This Week in Anime
Do Game Mechanics Make or Break Anime?
by Christopher Farris & Monique Thomas,
Chris and Nicky discuss the gamification of anime narratives (and life in general) from Solo Leveling to BOFURI. What's the best way to integrate familiar game elements into a story (hint: it's not stat screens).
Solo Leveling, Sleepy Princess in The Demon Castle, BOFURI: I Don't Want to Get Hurt, so I'll Max Out My Defense., .hack//SIGN, My Love Story with Yamada-kun at level 999, and My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom! are streaming on Crunchyroll. Delicious in Dungeon is streaming on Netflix.
Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed by the participants in this chatlog are not the views of Anime News Network.
Spoiler Warning for discussion of the series ahead.
@Lossthief
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@BeeDubsProwl
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@NickyEnchilada
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Chris
Nicky, I come to you, a gamer, hoping for an answer to one of life's great mysteries:
Are status screens as cool as anime acts like they are?
Nicky, I come to you, a gamer, hoping for an answer to one of life's great mysteries:
Are status screens as cool as anime acts like they are?
Nicky
While anime acts like adding a stat sheet to a story is the bee's knees. It's not so fantastical. After all, the real world is already covered in screens. Every day, we're bombarded with notifications and numbers. Even if you think doing tasks is boring, smartphones and computer apps have made it possible to gamify almost every aspect of life. People make challenges to make them do all kinds of things like working out, doing chores, going to doctor's appointments, and even drinking enough water. Rather than exciting, consider it a way to create incentives and accountability. There's something gratifying about ticking off little boxes. Yet, I don't think it's an exciting way to tell a story.
While anime acts like adding a stat sheet to a story is the bee's knees. It's not so fantastical. After all, the real world is already covered in screens. Every day, we're bombarded with notifications and numbers. Even if you think doing tasks is boring, smartphones and computer apps have made it possible to gamify almost every aspect of life. People make challenges to make them do all kinds of things like working out, doing chores, going to doctor's appointments, and even drinking enough water. Rather than exciting, consider it a way to create incentives and accountability. There's something gratifying about ticking off little boxes. Yet, I don't think it's an exciting way to tell a story.
You wouldn't know that from how regularly these glowing, number-filled rectangles pop up. They've become a standby signifier of the ongoing overbooked genres of isekai and VRMMO in anime. And now it seems that sort of gamification has escaped containment, since a floating touch panel full of notifications and points to allocate is a central feature of Solo Leveling, one of this season's headliners. It's neither isekai nor VRMMO, but it is adjacent to those.
Solo Leveling is an urban fantasy bordering a reverse isekai. Instead of the real-world protagonists coming to a fantasy world or game, Solo Leveling has "the game" appear in our world. One day, portals started popping up like real-world Oblivion gates. Afterward, people discovered they had magic powers and started forming parties raiding dungeons for cash and loot as if it were a regular freelance job. Though, I'd love to know what OSHA thinks about this.
One caveat is that once you've awakened your power, your stats and ranking are set in stone. Talk about a job ceiling!
One caveat is that once you've awakened your power, your stats and ranking are set in stone. Talk about a job ceiling!
The show likes to harp on the factoid that rankings can't change, but that turns out to be more of a suggestion than a hard rule. The story reveals that "Second Awakenings" can happen in rare instances, and our lead, Sung Jinwoo, stumbles onto another way of boosting his stats via that screen.
Sloppy writing on Solo Leveling's part, but the idea still highlights some selling points of using video game mechanics to tell a non-interactive story. Hard-coded rules can create simple, easy-to-understand jumping-off points for viewers to follow!
Sloppy writing on Solo Leveling's part, but the idea still highlights some selling points of using video game mechanics to tell a non-interactive story. Hard-coded rules can create simple, easy-to-understand jumping-off points for viewers to follow!
Yet, it can also be restrictive! Leveling up, unlocking new skills, and earning rewards are exciting to experience as a player but less so as a viewer. I might as well go to YouTube and look up speedruns because it will take a lot more than "gaming" to add extra novelty to your story. Other times, it feels that referencing video games is the cheater's way out of building detailed and immersive settings. Video games are familiar and fairly standardized, so it's easier to handwave something the audience likely already knows.
