No Game No Life is an anime by the studio Madhouse famous for works such as “Hunter x Hunter” and “One Punch Man”. It’s about two NEET (Not in Education, Employment, or Training) siblings named Sora and Shiro (A.K.A. 『　』or Blank) who are the best game players in the world. It doesn’t matter which game it is, they’re probably great at it. The show starts by them getting thrown into another world that basically runs on playing games after beating a computer in chess. In that new world they immediately crush their opponents just as successfully as they did in their world.

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▶ Video From the main duo we have Sora, who understands a person’s psychology better than that person does themself. He’s the one that does all the manipulating of the other characters. This is where I have a problem with him. I hold a distaste for anime 4D chess players because the majority of them feel like incredibly unrealistic pseudo-intellectuals. And Sora is no exception, every time he has a match with someone in the show he is instantly able to understand whatever emotions they might be feeling and what their thought process is. I have no idea how he is able to do this, even if he spent every minute of his life from the morning he was born studying others, he still wouldn’t be able to instantly understand everything about a person just from a quick glance. That isn't smart, that's just witchcraft. Also for some reason the creators gave Sora an “arrogant and prideful” personality even though that sort of contrasts with the whole NEET thing. You’d think that a NEET would be depressed or irritable, but instead Sora acts just like how a regular person would.

On the other hand we have Shiro, the human computer. She does all the calculating in the duo and happens to be a genius at it, better than anyone in human history. And she’s even more unrealistic than Sora because she’s an 11 year old. I’m not saying child prodigies don’t exist, but this is just ridiculous. Apart from her whole brocon thing she really doesn’t have many other important character traits. I don’t know why they made her 11 even though she doesn’t act or think like an 11 year old would, they could have just as easily made her a high school student and that would have fit her character better. She’s pretty clearly just a loli who “loves her onii-chan” for those guys out there that are into that kind of stuff.

There are also some other characters besides those two, but they’re all pretty much irrelevant or useless. Like Steph shows that she has the knowledge to run a country, but that’s completely useless when you’re in a world that’s run on games. Something which Steph notoriously sucks at unless aided by someone else. And Jibril is supposed to be super smart for her race, but ends up just being a jobber for the entire show after she’s beaten by Mr. and Mrs. Sue.

Now I’m going to tell you why Sora and Shiro don’t work as characters. When you’re writing a smart character you want to give them some realism because when you don’t, you get characters like these who are practically indistinguishable from omniscient gods. They don’t actually look in as smart as they're made out to be and if anything seem ironically less intelligent. It also doesn't help that they have no flaws. I guess the "can't be in a public place without breaking down" trait could be a flaw, but it's not like that actually affects them or the story, so I don't think it counts. And this is especially clear when we get into the games and how they’re played.

(This next part is going to be taken directly from a forum post I made a few days ago)

In high stakes gambling shows like NGNL (even though there really are no stakes), usually the creators would have their characters put into a situation where they’d have to find a way to beat the odds through realistic means while playing within the rules of their show, which is where NGNL fails. When Sora and Shiro play chess you'd think that they’d study their opponents playing style, strategize, and find/exploit weak points like in a regular chess game, right? Instead they decide to make a speech to the chess pieces to encourage them and boost their ability. This writing is in no way smart and seems to come out of nowhere. And it wouldn't be a problem if it were only 1 time, but it happens all the time throughout the entire show! Like during the coin flip at the end of the season, Sora got the coin to land on its side by moving a tile on the road backwards. How did he know the tile would be loose and what would he have done if it wasn’t? In fact, why didn’t the miko lady just ask Sora to flip the dang coin again in a different spot? I'll tell you why, because the writers tried to make Sora and Shiro seem smarter than they really are. I think I've said that to the point where it's redundant.

The animation isn't anything special either. Take for example the fight between Shiro and that wolf girl. Breaking it down we get: panning shot, rotating camera, and shaky camera over bright gun fire in that order. They animate it in a way that creates the illusion of good animation when there's barely any. But it didn't look good, it just looked awkward and distracted me from the actual battle. A large portion of the "animation" in NGNL is just slow pans across the screen with minimal detail. And it get's worse once you realize this show is made by people who are capable of making good animation.

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TL;DR: No Game No Life fails because the writing is lazy and the animation is subpar.