14 Game Anime Everyone Should Watch - The first knowledge sharing application in Vietnam

Games and anime are an iconic combo. These game-focused titles stand out as the best you can watch.

Game anime thrill their viewers for much the same reason that Twitch streams do: it’s exciting to see people excited by games and to share one’s beloved hobby with others. Whether they depict card games, board games, or VR, the best game anime leave no doubt in viewers’ minds as to why characters have picked their chosen pastimes.RELATED: The Best Anime Based On Video Game Franchises (According To MyAnimeList)Though many of them depict fierce competitions, game anime aren’t just about seeing characters win. They’re about watching characters grow with the game, developing deeper strategies, and building their confidence as players until they one day master moves that once could only look upon in awe.Updated on March 17, 2022 by Patrick Armstrong: Occasionally playing Bejeweled for 15 minutes is different from daily marathon sessions of League of Legends. Gaming takes many forms, and games themselves wear as many masks as novels do. What draws a player in might be breakneck combo execution, the methodical arrangement of virtual flowers, or the heart-stuttering excitement of being chased by an army of the dead. Game anime can take as many forms as the games that inspire them. What matters is that the show conveys the anticipation and excitement that comes with playing games, improving, and coming back to play again even after a shattering loss.

D-Frag!

A beloved anime trope is the school club, whether that club centers around training to be idols, raising livestock, or writing scary stories. In the case of D-Frag!, the club is Game Development Club. D-Frag is basically a slice-of-life-anime that pivots around people playing games. Though it could easily end up being a generic example of its genre with this premise, it never does.

Instead, the series has enough off-beat style and characterization to keep viewers hooked. The characters do enough game-hopping to keep things fresh, and there’s the occasional injection of genuine weirdness to keep viewers guessing where the series will take them next.

No Game No Life

In the real world, gamers who reach the absolute pinnacle of skill in a given game are often esports pros, playing at tournaments against other competitive teams for cash prizes.

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In No Game No Life, there’s more to be done with gamer skill than just battle for cash, as Sora and Shiro discover. The pair are undefeated gamers, a fact that draws the attention of a god and eventually leads to that god transporting Sora and Shiro to a world where games settle everything. No Game No Life is an isekai game anime, in which Sora and Shiro’s skills are tested again and again with stakes they could have never imagined. Altogether, the series is a funny and charming look at gaming and gamers themselves.

Recovery Of An MMO Junkie

Ever since the days of EverQuest and Ultima Online, MMO addiction has been a real and troubling phenomenon. It doesn’t take state-of-the-art graphics to immerse players, and there are those who quickly become addicted to their pastime, preferring the virtual world to the real one.

Recovery of an MMO Junkie tackles this subject directly. Fortunately, it’s a funny and lighthearted take on the subject rather than an oppressive one, featuring a woman trying to balance paying the bills with spending all of her time in her favorite game. It might be a niche subject in an already niche subgenre, but Recovery of an MMO Junkie does it right.

Log Horizon

If shows about people trapped inside a video game were rocks, one couldn’t walk five feet without stubbing their toe. The game anime genre is flooded with series that play with that premise, making it difficult to sort the best from the just okay.

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Log Horizon is amongst the best, for a simple reason: many anime about people trapped in games don’t actually care about the rules of those games. Things like team composition, pulling aggro, and metagaming are concepts that normally fall by the wayside in favor of action and drama. In Log Horizon, the elements of the game itself remain at the forefront, so that the setting never degenerates into a bland fantasy environment. Stylish and relatable, Log Horizon ranks amongst the best.

Bofuri: I Don’t Want To Get Hurt, So I’ll Max Out My Defense

Sometimes an anime’s title tells you everything you need to know. In Bofuri: I Don’t Want to Get Hurt, So I’ll Max Out My Defense, Maple decides to do just that in NewWorld Online, a virtual reality MMORPG.

Playing as a shield-user and devoting every point to defense as she levels up, Maple is able to survive against seemingly insurmountable odds, climbing the game’s ranks through her unusual strategy and quick thinking. The anime shows off its understanding of and love for MMORPGs for all to see, and watching Maple and her friends explore NewWorld Online is a joy. The series could easily have been based on a real RPG. By focusing on a fantasy protagonist who isn’t just another sword wielder, Bofuri stands out from the rest.

Net-Juu No Susume

Net-Juu No Susume is the story of Moriko, who, at the age of 30, quits her job and celebrates her unemployment by devoting herself to an MMO, quickly becoming obsessed. Within the game, she befriends Lily, a healer, and the two become inseparable.

Then, a chance meeting with another player at a convenience store changes everything. As many players know, the allure of some games can be all but impossible to tear away from, and Net-Juu No Susume understands that better than almost any other anime. It might not be one of the highest-grossing anime, but Net-Juu No Susume effortlessly demonstrates the power of game anime and video games in general.

