For the longest time I won­dered about why I read Zero no Tsukaima, which might be bet­ter than its anime adap­ta­tion but is still pretty sub­par in just about every aspect. Then I remem­bered some­thing a friend said: “does it mat­ter whether or not I’m actu­ally play­ing a game as long as I feel like I am?”

From last season’s Baka to Test to Shokanju to this season’s Angel Beats, the game inspired premises are becom­ing more and more obvi­ous. Is this just a coin­ci­dence? Does the ‘game-like’ story/setting have an appeal of its own? After all, the cur­rent gen­er­a­tion of anime-fans are also those who grew up play­ing video games, espe­cially the styl­is­tic clas­sic adventure-party RPGs that range from table­top D&D (Stan­dard RPG Sys­tem for Japan­ese) to Final Fan­tasy. So I’d say there’s some­thing spe­cial in mak­ing the viewer feel like they’re immersed in a well-paced game, espe­cially when it not only takes less time, but also saves you from the bore­dom of grind­ing and side-questing.

But what makes a story ‘game-like’? Is it just the con­cep­tual sim­i­lar­i­ties like NPCs, recov­ery exams points, and lev­el­ing up? Well, it’s all that and much, much more. The game-like story shares a great deal with both the clas­sic adven­ture and shounen gen­res, but to truly give the excite­ment of play­ing a RPG your­self, there’s a cou­ple of bases you to cover and bal­ance. Read the rest of this entry »

Episode 2 con­firmed my ini­tial thoughts. At the rate they’re going, Baka to Test to Shokanju is going to out­right win for me as the best anime of Win­ter 2009; even with how much I’m look­ing for­ward to Nodame Cantabile.

I mean seri­ously, it’s got just about every­thing, and it does it with high qual­ity style:

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An unex­pected boon for me this sea­son, Baka to Test to Shokanju is like a dream come true for a gamer turned anime fan. I mean, which one of us wouldn’t want our high school lives to be just like a video game?

Upon first glance, Baka to Test to Shokanju looks just like some over­done high school romance harem com­edy series, a genre so over­done it hurts my brain just to see the pro­mo­tion poster — prob­a­bly the rea­son why I glanced over the series descrip­tion in under a split sec­ond. Fac­tu­ally, that para­graph used to describe the series is entirely point­less rub­bish, and only seven words is required to replace it: “High School RPG with Exam Sum­mon­ing Bat­tles”.

Hence why Baka to Test to Shokanju becomes an atten­tion grab­ber within actual future prospects: the incor­po­ra­tion of a dream ele­ment, a con­cept we could only wish was avail­able in our own high schools (Nanoma­chines where are you!!!). Besides, all the video game par­o­dy­ing is sim­ply too lolsy. I for one spent too much time laugh­ing through­out the episode…

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