King's Game

This anime series is notorious. It came out in 2017 & has become quickly regarded as one of the worst series of all time. To be honest, I have to hope or reason to believe that this will be any good. I’m seeing like 20 red flags here that are telling me this is going to be atrocious. I really hope I’ll at least get something out of this & that it isn’t a complete waste of time. There will be spoilers in this review, but really, it won’t matter that much, because I don’t want any of you readers to actually watch the series in the first place

Story: 1/10

The story is about the titular game & the class of a random school getting caught up in it. They have to compete with each other to survive the game. But oh god is this story terrible. For starters, how the Kings Game came into existence is never explained in detail. We’re told that it happened at a small village 30 years ago. But how the Kings Game came into existence isn’t explained, or explored. What also never gets brought up is why the Kings Game happens in the first place. We’re told that the Kings Game is a virus near the end of the series, but that doesn’t explain how one catches the Kings Game, how it was created, or how it selects the victims that appear in the Kings Game.

But that’s the least of the problems with this story, how about the narrative structure & story-boarding? The “narrative structure” (if you can even call it that) in Kings Game is held together with glue, popsicle sticks, & scotch tape. The structure doesn’t have any flow to the narrative, events just happen with little fanfare or build up. Once they’re over, that’s it, it’s time to move onto the next scenes. The story-boarding is also atrocious, much like the narrative structure, the story-boarding has no flow, taking a note from Girls & Panzer, Kings Game just flip flops between locations, rarely easing the viewer into where the next shot is going to take place. It just cuts to the location abruptly & expects you to immediately be aware of what’s going on & what’s supposed to be taking place. Speaking of “abrupt”, that word sums up the editing in this series perfectly.

The end of this series is just stupid, So the only way to end the King’s Game is to kill everybody who’s competing in the current King’s Game, that’s fine. But the way this happens is once the characters make it to the abandoned house in the forest in episode 12, a chainsaw is just randomly thrown into the frame, they never explain how it got there, or why it was there in the first place. The series of events that conspire go as such. Riona picks up the chainsaw, slashes Natsuko in the spine, which should paralyze here but it doesn’t. After having a chat with Mamoru Miyano, Natsuko, defying any source of logic, gets back up, & swings the chainsaw into Mamoru Miyano’s neck as if nothing had happened to her. She and Miyano then die simultaneously (killing off the worst & best character respectively). One abrupt, lazy cut later, Riona drags Miyano to a beach where she then proceeds to kiss him, then drag him into the ocean so that she may presumably drown (it cuts to the ED exactly as this happens). If that wasn’t stupid enough, after the ED, we cut to a different guy who has never appeared in the series until now, he gets a message that the Kings Game is on, cut to a splash screen that says “more coming in Season 2”. Which, I hope never happens, I really don’t wanna sit through another 12 episodes of another stupid story. So, the point of the series was trying to stop the Kings Game from happening for future generations. At least I think it was, Mamoru Miyano is constantly trying to get everyone to work together rather than against each other to stop it. When you take that into consideration, this “tease” at a Season 2 that I hope never happens, makes the whole story fucking worthless. 12 episodes & barely, if anything was resolved in this story.

Characters: 1/10

Kings Game’s characters are awful. They don’t have any interesting personality traits or memorability. Aside from 3 of them, Nobuaki because he’s the main character voiced by Mamoru Miyano (more on the voice acting later. Daisuke because he wants to create music when he grows up, & Teruaki because he wants to be a barber when he grows up. But because this anime is horrible, & it’s a death game series, these 2 are killed off before any substantial development could’ve taken place, not that this series had the decency to develop its main character anyway. The rest of the characters are only there because the plot demands it. They have no interesting character bits, personality, or any of that. Nobuaki is the team player, Natsuko is the Psychopath, & Riona is the main girl for the 2nd half of the series. The rest of the characters are completely lacking in personality & only exist because the plot wouldn’t exist without them. Also to have terrible death scenes that lose all their impact, but more on those later. Oh, & before I forget. Kings Game is a series that tries to take itself somewhat seriously, so of course there’s going to be some trite character drama because it wouldn’t be an awful anime series if there wasn’t underwritten characters facing dramatic situations that leave no impact because the characters are underwritten & you couldn’t possibly root for them to come out on top.

Art: 1/10

If forever reason you were thinking “maybe the art will redeem this series” let me lay your hope to rest, this is some of the worst art I’ve seen out of a series from the 2010s. The backgrounds are flat & only comprise of 4 colors for a light scene (case by case), & 1 color for a dark scene. Green, Blue, Gray, & Brown for the light scenes. Pitch black for the dark scenes. There’s no variety to these color palettes at all.

The directing in this series is also really bad. Most of the camera work comprises of nothing but completely static shots with nothing but mouth movements that are so out of synch to the point where it’s even more distracting than usual, or no movement at all. Occasionally you’ll get a camera pan in the same shot, but it’s infrequent & nothing to write home about at all. Combine this directing with the lack of flow in Kings Game’s narrative structure & story-boarding, & you’ve got yourself an all around lazy directing effort.

Something that also needs mentioning is how many no faces you’ll see throughout this anime. Seriously, it’d ridiculous, basically every other frame has a no-face in it. I get that animators in Japan don’t have a fair working environment, but did the QC team seriously not catch any of these?

