English Dub Season Review: New Game! Season One

It’s not every day you see a series and think, “Been There”. But anyone, regardless of gender, who has worked in a small office environment, more specifically in the information technology/ software or animation production industries can take a look at New Game! and see an accurate reflection of real life.

New Game! is a slice-of-life animated comedy series that follows a high school graduate by the name of Suzukaze Aoba (voiced by Megan Shipman). An aspiring character designer that joins game production company Eagle Jump just as the company is beginning work on the third chapter of their hit game Fairies Story. As it turns out, this franchise is the reason why Aoba wants to work in the video game industry, to begin with, however, she soon has to acclimate herself to not so familiar surroundings.

We follow Aoba as she traverses to a lot of the similar traits that go along with working in a company just like this that a lot of us can relate to. From the first day and getting used to carrying around your ID badge, going out with coworkers for drinks and still having to get up the next morning, and of course, meeting deadlines.

As for co-workers, you see the obligatory archetypes that come with every job such as this. You’ve got the seasoned veterans like Ko (voiced by Michelle Rojas) and Rin (voiced by Kristen McGuire) who were part of the earlier games in the franchise and act as role models to Aoba and her co-workers all of whom are about a year in or less. Hajime (voiced by Tia Ballard) is your classic workout enthusiast that also acts as a motion producer. Hifume (voiced by Jill Harris) and Yun (voiced by Leah Clark) are also fellow graphic designers, and for the most part, everyone is friendly with each other.

I think that the real stars of the show are in fact the pets of the series. Already, we’ve spent time with two cats, most notably the rotund chubby cat named Mozuku owned by Hazuki (voiced by Carli Mosier), the department head that assembled this team of girls and may or may not be trying to pick up on each and every one of them. The other pet of note is a hedgehog named Sojiro that belongs to Hifume most notably because Sojiro is Hifume’s only real friend and even helps in making some decisions when it comes to the demure girl’s conflicts.

The animation and art direction for the series is pretty good, nothing too out of the ordinary for the series that features a palette definitely geared towards a particular fan base. However, there is an interesting dichotomy to be had as you note the character sprites being created for the game opposite the more traditional 2D hand-drawn style. Most of our setting is in the offices of Eagle Jump, so don’t expect any crazy shit to pop up anytime soon, unless if you count Mozuku.

That said, the show is pretty good, if not terrifyingly accurate of working in an office environment though it’s fascinating to see the focal point of an industry largely male dominated as told through the lens of an all-female team.

At first, the early parts of the series are kind of aggravating to discern because a lot of your instructions and setup is still in Japanese with no translation but as time goes on you start to figure things out in terms of organizational structure and the show settles in quite nicely. The rest of the season deals with temp employees and moves on into the hand-off of the game from the art department to coding and testing with us finally seeing the game come to completion and how the producers move on to the next project. Really, New Game is about another day at work, but what about if your work was awesome?