I appreciate some of the care and attention Solo Leveling goes into setting itself up the way it does. Still, even that doesn't escape that much of the conceit of rewarding the audience for understanding the references and indulging the power fantasy of "winning". These are all problems that are common with many light novels and isekai. This shorthand approach to premises is something me and Nick heavily complained about in our latest isekai haul.
I appreciate some of the care and attention Solo Leveling goes into setting itself up the way it does. Still, even that doesn't escape that much of the conceit of rewarding the audience for understanding the references and indulging the power fantasy of "winning". These are all problems that are common with many light novels and isekai. This shorthand approach to premises is something me and Nick heavily complained about in our latest isekai haul.
I admit I can understand it as a shortcut in that genre. A lot of anime fans are also heavy gamers, so it makes sense to craft a situation they can self-insert into where those skills are what would lead to their success. But yeah, it can also get super-tedious in the worst cases. Solo Leveling stands out in that its video game mechanics are a "twist" that doesn't surface until a couple of episodes in.
Still, you'd think there'd have to be a less overt way to explain to gamers the concept of "regular exercise will increase your physical abilities."
Still, you'd think there'd have to be a less overt way to explain to gamers the concept of "regular exercise will increase your physical abilities."
Dude, get a pedometer or one of those smartwatches. It won't send a giant bug after you if you don't do exactly 10k steps. It's still not as terrifying as the Duolingo owl, though.
At least already having context for the Saitama Workout Routine means those sets would result in Jinwoo turning out totally OP.
Still, his stat build sucks! What's the point of endurance training if your HP pool stays low? The video game part might be an abstraction, but the series setting still affirms that these fixed numericals are the only thing that matters, not virtues like effort or discipline that anybody can achieve.
That's right, even if Jinwoo is the only one with a stat screen he can see, the whole of Solo Leveling is still very much couched in gamelike setups. This doesn't necessarily have to be a bad thing. Other series like Scott Pilgrim or Sleepy Princess in the Demon Castle also paid reference to game structure and iconography. Though Solo Leveling is more serious and reverent with its deployment, which could make selling it trickier.
Many VRMMO anime also deal with the technical aspects of games; the creative and silly approach to min-maxing hooked me on BOFURI: I Don't Want to Get Hurt, so I'll Max Out My Defense. As the title says,BOFURI is what happens when an average high school girl and newbie gamer, Maple, accidentally forges a game-breaking character build. After allocating all her stats into defense and becoming practically untouchable, she makes friends. She casually stumbles through high-level and hidden content, much to the frustration of the game's dev team.
BOFURI is a personal favorite of mine, and it's a great example of how the simplicity of using game mechanics as your driving story element doesn't have to be a hindrance. Maple and her single-minded stat approach are a character and gag that complement each other wonderfully. Plus, the series recognizes the "just a game" nature of its setting, which lends to a nice, easygoing atmosphere, eventually settling into what could be termed "VRMMO iyashikei."
While many games put emphasis on competition and winning or use gimmicks to raise the stakes, including the usual "die in the game, you die in real life," BOFURIkeeps the stakes low. It's not that there aren't exciting things happening, what with all the crazy bosses she stumbles into, but what makes Maple tolerable as an OP protagonist is that she doesn't give a lick about power or winning (unless it is fun). She approaches the game world with childlike curiosity and wonder. She is never toxic and is simply there to have fun and spend time with her friends in their big ole tree house.
It sells gameplaying as the entertainment value itself rather than a means to facilitating an overall story. It also plays with the game mechanics—I love that Maple's busted build could even come about because New World Online is shown to be a janky, poorly balanced new release. That's what can happen specifically because of a game setting!
It also means you can easily write your way out of your main character being too overpowered since you can just put out some patch notes nerfing her.
It also means you can easily write your way out of your main character being too overpowered since you can just put out some patch notes nerfing her.
That's what I tell myself whenever my favorite class/character gets nerfed. I'm sorry I was simply too powerful. They told me I had to wait five more seconds to turn those annoying Dark Knights into little imps even though there's no fix for tank cheeses in frontlines (FFXIV's large-scale PVP mode). This goes to show that balancing real games is incredibly difficult! The paperclips and rubberbands strung together by New World Online's overworked dev team are part of the joke. Still, part of why I find random video game elements lazy is the equal lack of consideration toward game design as well as the story.
