Liar, Liar

Liar, Liar is a “Psychological”-Game, Harem Light Novel by Kuou Haruki. It was adapted into a 12-episode anime by GEEKTOYS. A lackluster studio, whose only other anime I watched was Dead Mount Death Play.

Let us go into the nitty-gritty. If you saw this anime and thought, it would be a good substitute for No Game No Life or Classroom of the Elite. Well sorry to say, but this anime is straight trash~

Our generic-looking MC Shinohara Hiroto transfers to Academy Island. A huge school island that never explains what they teach. All you need to know is that everything is settled through games.

Each student is ranked from 1 to 7 stars, with their advanced phones they play VR competitive games. The MC lucks out and beats the strongest player by accident, in the process gains a unique star that allows him to forge his account from a 1 star to a 7 star. The principal helps him out cause idk. Now Shinohara must pretend to be “him”, but slowly becomes “him” as the story goes. Shinohara is not a horrible MC, just very generic and behaves like your typical anime virgin.

What is so bad about this anime? The games. The games are baaaad.
An anime about outsmarting their opponents in games and yet they suck?

All of the games feel made up or aren’t common enough for the average viewer to understand them. Some are creative but needlessly complex. A good chunk of an episode explains the rules of their made-up game. But it is all worthless as the rules are looser than Elinalise from Mushoko Tensei.

The abilities… one of the worst writing decisions I have ever seen. Each player can use up to 3 or more abilities in the games, depending on their rank the stronger the ability is. They can be whatever the fuck you want to create fake tension or Dues ex Machinas, such as:

• the ability to change the rules,
• an ability that reset someone’s win,
• an ability that allows you to waste 5 crucial turns of your opponent,
• an ability to switch players, so you later realize you won against the wrong person.

All of these abilities are random, and they appear when the story needs them to.

Imagine writing a game scenario where players A & B have a race. Player B goes through the finish line first, but Player A wins because of his ability that didn’t exist until I wrote it. The ability can be something like, whoever crosses the finish line first loses. Then I give you the illusion that the character was so smart when it’s just utter nonsense.

The anime further proves the games are all nonsense, by the fact that the main character actively cheats in his games. In one game that was Pokemon-inspired, the anime presented a final boss loli who had a -99lvl.
The rules? I don’t care, basically, she had to be in the positive values, so Shinohara calls up anime Lester to crack her account and set her level to 30. He then wins and people think he’s smart. Nobody questions how that was possible.

So when the games suck, the anime becomes BORING.

Everything else? Side characters suck, the animation is below average, the sound design is questionable, music is fairly good. I cannot speak for the light novel, since it is abundantly clear that this adaptation was rushed and an overall mess.