In case you thought the animation would at least be decent, it’s not. The animation is lazy, often comprising of 2 frame cycles looped to nauseam. The more “action packed scenes” (and that’s being generous) have no sense of fluidity to them at all. They’re just as stiff & jank as the walking & running in this series is. It wouldn’t be a shitty anime if there wasn’t terrible, out of place CGI in it right? Don’t worry, because Kings Game has you covered on that front. The bad CGI character models are one thing, but the vehicles look like they belong in an early 90s CG project, & the landscapes wouldn’t even pass as PS2 quality landscapes. In spite of the awful story & characters, I think the art might be the worst aspect about this series. Even the worst anime have at least something going on visually. Rather it be Dark Cat’s putridness, Sword For Truth’s lazy action sequences, Mad Bull 34 in general. Kings Game has NOTHING to its visuals. It’s just an all around bland effort that looks like “standard bad 2010s anime visuals”.

The death scenes are also stupid. Kings Game tries to take itself somewhat seriously as a story. But the deaths are always portrayed in such an over the top way that you either laugh at how horrible they are, or have their impact stripped from them. There’s one scene where some bitch jumps out of a window because she was nominated as the next victim to get punished by the king. She jumps out the window, goes flying in the air, then falls back down, (just a still image being dragged with no animation on the hair, or cloths) & then becomes completely disfigured after hitting the concrete. I could also mention the numerous amounts of spontaneous combustion where the characters & their limbs just explode for no reason. I could mention a scene in which a characters neck 720’s into the air, goes flying & his head turns into a geyser of black blood. Oh yeah, the blood in this anime is even screwed up, how do you screw up blood? Blood is one color, red. Rather you make it bright red or a darker shade of red, as long as it looks red, you’ve done your job at drawing blood. For some reason, the blood in this anime looks black. It is a shade of red to be fair, but because of the lighting & general color design of the anime, the blood looks black. HOW?

Sound: 1/10

By this point, you shouldn’t be surprised that the sound in Kings Game is awful. The voice acting, dear god what happened here? It’s not like Kings Game has bad voice actors either. Mamoru Miyano (Okabe from Stiens;Gate). Yui Horie (Tsubasa Hanekawa from Monogatari) to name a few. Most of the voice actors are either amatures or don’t have too many roles notable to me, but that’s not an inherently bad thing. Too bad Kings Game is an example of this being a bad thing though. In fairness to the voice actors, I don’t blame them for their performances here. They clearly had a terrible voice director, because these voice actors don’t seem to be remotely trying, any voice director worth their salt would at least try to sprinkle some personality & emotion into the delivery. But then I also have to remember, this is Kings Game, even if the voice actors did a good job, & the voice direction was even halfway decent. It wouldn’t matter anyway due to the awful story, & poorly written characters. So their efforts would’ve gone to waste regardless. I feel sorry for all the voice actors & actresses who had to work on this failed abortion of a series.

Then there’s the sound design. I don’t know who did the sound design but they’re even worse at their job than the voice director was at their job. The sound effects are so quiet & leave such little oomph as to leave 0 impact. Punches, kicks, footsteps, doors, windows shattering, chainsaws, none of it sounds good or leads any level of impact because it connects with such puny force as to make me question if an action even took place or not. But speaking of connection, there’s seemingly a delay to the sound effects. I swear I could see punches connect numerous times, yet the sound didn’t play until a second later. This is just lazy, if the sound effect isn’t timed to react the second something makes contact, or a notable action takes place, than the effort is in vain, & the impact isn’t felt at all. Top that off with the issue of the sound design being quiet & not leaving impact from earlier, it only further adds to King’s Game sound design being bad & failing to leave an impact. As much as I love to shit on Girls & Panzer for all its aspects, it at least got sound design right. I at least felt some impact when the tank would fire, or the impact of a tank getting blasted. If I can real quickly mention the music in this, it’s practically non-existent. I heard some music throughout, but it was usually too quiet, or too atmospheric. I usually wouldn’t mention an OP in my reviews, but I have to bring mention to the OP in King’s Game. This has to be some of the worst mixing I’ve ever heard for an OP. The audio quality is atrocious, & I can barely hear what the singer is saying due to the mixing. Also, OPs are supposed to make the show look better than they actually are in motion. This OP of course, doesn’t. The OP seldom, if ever rises above the animation quality of the TV series.

Overall: 1/10

I can’t say I’m surprised that Kings Game ended up being this atrocious. I kinda figured this show was going to be really bad going into it, & low & behold, here I am informing all of you on how bad it is. The story is a bunch of bullshit, the characters are lacking & suffer from 0-personality syndrome. They also suffer from “We only exist to the serve the plot syndrome”. The art is atrocious, flat, & unimaginative. The lighting is awful. The coloring is terrible. The voice actors aren’t trying, along with the voice director. The sound design is awful & doesn’t leave any impact, & the OP has some of the worst sound mixing I’ve ever heard out of not just an OP. But a song. My final score for Kings Game is, do I even have to say it? A 1/10. Please do yourselves a favor & don’t watch this. If you absolutely HAVE to see any piece of Kings Game. Just look at the death scenes on youtube. You might think they’re so over the top & poorly done as to think they’re funny. For me though, all the death scenes served ws further boredom to the overall experience that was watching King’s Game