Everything in video games is in service of the player, even the stuff we don't think about, like UI, the economy, and how enemies behave; they all exist to keep us pressing buttons. Games might present complex challenges, but honestly, they're designed to teach, reward, and help us succeed because the worst thing you can do to a video game is to quit playing.
Everything in video games is in service of the player, even the stuff we don't think about, like UI, the economy, and how enemies behave; they all exist to keep us pressing buttons. Games might present complex challenges, but honestly, they're designed to teach, reward, and help us succeed because the worst thing you can do to a video game is to quit playing.
That appreciation makes the game integration in BOFURI feel organic. Watching, you can believe the characters have fun just chilling together in this MMORPG world and interacting with it. Other shows like .hack//SIGN similarly depicted the hang-out-ability of the setting, even as broader, more serious plots played out simultaneously.
The anime where the prime fantasy is AFK-ing to Yuki Kajira's excellent OST. The social aspect of games only adds to their appeal as a setting. As we discussed in My Love Story With Yamada-kun at Lv999 last year, games are a wonderful way to meet, interact, and even cooperate with other players, sometimes leading to lasting friendships or even relationships.
Yamada-kun also shows that anime integrating video game elements need not be fantasy-action deals like so many VRMMO and isekai entries. That series was more about the social aspect, but the anime/gamer overlap means coaching relationships in terms of the actual game mechanics is a concept with appeal.
Thus, you get series like The World God Only Knows, where the premise is applying strategies from dating sims to actual dating and all the ways that can go right and wrong.
Thus, you get series like The World God Only Knows, where the premise is applying strategies from dating sims to actual dating and all the ways that can go right and wrong.
I've only seen a little bit of this show, but it's interesting how quickly it goes from being a setup to make all the girls fall for you to a kind of morality play in how real relationships fail when you approach them only as transactional or another trophy to collect, a common critique towards the design philosophy of many game's romance mechanics. There is no need to put myself out there when I only have to give the right gifts and say all the right things to win people over!
Dating sim mechanics can also cross over into isekai and isekai-adjacent series as much as those omnipresent RPG elements. A lot of this is thanks to the emergent villainess genre, where otome game players get to interact with stories and characters they're technically familiar with manipulating, but now behaving as real, much less predictable humans. Or they have characters straight-up playing through a video game that starts acting like this, like in Endo and Kobayashi.
We joked about some of these series coming across as Let's Plays, but this one is that!
We joked about some of these series coming across as Let's Plays, but this one is that!
True, part of what makes "gaming" stories difficult to invest in is that we know in some way that the world and the people in it are all falsehoods. Part of the fun of the first season of My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom is watching how all the characters subvert their original roles as a result of Bakarina's Bad End Dodging efforts, pushing them into becoming much more well-adjusted than the game's story would've had them. (Even if she has trouble separating her life from the game it's based on.)
Villainess Life is another one that uses its premise to comment on its source genre. There's a tacit admission in how the characters are "supposed" to be that the kinds of games that spawn villainesses like Katarina are the way they are due to needing to facilitate their plots and gameplay. When a player can communicate with these people with actual words and feelings instead of predetermined text boxes, it opens up a whole new world of possibilities.
There's also the point that Katarina's kind of the dating sim equivalent of Maple from BOFURI, in that she unintentionally stumbles into a "build" perfectly suited to winning over all her suitors.
There's also the point that Katarina's kind of the dating sim equivalent of Maple from BOFURI, in that she unintentionally stumbles into a "build" perfectly suited to winning over all her suitors.
Bakarina is what happens when rolling a -1 in intelligence makes your build broken. Please nerf.
Still, there's a point where the trope has become so common I'm not even sure if the "video game" or "isekai" element is necessary. Most visual novels don't have a lot of game mechanics, and even most fantasy anime have some allusions to their video game counterparts. There are many ways to approach game elements without breaking the immersion. Delicious in Dungeon is a love letter to traditional Dungeons and Dragons, but it does so well to capture the vibe of its RPG inspirations while feeling natural to the setting.
Since the focus is on food, nature is one of the major themes. Treating many of the creatures in any ol' Monster Manual as living things acting in a larger ecosystem, the Dungeon.
