Review of No Game, No Life: Zero

I was in love with the No Game No Life anime, it was colourful and beautiful, the characters were funny and likeable, the games were exciting and the way they would always outsmart the opponent were interesting. However, the anime felt like it was cut short and like there was so much more left to be discovered, like Blanks journey was just beginning. I had very high expectations for this movie and I can say, I was really disappointed. No, you do not get to see Blanks journey continue, in fact the main characters are not really even in the movie apart from a tiny partat the end. You do get to see Dola and Jibril a bit though.

Instead this movie focuses on two "new" characters, in the war ridden time before Shiro and Sora turned up into the new world of games, which was far more colourful and peaceful. However the new characters Schwi and Riku look and act extremely similar to Shiro and Sora in some ways apart from their relationship and circumstances being different, so on. I can't say that I hate these characters, I do enjoy them and find them sweet still.

The movie had good music and some VERY beautiful animation and graphics, some of the backgrounds were breathtaking and learning about the previous world was interesting and provided you with some cool lore and fight scenarios, but there were no games and the movie is VERY different to the anime in how the action plays out. It felt like there were too many exposition scenes where characters would sit around and talk, and just nothing going on. I left the movie feeling very empty and like there was basically no action at all.

Sure the movie looked very nice, but to say the characters barely moved or did little of anything at all, bored me to death. I was so excited and waited for something epic to happen but it never really did. There is a fight scene or two, but compared to all the waiting you have to do, they do not really make up for that at all.

Beautiful movie, but it's boring and slow as hell. If you are invested in the No Game No Life universe and all of its lore, then I can recommend you check this out as it fills you in about the previous world without all the peaceful rules. However if you loved the anime for the characters, colour, games, action and humour, then I think you should give this one a miss as it is not really similar to the anime apart from starring in the same universe.