Tenji, how could you? Tomodachi Game Episode 4 deals with the consequences of the biggest reveal from the show so far, one that threatens to shake the show’s concept to the core. Let’s find out how the show did in this review!
Tomodachi Game Episode 4 Overview
Tomodachi Game, or Friends Game in English, is a psychological strategy anime belonging to the Death Game genre, a kind of anime that pits several characters against each other in a bid to make one of them outlast them all. It is based on a manga written by Mikoto Yamaguchi and illustrated by Yuuki Satou. This episode of the show is also referred to as Friends Game Episode 4.
The anime adaptation is developed by Studio Okuroto Noboru, a studio with only two full-length anime adaptations in its catalogue, Special Training in the Secret Dungeon and the second season of How Not To Summon A Demon Lord. The show is directed by Hirofumi Ogura, the director behind several well-known shows such as Black Butler and Cells At Work. You can read our review of the previous episode here!
– Friends Game Episode 4 Review does not contain any spoilers –
Tomodachi Game Episode 4 Review- A Lot Of Changes
Most people probably expected the show to take the identity of the bad friend to the final episodes and build up to it more over the course of the episodes. Hence, the reveal of Kenji to be the one sowing the seeds of hostility among the five “friends” came as quite a surprise. If you’re a believer in the “Least Suspicious” theory of mystery shows, which says that the most likely candidate to be the villain is almost always the one who looks the least likely to be the part, you would have guessed something was wrong with Tenji the instant this show began.
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The latest episode mostly focused on Tenji’s point of view, but not his backstory or anything that explains his position as the destroyer of relations and stalker extraordinaire. Instead, we were in his mind as he plotted to isolate more friends from each other and showed us how he might have done the same in the first game. It was a fascinating perspective as we looked into this game from the eyes of someone who wasn’t playing to win. Rather, he was playing to make the other characters lose. However, that’s where compliments about this episode end.
It was an unpleasant watch for more reasons than one. The episode and Kenji’s character leaned too far into the monologuing lunatic villain stereotype, and he wasn’t even a good example of that. He just went on and on about the most trivial things one can imagine, as we were supposed to think of him as some criminal mastermind. Now that we know that he pitted them all against each other, his attempts at driving a wedge in the group look pitifully obvious and truly pathetic. How is everyone else missing this? If this is supposed to make him look smart, all it has managed to do is make the others look dumber by association.
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What the hell is this game they are playing anyway? It is now the third episode of just talking crap about each other in total anonymity and casting doubt over who said what. This isn’t a practical game by any means, but that was never the point. How have the four innocent people not realised what is happening yet, even if recognising who is doing all this seems hard? Maybe look at the guy whose only bad attribute has been he is one year older than the rest of you and is actively hostile towards everyone?
Tomodachi Game Episode 4 also cemented another bothersome thing about this entire experience. The show must have taken the bare minimum amount of budget and effort to animate. There are a ton of white backgrounds, static shots, and lingering frames that are hard to hide even if you put a thousand colour filters over them, as the show seems to do very often. This might just be a story limitation, as there is nothing to animate in this show anyways. However, it would be nice if the show made its simple frames more detailed instead of messing about with Snapchat filters.
Verdict
Tomodachi Game Episode 4 was a weird and off-putting outing that failed to follow up on the shock value of the previous outing. Let’s hope that the next episode is better in this regard.
Click here to read the review of the next episode!
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