ReviewBonfire

Darwin's Game

As everyone knows, every anime season has its misfits who wouldn't even be loved by their mothers. And Darwin's Game has proven a lot of things with the first 3 episodes, especially how low you can fall and have no idea what you're doing. But I wouldn't call this anime bad, even though the first episodes were just a disaster. Darwin's Game, despite everything, has a relatively average plot, a somewhat detailed game concept, and especially a protagonist which is more rational than you would think.

To my surprise, this grit went from being a bad show to a weak show, and in the end, even a slightly below-average show. It is rare to see how a bad series gets better bit by bit. In the beginning, I could hardly imagine watching this garbage to the end and wishing there would be no sequel. Ironically, in the end, I even thought "well, it wasn't that bad, they could make a second season".

What you have to keep in mind, especially with Darwin's Game, is that it is an extremely amateur work. Not only the scenery, but especially the flow of the plot is immensely weak, forced, and without any real build-up. Not to mention my favorite, the disastrously bad dialogue, and character reactions. One could almost think that the author was trying to do something "better". That he was inspired by too many but didn't know what to do with the inspiration. You can see it, especially in the protagonist, who is a typical Weak to Strong character. With a great variation he can be very rational and in the later course destroys many clichés. It's as if one tried desperately to create a protagonist who is "different" from the others. It partially worked, but what was the price?

[Story 3]

Darwin's Game is a Survival-Concept that has been only partially explained so far and still has a lot of unexplained logic in store. This game forces everyone who used its app to participate and fight against others. A point system or simple survival decides the winner and death. The idea is simple and nothing worth mentioning. The only good thing here is the power system, which was explained relatively subtly after all. All Stigma users can control their new "superpowers" as if it were normal for them, like breathing and walking. This creates a certain balance between all participants and no one has to adapt to their abilities.

Of course, our "protagonist" is once again special for various inexplicable reasons and has a very interesting ability, besides his infinite plot armor. I'm still puzzled how everyone in the series dies from strong attacks but the protagonist himself takes wall-level attacks without broken ribs or shredded organs. In shounen this is normal, but here everyone should be "human" except for their abilities.

[Characters 3]

The protagonist has been the only blessing here. In the beginning, he is a naive fool who acts like a bit of a brat but turns out to be a very nice person. Armed with some of the dumbest dialogue and monologues in human history, he struggles through the game hoping to survive.
Even though it feels like his character spontaneously changed 2-3x in the anime, at least he had been given different character traits. And to my surprise, he was relatively rational. That a protagonist brings so many actions that are actually understandable or even "good" is rare.
But that was also the only thing worth mentioning.

Shuka is a boring content-less yandere whose entire personality is just sad. Even her background was incorporated into the plot as if it were a bad joke.

The others aren't even worth mentioning as they barely have personalities nor are they greatly relevant except for the hacker kid.
The two siblings are the definition of cringe and have NO reason to exist. They contributed nothing to the plot and were merely dead weight.

The antagonist of season 1, Wang was at least relatively decent. While he was the typical Darkforce villain with no motivations or depth, this did give him a certain level of menace. Especially his final action against the protagonist and his ending were relatively interesting.

[Animations 5/ Music 5]

Regarding the music, there is nothing to say, it is average. The intro, outro, and osts offer nothing worth mentioning.

The animations are also pure average with no dynamics and very spongy fights. Only episode 9 had a fight scene where 500% of the budget was used.

[Conclusion 4]

Darwin's Game is an anime that could hardly have gotten a worse start. Combine it with its relatively average storyline and poor dialogue. However, the anime still managed to stand its ground with a reasonably decent concept and some interesting choices. If it hadn't gotten better from episode 6 on, I don't know what positive I could say.

[Enjoyment 5]