault the camera leers at Kokorogi’s body despite this being a horrific scene. A similar situation happens in the last episode of the series in which a group of guys cut open Kokorogi’s shirt to have her breasts nearly exposed. Her breasts remain exposed for most of this scene with little purpose other than to showcase how devious the villains in the scene are. I will give the show some credit that it doesn’t seem to use this scene for titilation, however, it seems to rely on violating Kokorogi for the sake of shock value. With this in mind, Tomodachi Game is no longer just a ridiculous high stakes gaming anime but one that attempts and fails to responsibly handle sensitive topics.

Entertaining for mostly the wrong reasons, Tomodachi Game leaves little room for any sort of recommendation.