The King’s Avatar

A game anime that turns its eye to the esports scene, The King’s Avatar follows Ye Xiu, a first-rank player who is forced from his pro team and turns to work as the night manager at an internet cafe. When a new server launches, Ye returns to the game he loves, beginning the long grind up from nothing.

While his exceptional skill and encyclopedic game capture the attention of guilds, Ye struggles to relearn and adapt to a game that has changed in his years away. The series is one of the few game anime that demonstrates a genuine understanding of how MMOs play, and it doesn’t hurt that the anime is beautiful. Focusing on the professional scene, The King’s Avatar looks at the hard realities of the competitive scene, in which games sometimes no longer feel much like play.

Sword Art Online

In Sword Art Online, 10,000 players log into a virtual reality MMO, only to learn that they cannot log out — and that if their characters die in the game, their real bodies die, too. Kirito, a player from the beta, vows not to let any players die, setting out to conquer the 100-floor Aincrad castle, thereby freeing everyone from the game.

Sword Art Onlineis action-packed, chockfull of characterization, and heavy with lore regarding the company that created the game as well as its founder. The series helped define the genre for a reason, and is not to be missed.

Hikaru No Go

Similarities between Yu-Gi-Oh! and Hikaru no Go are unavoidable. The protagonist of this series might not have iconic anime hair like Yu-Gi-Oh, but in both, a boy is possessed by the spirit of a long-dead player, and, using the spirit’s expertise, rises through the ranks of his chosen game.

In Hikaru no Go, the game is Go, and the existence of the game outside the series’s fictional universe is a huge departure from most game anime. Through Hikaru no Go, fans and players can experience their hobby in a new medium and enjoy it anew through the protagonist’s eyes, with all the drama and style that anime provides.

New Game!

New Game! is not about playing a game, but making one. Fresh out of high school, Aoba Suzukaze, gets the chance of a lifetime to work as a character designer on the newest installment in her favorite series: Fairies Story.

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Aoba’s coworkers are one of the series highlights, including the game’s director, Shizuku, who brings her cat to work, and Hifumi who is exuberant in text messages but so shy in person that she won’t even make eye contact. New Game! is a fun behind-the-scenes look at what game development is like, from the highs of perfecting a character’s look to the lows of game-breaking glitches.

Overlord

Popular MMO is Yggdrisil is ending, but wizard and guild leader Momonga is staying until the last server shuts down. When time runs out, however, Momonga remains in the server, trapped in the body of his character as the NPCs around him begin to show signs of sentience.

Momonga enlists the help of his loyal followers to investigate these mysterious occurrences. Unlike the tropes of many anime, the protagonist of Overlord is an outright villain, deceiving, manipulating, and killing to achieve his goals. Further, Momonga is not a weakling on a journey to greatness but is from the beginning of the series the greatest sorcerer in existence, even if he can’t shake his gamer habit of hoarding every useless item he finds.

Death Parade

Instead of departing immediately to the afterlife upon death, dead souls first travel to a mysterious bar between realities. In the bar, the soul is forced to compete in Death Games, the outcome of which reveals what secrets led to their present predicament and what their fate is to be: reincarnated or banished from existence. Decim the bartender and his assistant act as arbiters, overseeing the games.

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Decim is emotionless by nature, having neither lived nor died, and his assistant is amnesiac, remembering nothing of her human life. The interactions between the two — as well as their dealings with the souls that wind up in their bar — are more than enough to keep viewers coming back.

Welcome To The N.H.K.

Welcome to the N.H.K. is not shy about exploring difficult subject matter. Satou is a hikikomori, an asocial recluse, who, by the age of 22, is an unemployed college dropout, totally withdrawn from society. His isolation is disrupted when he meets a young woman who claims to be able to cure him of his hikikomori lifestyle. Satou insists that a conspiracy is to blame for his current predicament, and difficult subjects like loneliness, social isolation, and suicide feature prominently.

The series could easily count as one of the greatest slice-of-life anime as well. Satou is eventually badgered into becoming the writer for the gal game that his neighbor is developing, and here Welcome to the N.H.K. becomes a game development anime, albeit one of an altogether different breed than New Game! Here, the focus is much more on the psychology of the game makers than the nitty-gritty of development.

.Hack//Sign

From its character designs to the premise of its setting, .Hack//Sign is an iconic anime and looms large within the genre, casting the shadow of its influence over many shows and games that followed it. The series features a popular MMO called The World, in which Tsukasa awakens in a dungeon with no short-term memory, unable to log out.

The series is a slow-burn mystery, relying on dialog and steady world building rather than action to drive the plot. The relative lack of combat means .Hack//Sign is not for everyone, but for those more interested in compelling lore than clashing swords, the series is near impossible to beat.

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