Still, there's a point where the trope has become so common I'm not even sure if the "video game" or "isekai" element is necessary. Most visual novels don't have a lot of game mechanics, and even most fantasy anime have some allusions to their video game counterparts. There are many ways to approach game elements without breaking the immersion. Delicious in Dungeon is a love letter to traditional Dungeons and Dragons, but it does so well to capture the vibe of its RPG inspirations while feeling natural to the setting.
Since the focus is on food, nature is one of the major themes. Treating many of the creatures in any ol' Monster Manual as living things acting in a larger ecosystem, the Dungeon.
That is why I mentioned Sleepy Princess earlier. That series doesn't feature any stat sheets, but it visibly operates on similar dungeon-diving mechanics the way Delicious in Dungeon does. Instead of food, the titular terrifying princess is harvesting the castle's denizens to craft bedspreads and clear snooze-based quests.
It provides a recognizable dungeon-crawling game structure that audiences can glom onto, but it still uses that to deliver entertainment and humor as a show in its own right.
It provides a recognizable dungeon-crawling game structure that audiences can glom onto, but it still uses that to deliver entertainment and humor as a show in its own right.
There's also the B-plot of the Demon King setting up challenges and tools for the Hero's Party and maintaining leadership over his demon workforce. However, all things are chaos when the princess is involved, occasionally making the game difficulty even harder for her would-be rescuers. It's a gag because it's about as stock as it can get, with much of it being a direct reference to the video game franchise Dragon Quest, a monolith in Japan, but somehow completely subverts all the tropes about captive princesses by making everyone a hostage to her antics.
Still, there are a lot of clever, deep cuts; I appreciate the anime, in particular, taking the video game aspects a step further by stylizing certain text boxes in that nostalgic NES fashion (though others are more ornate), keeping many of the non-diegetic text jokes from the manga but adding an extra charm.
Still, there are a lot of clever, deep cuts; I appreciate the anime, in particular, taking the video game aspects a step further by stylizing certain text boxes in that nostalgic NES fashion (though others are more ornate), keeping many of the non-diegetic text jokes from the manga but adding an extra charm.
It shows that adding game stuff to an anime story doesn't have to be overbearing, nor does it need to be a singular, flat, defining feature of what it's about. Sleepy Princess and Delicious in Dungeon use their gaming inspirations to add flavor, in contrast to the way so many of those more number-crunching-focused series feel so sauceless.
I think it also shows a whole attitude about world-building and setting, even if it's all for the sake of comedy; there are a lot of ways to play on existing tropes without sacrificing all of the flavor text that draws us to them in the first place. I think there's potential for Solo Leveling to go in some interesting directions, but I think the biggest turn-off for similar stories that are done worse is the emphasis on winning. Games are their own works of art, and the prospect of winning is simply an incentive to keep playing along. Games aren't rewarding just because a nice little screen pops up when you've completed something. We play games to explore, experience, and enjoy what's been made. They're carefully crafted constructions meant to challenge, unite, and even comfort or inspire us. If every game were just about handing me victory, it wouldn't be entertaining, would it? So why do so many anime about or inspired by video games assume that winning is the only thing that matters?
Shows like BOFURI and Villainess Life can make their characters OP because they're comedies, and their characters succeeding all the time don't have to worry about dramatic tension. Now, to what credit I can give Solo Leveling, it shows how Jinwoo has to work for his level-ups. And the accompanying fight animation is pretty nice-looking, too.
But its story and the game mechanics fueling it indicate that they're primarily about Jinwoo increasing his strength because he has something to prove. There are ways to build an interesting narrative out of that, but in this instance, doing it via stat points our hero gets from going on jogs feels like a shortcut more than anything.
But its story and the game mechanics fueling it indicate that they're primarily about Jinwoo increasing his strength because he has something to prove. There are ways to build an interesting narrative out of that, but in this instance, doing it via stat points our hero gets from going on jogs feels like a shortcut more than anything.
By comparison, there's no strict requirement for winning or losing in real life. Everyone has their skills and privileges, but they don't determine your value as a person. You may never live up to being rich, famous, or powerful, but happiness is an achievement you establish for yourself. Only YOU can decide what's most rewarding in life. Please tell us what video game anime feels the most rewarding, and we'll sing a little victory tune you certainly can't hear. Thanks to everyone who read this whole column. You're all winners to me.
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