Another season of anime is upon us, and you know what that means. SPY X FAMILY is going nuts and delivering upon the hype. Well, yes. But I’m talking about another truth of seasonal anime. There will be a death game premise anime, and it will be horribly edgy and unengaging for the audience. This time around Kinky and I are watching Tomodachi Game. Five friends are mysteriously kidnapped and put into a series of games where they must work together to reduce their debt. The catch? Only one person actually had debt to begin with, so who caused these friends to enter this game in the first place? Does it matter or will the friends merely work together to split the debt and then reduce it? Now so far this isn’t a true death game anime in terms of people not dying, but it absolutely has that edgy feel. Let’s dive into that.

Some people think that covering a dark topic like murder or failed relationships makes something edgy but I have to disagree. To me, true edginess emerges from the darkness when writers spend more time highlighting the “evil” of someone or something than they do working to make that character or event compelling. For example, I think a character who will always drop his ice cream on purpose and then smile and say “I GuESS thaTS whY I’m SO STuPiD, I AlWays LoSE whAT I LovE haHHAHAHAH” is WAY more edgier than an actual murderer who says shit like “My little brother died because of malpractice, so I kill doctors every year on his anniversary”. The second character is committing a much darker action than the first, but because he has a backstory and reason to do it, it somehow feels less edgy than the ice cream guy. And here’s the problem. Writers LOVE the ice cream guy in death game anime.

I'd show you the EVIL person but that'd be spoilers so here's someone else going psycho.

Right now in Tomodachi Game we’re losing interest fast as fuck because one of the characters is already becoming an ice cream guy. The point of death game/money game anime is you should WANT at least some if not all of the characters to succeed. Otherwise it’s not going to be very suspenseful. However, *minor spoilers ahead* it’s pretty hard to give a shit about a guy who is revealed to be a manipulative stalker who is obsessed with one of the members of the “friend” group. To me in these games the writers can’t help but reveal that “wait a minute… this group of FRIENDS…aren’t actually good FRIENDS???” every damn time. I think this is a risky move because once it’s found out that this group of people aren’t really that close, you kinda just pick your favorite and don’t mind if the rest die. It’s like they can’t help but turn everything up to eleven in the story, even if it would be more realistic and probably more interesting if they actually WERE good friends. Let me illustrate one last example and then I’ll wrap it up.

So the first debt game involved the five players. Player 1 would read a question on a slip of paper that nobody else could see. The players can’t communicate outside of reading the question. Player 1 reads it and then the five players decide whether the answer is “Yes” or “No”. However, if even one player deviates from the majority, the minority answer will be recorded. The game starts and they get the first, very basic, question incorrect. Player 2 then reads a question and the group gets that wrong too. This continues until Player 4, the MC, reads the question. He notices on his slip of paper that it says “If you get the question wrong, YOUR debt will be reduced by half”. He then concludes that all slips of paper until this point had that message and that’s why everyone has been getting easy questions incorrect in order to reduce their own debt. However, if they just get a single question correct then everyone’s debt is reduced by a fair amount so he considers them traitors. Now at this point Kinky and I crafted a theory. Our theory was that Player 1, who the show made out to be kinda stupid, simply got a basic question wrong. His paper was blank outside of the question. Then Player 2 DID have the option to reduce their debt by getting shit wrong, and assumed that Player 1 did that on purpose. Player 3 then falsely assumes that Players 1 and 2 both had the option on their slip of paper, and then further assumes that ALL players will receive that option and thus everyone should intentionally work to make sure they get the questions wrong. Player 4, more focused on reducing everyone’s debt without worrying about mind games, then labels the previous players traitors and gets paranoid as per the script of the story. Boom. That was our theory at least. Now what actually happened? They didn’t reveal it and we just kinda skipped past it without finding out baby, BUT THEY DID REVEAL THERE IS A TRAITOR AMONG US WHO WANTS TO RUIN EVERYTHING AHHHHHHHHH BECAUSE THEY’RE SUCH A SICK FUUUUCKKKKK AHHHHHHH THE DARKNESS. And thus, our theory was thrown out the window. However, I would have much preferred our outcome because in that scenario everyone there is still being a friend and good person, it’s just that assumptions are fucking everything up due to Player 1’s honest mistake. You know, kinda like a mistake that happens in real life friend groups. Instead of every friend group having a psycho traitor among them.

Chill, I am a stupid virgin, but I think I'm onto something here.

Hopefully I was able to construe what I meant well enough to give a sense of what happened for those not watching or not familiar with death game anime tropes. TL;DR Death game/debt game anime love making characters edgy and over the top when I surmise they’d be much more interesting if they were grounded. That’s enough whining for one day though, sheesh. Are you watching Tomodachi Game? Do you watch these kinds of death game/debt game anime? Do these tropes annoy you, or are they there for a reason? Lie, cheat, steal, and fuck over your “friends” to make fat stacks in the comments below!