Gods’ Game We Play (Season One) – Kami wa Game ni Ueteiru.
It can be boring being a god, so they decided to grant some humans a special ability that would allow them to compete in a series of games. If anyone wins ten games, the gods will grant their wish. Lose three, and it’s all over!
Gods’ Game We Play (Season One) – Kami wa Game ni Ueteiru.
What did you watch?
When I selected Gods’ Game We Play as one of my shows from the Spring 2024 lineup, I was fooled into thinking it was a high school battle series due to the uniforms the two characters on the poster were wearing. In reality, this is much closer to No Game No Life, but does close cut it when we’re comparing something to one of the all-time greats? Well, let’s find out!
What happened?
When a group of explorers found a woman encased in a glacier, they were shocked to discover that she was still alive and had been there for several thousand years. Even more shocking, she was the dragon god, Leoleshea who had been playing hide and seek when the sea froze over her. Now considered a former god, Leoleshea demanded that the world’s best gamer be brought to her to play games with her. As crazy as this might sound, the gods’ games are a serious thing in this world. Random humans are granted mysterious abilities known as an Arise. That gives them the opportunity to play games against the gods in the hopes of winning ten games and having their wish granted. The gods, however, are just looking to have a little fun. Eternity can be a long time!
Leoleshea is introduced to Fay, an apostle who is widely regarded as the greatest rookie. Together they will play the Gods’ Games and when they win ten games, Leoleshea will wish to become a god once more whereas Fay just wants to find the woman who taught him how to play games. Their first Gods’ Game together is against the undefeatable Ouroborous and they appear to have gained a new player to their team in the form of Pearl Diamond who has the ability to teleport people or objects. Amazingly, they win the game and make quite an impression on the viewing public. Unfortunately, this had the unwanted consequence of locking up all the games for the next month as people attempted to replicate Fay and Leoleshea’s stunning victory. In order to keep going, Fay, Leoleshea, and Pearl go on a world tour where they hope to defeat more gods and maybe find some new players for their team.
What did you think?
After four episodes, I really wasn’t sure about this series. Given the idea that many have of giving a show three episodes to catch their attention or they walk away, this would have resulted in me dropping it. However, I’m too stubborn to drop shows and this series proved exactly why I do that. I watched the remaining nine episodes in one sitting. It was not as good as No Game No Life. It wasn’t even close, but it was actually incredibly entertaining and I think I know what happened for me to change my opinions so suddenly. You can expect details of what that was if you keep reading.
What was your favourite moment?
This series was at its best when it was playing simple games that I knew about and could follow along with. It’s the same concept as a mystery story. The audience needs to be able to solve the mystery along with the characters. If they can’t then it loses a lot of its impact. The first half of the season had some bizarre abstract games that the audience had no hope of working out how they figured it out, whereas the second half gave the audience a chance to play along and at the very least, work out what the characters were doing.
One game that really got the ball rolling was the Sunsteal Scramble. Each of the players in the game was given a flower. Most were irrelevant, but two had special abilities. The idea was to get one of these flowers to the altar protected by the god Mahtma II and his army of cat creatures. There was a lot of trickery and sleight of hand, but it was all something that could be followed and predicted as it happened. That suddenly made the series incredibly engaging as I felt that I was in on the mystery. It made me like the characters better and from that point on, I was all in. The series grabbed me in the seventh episode, which in my opinion, is far too late for a series to do that. Like I said earlier, lots of people will not give a series that many episodes.
What was your least favourite moment?
So, in contrast to my favourite moment, my least favourite moment was the first Gods’ Game against Ouroboros. The game was too abstract and had a number of hidden rules that I had no way of understanding how the characters worked them out. It left me feeling like I wasn’t involved in the show and that’s what was pushing me away. If you compare it to the first game in No Game No Life which was Rock, Paper, Scissors it’s not hard to see why one pulled you in instantly, while the other pushed you away. It’s like when the mystery is solved in a way that the audience couldn’t have possibly seen. We call that an ass-pull in the business. Don’t do that!
Who was your favourite character?
This was very much a team-focused story although you could argue that Fay was the pivotal character. However, he wasn’t that exciting on his own, but as part of the team, he complemented things nicely. I can’t pick a favourite from Leoleshea, Pearl, or Nel. I even enjoyed it when Ouroboros crashed the final game and ended up joining the party for a short period of time. And then, there was Kerlich the partner of the self-proclaimed rival to Fay, Dark Gia Scimitar. Basically, this series is full of fun and quirky characters who do weird and wonderful things while playing games. It’s a lot of fun and they were all a big part of it.
Who was your least favourite character?
On the flip side from my favourite character, I can’t single out anyone as my least favourite. If pushed, I would say Dark Gia, but he grew on me too and even had a few good moments towards the end. Like I said, this series was a lot of fun and that was quite unexpected, especially after the first four or five episodes.
Would you like some more?
I actually would. This season ended with Fay, Leoleshea, Pearl, and Nel all having four wins after they defeated Grimoire to get Nel back in the game and then beat Luceimia in the never-ending labyrinth. That was a great way to end the season and with the characters that it had set up, I’d be happy to see them get to the ten wins needed to earn their wishes. Like I said, it was fun and I’m more than happy to watch more fun shows.
What have you learned?
The biggest takeaway from this series is how much of a difference it made when I could follow the games that were being played. Now, I’m sure there are people who don’t know how to play Poker or Old Maid, but using conventional games makes it infinitely more likely than coming up with abstract games that can’t be fully explored in an episode or two. The idea of a story is to pull the audience in. You want to engage them and relate to them. If you don’t you stand the very real chance that they will walk away. There’s only so much time and so many stories available that you really can’t afford to give people the chance to walk away. Grab them and hold on until you reach the end. Even then, if you’ve done it right, they’ll still want to hang around.
Series Information
| English Title | Gods’ Game We Play |
| Japanese Title | Kami wa Game ni Ueteiru. |
| Genres | Ecchi, Fantasy, Game, Suspense |
Anime
| Season | Season One |
| Released | Spring 2024 |
| Animation Studios | LIDENFILMS |
| Episodes | 13 |
Speaking of “when will it get interesting”, I think I would feel the same while watching “I Parry Everything” which I’ve gotten myself to read others’ less spoilery reviews so that I know what to expect in the later episodes. Majority have mixed feelings, but they’re implying the series is mediocre at best if one mustn’t be nitpicky in how its storytelling elements goes along the way.
As for mystery writing elements, it’s definitely not fun when it just pull the rug beneath you all of a sudden and without any hints thrown at you. Probably how I try my best to remind myself and remember that lesson whenever I write my ongoing series.
I have “I Parry Everything” on my watch list so it’ll be interesting to see if I experience a similar thing. Like I said, it’s rare for me to drop anything so we should find out. I do think it’s better to grab the audience’s attention early though. You could get away with it in the past, but there’s just so many more options that if you can’t get them from the beginning you’ll lose them.
And yeah, that’s one of the most annoying things when they do something that you couldn’t possibly have seen or known. That’s why I hate it when a show deliberately hides what someone is looking at or only shows someone whispering but you can’t hear what they’re saying. Better not to tease something that we aren’t going to see until after the solution has been revealed.
I didn’t go past the first episode — sounds like I missed out! Glad you suffered through!
Stubbornness for the win! It was worth it, but they definitely didn’t make it easy to begin with…