Anime: New Game!

Note: This review only applies to the first season of New Game!

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Review
Take a moment to visualize our reality in the videogame industry. You don't have to go far, just look at some movies to pick somewhere to start from. You know what to see, right? No, wait. Look at a student list of an university offering computer science bachelor then. Oh, you could seek some artists too, those people drawing wicked RPG porn, comic books, and so on. Yeah. See that? See? ...no? In that case let me enlighten you.

The videogame game industry is dominated by men. In fact, the technology department is overwhelmed by nerdy guys smelling unwashed pants, wasting hours and hours programming or making those sexy Overwatch porn. When they get home they play some Call of Duty, Battlefield, Dragon Quest, or some never-heard-of MMO that is surprisingly hitting millions of users. It's a terrible setting. Yeah. I know it. I've worked on it. I am in it still. This is an industry built upon dreams and creativity yet it is smashed by profits and insane demands. It's a mixture of good and bad, yeah.

This alternate world, however, is reversed. EagleJump is a game company which made an RPG that entranced the young Suzukaze Aoba so much she applied to work there as her first job. The newcomer is greeted by her new co-workers in a cheerful and colorful environment. Yes, they are all cute girls, young, sparkling, gleaming. Yup.

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1. Huh... what?
   This is New Game!, a show about a game company where all employees are young women behaving most of the time as high-schoolers and at rare moments as the responsible adults everyone in Japan needs to be. Ridiculous, right? Definitely. This is a show you could hate just by looking at it. This concept is bound to give you shame, to make you feel weird while watching it. Damn.
   
   Yet...
   New Game! may look stupidly silly. Well, it can BE stupidly silly. Yet there is a lot going on here. This isn't exactly the smart comedy of your daily work such as Servant x Service, but it got its clever references and critiques, such as the one mentioned at the start of this review. This is a moe-moe work about your office job in a tech company, about working conditions, sometimes an attempt to push it towards the viewers and at others a harsh depiction of how ridiculous one's work can get.
   
   It starts as a dream
   I can fit Suzukaze's shoes at some degree. She joins an industry she loves and she dreams of being able of creating her own game and have a life of fun and earning money just as it happens. Yet, the reality kicks in your butt. Before you can think of it, the deadlines are piling, the company threatens to lay off employees to save money, some big-shot buys half the company and sells it, you need to work on weekends, you need to stick around throughout the night. Damn sick workaholic system we live in.
   
   A propaganda?
   At first I was extremely annoyed about how superficial New Game! sold Aoba's work. Her first day was ok. But then... gods, sleeping at the office? Damn. That's the japanese way of telling you your life is fated to be a pile of sh*t. In fact, the show slowly gets to give away that these things are NOT nice. Aoba ends up not having any time at all to hang out with her friends, her life is consumed by her job and even though she likes it and hopes she will achieve her dream, she is simply deceived by her aspirations. There's a lot to argue about how society handles the necessity of a job here, especially in Japan, where people are more common to commit suicide due to overwork than almost anywhere else in the developed world.
   
   New Game! can work in two ways. You either buy the love-dovey tale of working hard and earning your place in society or you laugh in the face of the ridiculous situations and torture that working is, especially when everyone in a male-dominated real industry is a cutie-girl with moe behavior and take every situation of pressure with a few giggles and blushing. I found it funny. Damn, it's like depicting a slaughterhouse as a rainbow farm where pinky piglets and lovable fluffy cows have funny conversations while they are being chopped and killed. Yeah.
   
   It's slice-of-life
   As many other 4koma, New Game! is completely absent of anything else besides daily work. In a way, considering Aoba and her coworkers condition, it becomes clear that her life simply ended after high school and she now is a devoted servant of a system that simply took away whatever she had of her own time. It gets intriguing when you match a show like these with some high-school shounen sports where the third years are all about "wanting to experience their _last_summer with their friends". God damn. It is indeed their last summer. Fuck*n last summer they will ever truly experience because, after that, they must devote their petty lives to a company hoping their contribution to society will someday give them fulfillment.
   
   It's cute
   You know. This is a bunch of lolis, which happens to be eighteen or twenty-something years old. They are damn cute, they overwhelm the screen, and they may satisfy most of the horny needs of the fans. Unlike other ecchis such as Eromanga Sensei though, there is a lack of perverted scenes to make use of the loli's cuteness. Aoba's boss does sleep with her pantsu showing, but very little sexual content is offered otherwise. Oh, and of course this is a sh*tfest of screeching voices capable of destroying your hearing, especially when there is someone named Nenechin in that. Yeah. Her voice is the worst.
   

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Comments
I am truly confused now. I wanted to hate this show. God damn, look at these lolis, the screeching speech. Look at how all unicorns and rainbows it looks like working on a company that demands you to sleep on a damn sleeping bag at the office. Those girls making happy hour looks like a high-school meeting. Yeah. I hate that. I truly do.

However, all this bullsh*t can be quite a heavy reverse showing about a system that is ridiculous as it is. A system that enslaves people into a dream of working and getting your share although all it does is removing your life from you. When you see from that perspective, New Game! can not only be funny, but hilarious. It offers many realities to a office job, yet the way it glorifies things with sparkles and pink colors can only work as a comical interpretation of a grim and tedious fate. As much as I see the show this way though, it seems most other people only see this as propaganda... is my view of the world that much different from everyone else?

