Review of No Game, No Life: Zero

The rare occurrence where not only is the sequel/prequel better than the original material but would be improved by just not having the original material at all and being free of it I can't properly say how much better this movie is compared to the series, but I'll try. Lets start with the elephant in the room, the world !!! It's believable. You buy into it right from the start and there's little if anything to pick apart about the premise. There's a world fighting it's final war, humanity is weak, it has nothing going for it, and it's about to be wiped out. What's morethe humans are really damn unhappy about this.

Thumbs up A++ for the world. Everything about the film conveys it's reality to you. The music, the art, the dialog, everything just sells the world to you. The color palette is dark and somber. The backgrounds and artwork really hit that during the apocalypse feel. Just looking on them you know these people are being ground down into the dust. The characters even when they are at their most optimistic are laughing in a graveyard soon to be occupied by them.

The characters leave little doubt they are going through hell. There's all kinds of stress related problems showing and almost everyone is clearly on the edge of breakdown.This is well used by the story. The despair renders the otherwise difficult to believe changes in relationships believable. There are a few weak spots but the overall is still incredibly solid.

The plot. It's really good. A bit hard to swallow in places. It depends too much on the idea that everyone who isn't a MC is an idiot. It's not as bad as the main series but it sure as hell is there.The other parties are freakishly easy to manipulate. One of the enemy groups is placed in the point of, "Oh we were trashing the world for no particular reason", the only reaction you can have is WTF ???. It's still very good, but it could have been more maybe a lot more.

As I said at the beginning this could have been better without the baggage from the series. The world rules from the series are plain stupid. There are characters that really needed to receive well deserved fates but wind up getting to be cheerful psychopaths to the ends of eternity. There's the need to square the movie with the events of the series, and there really isn't any satisfactory way to do it.

Minor Spoilers FOLLOW. It's not a spoiler if you watched the series.
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The aftermath that follows really goes to crap because it has to be consistent with the original series. Shifting from the movies world to the game world instantly is too much. Way too much when you consider the problems in the series world. (see my review for more details). .

First dealing with the Human/ Nameless Race. These people have truly gotten the shite end of the stick in this war. There's only handfuls of them left and somehow they managed to put this idiot of a god in the driver seat so what does he do. He gives the human race an effing NAME !!!. Gee thanks, the Nameless Race at least hand some style as a name more than garbage name Emanity. Before they at least achieved everything they had on their own, after their only their by the grace of Tet, and their name isn't their own anymore gee thanks. The humans are left still as the weakest race at the mercy of other races for the next 6000 years till the idiot notices, that wow it didn't work well and maybe he should try and do something. SMH!!! So yeah if the movie wasn't a prequel, and just left the ending open that would have given this at least half a point.

Next up, hey all the races who ruined the world, get their lands restored replenished and don't have any consequences. What's more all those lands you conquered and ruined, have them back green and lush, no harm no foul. Ehh any war criminals cough**Jibril***cough no worries, it's all in fun.

Finally the killer, nobody gets to know or remember how this all happened, except when Tet decides to torture small children by putting blanks in their memory.

Yeah if it weren't for the baggage from the series, this would have been at least a 9, could have been a 10.