That was pathetic.
Impressions:
I can’t say I’m surprised, having thumbed briefly through the source manga and seeing that it was page after page of people sitting it rooms, talking at each other, but the promos had wacky magical card summoning nonsense, so I was curious if perhaps they might be swerving off in a more action oriented direction. Clearly not though. This episode was dull, tedious, and full of all the plot holes. Sure, half of humanity died overnight, but why would society or infrastructure be affected? Also, not a single body anywhere in the world, except for the couple friends corpses so we can react with shock and show how serious it is. I also like how there’s a random gun just dropped in the middle of the street. And that’s not even getting into the whole middle of the episode spent explaining and then re-explaining the death game premise. This isn’t a hook. This is standard. Get to anything.
There’s basically nothing to recommend this. The most interesting part is probably the very strange OP that looks like it belongs to a Saturday morning children’s show about kids using trading cards or collectable gachapon to fight. It’s incredibly pathetic, yet has the entire cast grinning like they just faceplanted into an entire pallet of ecstasy despite the show itself being deadpan melodrama. Half-assed melodrama at that. Everybody standing around, explaining how super serious, awful things are happening or about to happen, somewhere just off-screen, but it’s really important, guys. Even the one dude picking up a literally random gun off the street to go literally randomly crazy is just kicked in the back about ten seconds after doing anything with it, thus resolving that ‘crisis.’ It’s about five years too late for the death game fad, and even compared to the corniest of them, it’s weak on all fronts.
