Review of No Game, No Life: Zero

First things first. My "reviews" system is explained on a blog entry. Which can be found through my profile. ------ Every section will have a little comparison to NGNL series ------ ✦Story Hard to explain the story as it was quite a ride. But to keep it general, it was very rich storytelling. Large spectrum of emotions were felt from it. But the general gist is struggles of mankind in a world of chaos between superior races. And anomaly of superior race is essentially the start of a plot in here. I found that the story was conveyed in a very exceptionally good and powerful way. The emotions of main charactersand the goal and thriving will towards it were extremely well put.

As well, the story is essentially a very bittersweet romance. Which I cannot really open up as topic in a review as it would be in any way a spoiler.

But I can one thing for sure, I did tear up on multiple occasions. Meaning it was just superb. Another but probably obvious thing I can mention it takes place far back in history of NGNL story. I do have to mention that few things kinda remained mystery or a question mark for me, but those would be spoilers to mention so sadly I cannot mention them. But that simply means that world is build up nicely and important factors of the story were conveyed just superb, yet still there remains mystery and sense of wonder about lot of things. It would haven gotten perfect score from me if few of these "?" I had, would have gotten answers.

Now to comparison part of the movie and NGNL series. I do love this movie and series equally as much. While movie excels at dark, depressing world and plot with a bittersweet romance and underlying tone of road of joy. The series excel at bright tuned, joyful and fun world with darker undertone. But both are just wondrous. They simply are different. I cannot say this movie was "better" or "worse" it simply was as superb as the series. Only difference is that is has different sort of story, world and emotions that are the essential "goal" here.

✦Art & Sound
Art & Animation is superb, it's darker but still grand. The action, magic were just on a very grand scale. But it was very powerfully presented, thus it was simply spot-on. Also a lot of interesting designs on characters, spells and some other things.

Music I loved as well, but I do hate the movie format encoding. The whole "quiet vocals and loud effects" is pain in the butt. I'm sad that up to this day sound isn't encoded in more of a pleasant way that would make viewing experience pleasant as in cinemas. Point being it, OST I heard was superb, but there were bunch of moments were I simply barely could hear the music. Maybe it's more of technical issue, but nevertheless that made be drop a score by 1 point.

As for comparison, I found series OP being much better, but rest of the OST was still great in both.

✦Character
Essentially we have the same 3 main characters as In the series. They have very similar traits, but simply different history, development and finale.

Some things regarding the characters came as a pleasant surprise to me. But overall I felt that characters were with amazing presence and superb emotion deliverance. I did simply adore the romantic aspect, it was very powerful but sad and at the same time it also gave me few questions I simply would have wondered if the story would be more "lengthier" .

But aside that, aside some nice characters I did kinda except, but still came as a surprise in a good sense. "Filler" characters were "just to fill in some empty spots" enough. It isn't bad thing, just a bit funny.

The comparison part would be simply about main cast. And they are equally great. Just TV series had more time and more characters, thus TV series having bunch of enjoyable side-characters isn't a surprise.

✦Enjoyment & Overall
I teared up on multiple occasions. That is enough for me to mark it as "highly enjoyed" Anime. Not a single moment was there where I would feel like skipping. It was constantly emotional or powerful.

This anime shall go into my list of favorites as the series did.