Anyway. It's a funny show if you want your time filled with cute girls, but that's it.

A few seasons back I watched a rather subpar show about a group of high schoolers making a game. So I guess someone decided it was about time to do another such show, but utilizing pros this time. What results is propaganda so ridiculously fake that you might as well be convincing someone that cheesecake is in fact ice cream cake. New Game! depicts the not-so-realistic game studio Eagle Jump, which apparently has a reverse-discriminatory hiring practice as not a single guy shows up in the entire show. It follows recent high school graduate Aoba as she learns about office life from her sempai. It feels very much along the same vein as shows such as Working! and Sore ga Seiyuu! Know that despite the 4-koma tag, these episodes are actually full length.

If you want to laugh at a show as it attempts to sell you on the fun of staying up all night doing work, dig in. Likewise, those who enjoyed girls' club shows such as K-On, Tari Tari, or the like may also enjoy this. If you're like me and tired of the same moe format being applied to every conceivable setting, then you'll probably want to skip this one.

Animation:
The animation is standard fare moe material, most of which takes place in a relatively bright and happy office. Expect pretty good detailing in the studio, the narrow building entrance and certain details definitely feel fitting based on my time in Tokyo. I mentioned Shokomeza earlier, and honestly, despite the characters here being supposedly older these characters act and behave even more childish. There you have it, a show with middle-school aged characters working in a supposedly professional gaming studio. The animation highlights of this show for me include the cute yet obviously uninterested hedgehog Sojiro and Hifumi's true smile - about as moe as you can get, ok fine they got me on that one.

Sound:
The show opens with a playful song by the VAs that somehow reminds me of Working!, and no it's not because of the exclamation point. The ED is a likewise cheerful piece though it isn't as catchy, and the first part is pretty low in pitch (sounds like it's out of the comfort zone for some of the VAs). The BGM is mostly unobtrusive though also rather fittingly upbeat.

Aoba and her cubicle mates are all voiced by relatively junior VAs. Their performance is fine though Megumi Yamaguchi stands out more because of her character than her performance. However, the managerial level is full of veterans including Eri Kitamura, Ai Kayano, and Youko Hikasa; the latter two deliver very strong performances. Overall, expect a very light and cute sound package throughout.

Story:
The show follows Aoba as she learns how to design and create 3D models for a game, which happens to be a sequel to the game that she first fell in love with as a child. The plot is pretty simple and follows the company as the workers seek to master up. In addition to getting us closer to the looming deadline, each episode has a particular focus, be it Aoba's first nomikai (drinking party), or her first paycheck. It's trivially easy to figure out what the episode is going to be about, just check the episode title. The show builds to a natural and predictable climax and resolution. There is a tiny bit of tension right at the climax but really, this isn't a particularly exciting show. Overall, I got a handful of laughs along the way, but honestly speaking this is not a show that you'll want to chain.

Character:
If all you need from a show are cute girls interacting, then this is pure bliss. If you're more interested in dynamic characters reacting to changing situations or romance, then this is probably going to be a waste of your time. My main complaint here is, again, how immature everyone acts. I get that things are typically overstated in anime, but seriously, these characters are in the wrong setting; the management are more like babysitters than company leaders. That said the character chemistry isn't bad. Aoba is an inexperienced but hard-working newbie. Hajime is your brash, playful otaku who spends all her money on figurines. Yun is your Kansai-accented, goth loli who is uber-sensitive about having flabby arms. And Hifumi is, ironically, a shy, secret cosplayer. They really put thought into giving the characters a bit of depth and not spamming the viewer with a ton of supporting characters, both points that are greatly appreciated. The show really could do without Nene though, maybe I'm still recovering from Flora from Asterisk but loud, childishly-whiny kids really rub me the wrong way.

Value:
Honestly, this is a fair watch but probably the first show of the year that I will forget; there's just nothing significant that happens. On top of that, the plot isn't particularly exciting and the setting is even more far removed from the reality of the workplace than the Working! series. I really have no idea how this is considered seinin but regardless, there are other shows that are much more worthy of your time.

This incredibly boring piece of propaganda, try to take a light-hearted look at the abysmal work conditions in the gaming (and very sadly, anime) industry. Overworked, exhausted employees trying to meet unrealistic deadlines driven by external and gross constraints, mostly commercial ones, without an ounce of regard for technical complexity. That's the real-word reality. But hey, with a little anime magic, let's try to say just the exact opposite : it's fun and cuteness at every corner.
And boy, does this one try to put a happy an smily face on it. Working so hard that you fuel on energy drink and sleep 2 hours under your desk : well, hello that's the perfect setting for a panty shot... ?!
Don't know a thing about programming ? well, your manager will let you teach yourself autodesk m... (as if !!) at your own pace... and disturb everyone by asking basic questions about it in the process.

Characters are dull and predictable, there's almost no story in it, main character is trying too hard to please and relive her childhood memories of early gaming to see what a freakish hell she is condemning herself to live in.

And being an exclusively female workforce, we are served with girly tropes and giggles, ad nauseam.

This is gross, unrealistic, boring as hell, not even funny, and serve no purpose whatsoever. Stay very clear of this terrible, terrible, poor excuse of an anime.