JVAnimeReviews

Positive

*First thing that I liked in NG was the character design and with that the overall color palet that the studio used. NG was supposed to be a lighthearted, fun anime and the studio emphasized that perfectly with the bright colors that it used throughout the entire anime. It’s such a simple but effective thing to do, you can make an anime that much more fun by using the right colors. And that fun character also radiated in the character design. Here in particular I liked the eyes of the characters. There was a certain sparkle to them that gave the characters a more lively look. The eye design reminded me of the characters from Mayoiga even those are animated by a different studio being Diomedea in stead of Dogakobo. But then I went and looked at some pictures from Plastic Memories, another anime from Dogakobo. Great anime btw, definitely watch it if you’re into romance-drama. And also there I noticed that sparkle in the eyes of the characters so that’s something that Dogakobo has mastered.

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*Then NG was supposed to be lighthearted comedy and it became exactly that. The comedy was simple but effective. No deep meanings or difficult interactions but straight and simpel comedy which was what I expected from NG. Although I must say that the comedy sometimes was a bit weird. Not that I’m complaining but there were some moments where I had to rewind the episode to see if I got that right.

*And a final thing that also greatly impacted the comedy were the yuri innuendos between Yagami and Rin because they were quite strong at times, especially in the final episodes. But again here not that I’m complaining, the innuendos made some pretty good comical moments and were part of NG’s good comedy.

Negative

*A first thing or better person that I found deserved more attention and development was Hifumi. The anime stays quite on the surface when it comes to her development. She does become a little bit less shy over the course of NG but still I thought that things like her love for cosplay would have been displayed more so that, with the help of Aoba, she could have opened up more.

*Another thing was that this anime did focus on the development of a game but we get to see very little of it mostly for two reasons being: 1) Aoba only gets into the team very late in the development phase so we never get to see how the foundations for the game were laid out. And 2) every character except for 2 work in the character design departement. So we do get to see how these characters get designed but other elements of the game like programming, script writing, voice acting never get shown. So despite NG giving us an insight in the game’s development, it’s only in a small niche from the bigger structure that lies behind set game.

*And a final negative point was that although I liked the character design and the overall colors of the anime, there were some times when the animation showed signs of “budget shortage”. I especially noticed this when there were a lot of people in one shot. Our main characters, who were on the foreground would be animated as normal. But I noticed that the characters on the background would be completely still, they were not animated at all but simply drawn into place. So probably that was to save budget but it was something that was very noticeable.

Conclusion

So as a conclusion, NG became what I expected it to become. It was an overall simple but therefor not less entertaining anime, and I like having one or two of those in my schedule. So for this fun and entertainment I’m going to rate New Game! at 3,5 stars. This is a lighthearted anime that you should give a try if you’re into simple comedy anime’s.