English Dub Season Review: Tomodachi Game Season One

Overview:

Yuichi and his friends are deceived into meeting up and knocked unconscious by unknown assailants. After waking, the group finds themselves confined in a white room with controversial figure Manabu-kun, who reveals that one of the five has gathered them together to clear their personal debt of twenty million yen. To pay off the amount, they must participate in a variety of psychological games that will test the true nature of their friendship and humanity.

Our Take:

I’ll be honest I had a lot of fun with this one. But to be fair I do love survival games and unhinged characters. If it gives you an idea I really love Future Diary and Yuno Gasai is one of my favorite characters. Unfortunately, there are no yanderes here (at least not yet) but Yuichi is one of the more interesting protagonists I have experienced in this genre. Mainly because I can’t figure him out. He acts like he doesn’t care about his friends yet consistently goes out of his way to help them, even if it doesn’t seem like it.

The characters are both the best and worst parts of this anime. Why they’re the worst is because we hardly learn anything about them. Even Yuichi, the protagonist, I had lots of questions about him that were never quite answered. There was a little bit of everything in this anime for everyone I think but if you love characters outsmarting everyone and big reveals at the end of an arc you’re going to love it.

The voice actors for this one were great. Dani Chambers got to use more of her vocal range which I am learning is way more than I thought. Caitlin Glass in a fairly leading role is always a treat but there is one voice actor that carried this show. That is David Matranga who played Yuichi. The range of emotions he brought was fantastic and his vocal work is part of what also kept me guessing about Yuichi’s intentions. Even the times he “lost” I was left wondering if this was really it because of how convincing the performance was. I was also really impressed with Josh Bangle as Tenji. Tenji’s character seemed fairly villainous at first but no one is what they seem in Tomodachi Game.

I only have one problem with this anime and sadly it is a fairly big issue. Endings are really important to me and even if the source material goes beyond where the anime ends you can make an ending satisfying. That is not what happens here, instead, it kind of just ends as all the bigger plot threads are getting woven together. I really enjoyed this anime and I hope that it gets a second season but for now, I have to grade it on the assumption that it won’t get one. It was still a lot of fun and I definitely recommend it but it would have had a higher score if the ending was even a little bit more satisfying.