English Dub Season Review: New Game Season Two

Get ready for earplugs.

For those that don’t know, New Game is a slice-of-life anime series that revolves around a gaming company called Eagle Jump. This season, the focus has been more on the team that is Eagle Jump and less of a focus on Aoba which was the majority of what the show’s first season. Similar to the first season, New Game S2 sees the team focusing on the development and completion of a game only this time around we get the added weight of launching a new intellectual property.

New Game Season Two also shed the “rookie” motif assigned to Aoba in favor of a character designer who is working her way up in a reputable company under the tutelage of Ko, creator of the successful Fairies Stories franchise, whom we eventually find out is leaving the company.  We see some political strife during Aoba’s rise to prominence but in the end, Ko makes amends for it before she takes off. By the end, Aoba also establishes a bit of a rivalry with another talented designer in Momiji who joins the company as an intern but is eventually given a full-time job.

With Aoba taking some of the focus off, we got to spend a bunch more time with the programming team that includes Aoba’s long-time friend Nene and Momiji’s roommate and fellow intern Tsubame. Like most of the series, the two act like rivals, but as we get closer to the end we learn that their’s is probably a lot friendlier’ than what’s going on in the art department.

As per usual, these feel-good stories see the “new game”, Peco, release pretty much on schedule and to much success even with the departure of Ko.

Our Take

By far and away, New Game Season One was a lot better than the show’s second season. With Aoba’s journey into full-time employment, we really got to grow with the lead character. This season, New Game had no problem giving us episodes that literally are about nothing. There’s a lot of complaining and whining in this show with Aoba’s voice (played by Megan Shipman) being by far the most cringe-inducing of the bunch. The worst part is, it’s not even a show that complains about what real millennials have to complain about when they enter a new job in this industry, like roommates, rent, shitty bosses….no. These kids argue over who gets credit for what, where they are going to go for lunch or dinner, and a bunch of other silliness. Not until the final third part of the season did the series really start introducing elements that were kind of interesting, like Ko’s departure and Tsubame being bad at her job, but even the latter didn’t give us a LOT of time to pile on her and was instead revolved in a matter of minutes. We didn’t feel any pain, no one’s job was really in jeopardy, and as such a lot of the episodes were just standard fare which is a great way to describe New Game.