No Game No Life - Episode 9 Discussion / Poll

[Xacual]

Originally Posted by Mentar

@Xacual: If _that_ is indeed the explanation, then I stand by my criticism. I'm not interested in games which are won by some generic "that's because we're invincible to begin with", but I want to be able to follow the tricks and ideas used to win it, at least in hindsight. The earlier episodes managed to do that! This game did not!

Don't get me wrong, I'm still a fan of the show, but a lot of my enjoyment hinges on the ability to go through the games and think "hey, that was clever"! Shiritori already strained this. Othello was the low point for me. I hope that this is no indicator that the author is running out of ideas!

Sora is the one that comes up with tricks though, Shiro is the brute force intellect, calculating machine. The trick of the game was making sure that once Sora disappeared Shiro would be able to show up and still play and win it.

Personally I agree that the episode was weak though, it didn't feel like it adapted everything properly from the novel, especially the Shiro past bit.

[Miraluka]

Originally Posted by GDB

As usual, you don't like it. Why do you continue to watch it, then? I know this will come off as confrontational, but I don't intend it to be such, just curious why someone would continue watching a series they have obvious disdain for.

Masochism or a big AW syndrome lol.

[~Yami~]

Othello is the game where you could overturn a loss into a victory in few moves... it's a complicated way but considering that Blank are able to simulate many victory routes made this easier
The most important point is trying to convince Kurami and Fii to join them....
well, I'm surprised that Kurami could easily accept Sora's memories which also means she already seen his past (wow! He trusts Kurami that much, eh?)

Sora is a crazy schemer and gambler... I'm surprised that Shiro didn't hit him....
His game stakes become higher and higher each time... I wonder what would he put when he's facing Old Deus, Elementals, or Tet.
don't do that again, Sora.... seeing you guys separated is scary for us as viewers as well

[The Green One]

Sora deliberately played a deceptively weak game where he lost a lot of stones but it left a weak spot in Kurami's defenses that Shiro could use to completely turn the game around all at once. He deliberately let himself get so far behind so that Kurami would get his memories and see in a way she couldn't ignore or deny that he wasn't lying about being not being a puppet of another race and he truly wants to help Imanity. The rule that if the player couldn't continue that the partner could continue the game allowed Shiro to keep her memories of Sora which allowed her to retrace what happened and deduce how to win once she recalled how he had played.

It was carefully planned out and rather devious. Sora truly is crazy to allow himself to be taken to the brink like that just to secure Kurami and Fi. This wasn't protagonist invincibility, it was a carefully plotted out strategy and the resolve and courage of Sora literally putting his existence itself in Shiro's hands to secure the win that he wouldn't be able to get alone and still accomplish his goals. This was skill not Dues ex Machina.

[silvercover]

well they were faithful, but im also on the boat of the disappointed fans of this ep.

really, the best and core part of this chapter was supposed to be the abject horror and despair, with the importance of their existence and its disappearance, the closeness of the parties involved, the subtle hints of their past, rather than the game itself.

as someone already wrote in a spoiler in the last pages, those misses end up lowering the overall quality of this ep.

this is one where I say they really needed more time like several minutes. they did good enough in keeping it as close as possible, but its unfortunate that they cannot fit it in with one episode.


^the slight problem again here, is the anime is sort of lacking in explanation and details of how shiro and sora planned it.
the anime didnt exactly make it clear that shiro calculated exactly the moves sora would make, anime also didnt really show enough of how strained shiro was in thinking up how sora disappeared in the first place.
there's also the one 2 eps ago, with how they found the king's secret room. the anime didnt elaborate the ways on how they found it, heck they also missed the part that showed how the siblings are really game players because someone commented how they could have opened it themselves with pick locks, but they just didnt cause that would ruin the game aspect for them.

so it ends up being like a deus ex machina.

[takai]

An excellent thought provoking episode. Kept me interested throughout despite no action or anything.

I'd like them to go more in-depth with Sora and Shiro's past even more so than they did this episode. But the mystery of it is a really nice touch to the characters, it keeps one invested in them.

Great episode all around. AOTS.

[Marcus H.]

@Xacual: If _that_ is indeed the explanation, then I stand by my criticism. I'm not interested in games which are won by some generic "that's because we're invincible to begin with", but I want to be able to follow the tricks and ideas used to win it, at least in hindsight. The earlier episodes managed to do that! This game did not!

I don't think that's a problem the anime series would solve any time soon.
And wow, you're complaining about "technobabble" in NGNL? WHA?

I understand what others say about the outcome of the "Existential Othello" match. However, improving the pacing for this episode means that they need to offer one more episode to the match to cover Sora's struggles, which may hurt the final arc for this series. Besides, I think that Shiro is the emotionally weaker of the two, and seeing her make it through without Sora for the first time makes not seeing the match itself worth it.

As for Shiro's multiple moves: it's highly possible that Kurami is already down by the first move, allowing Shiro to place more chips for the win.

[quigonkenny]

I think the problem is that this is just one of those episodes you need more than 22 minutes for. With the time allotted, they could either give us more (but still probably not enough) explanation than they did, or as much Shiro angst as they did. Anime watcher proclivities being what they are, they went for the latter. In a perfect world, they would have allotted five episodes for this last volume (volume 3) instead of the usual four, giving the season 13 episodes total, and figured out some way to split this episode into two.

Originally Posted by Xacual

Personally I agree that the episode was weak though, it didn't feel like it adapted everything properly from the novel, especially the Shiro past bit.

Actually, I thought that was the part of the episode they handled best.

[R.LocK]

I do believe you're not allowed to make passes in Sora's version of the game. Not that it was included in the anime rules.

[Craxuan]

Really, anyone could have done what Shiro did if they had an equal bond with Sora. It's like two crooks planning multiple ways to break into a bank (which all of them work) and Sora just needed to show which one they would use at the beginning. Obviously the LN described this far better, but it's a setup, plain and simple.

[Random Wanderer]

I'm confused that people were confused. The episode explained it all quite clearly, as far as I could tell. As soon as it became possible for Shiro to play, Kurami had lost, because othello would be just as predictable as chess, for Shiro. She didn't need to remember what moves Sora had made, because she knew Sora: knew the way he thought, the way he acted, and the way he played games inside and out, and combined with her supercomputer brain she could use that knowledge to know exactly how he would have played the game.

The three pieces that remained were of no significance in telling her how to win (beyond telling her what the game was and how many moves were left). What they did was explain why Sora didn't lose even when his existence was erased: because there were three pieces of him that his subconscious considered even more significant than his own existence. Third most important: the way to win the game. Second: his absolute trust in Shiro. Most important: Shiro's very existence.

[Marcus H.]

By the way, anyone wanna write in Imanity-go?

http://www.hogera.com/pcb/font/imanitish.html

[Bakaizer]

so she managed to determine the position to which she will win the game by looking at those three pieces?? and she can't even see the board

[Dark Wing]

Originally Posted by Random Wanderer

I'm confused that people were confused. The episode explained it all quite clearly, as far as I could tell. As soon as it became possible for Shiro to play, Kurami had lost, because othello would be just as predictable as chess, for Shiro. She didn't need to remember what moves Sora had made, because she knew Sora: knew the way he thought, the way he acted, and the way he played games inside and out, and combined with her supercomputer brain she could use that knowledge to know exactly how he would have played the game.

The three pieces that remained were of no significance in telling her how to win (beyond telling her what the game was and how many moves were left). What they did was explain why Sora didn't lose even when his existence was erased: because there were three pieces of him that his subconscious considered even more significant than his own existence. Third most important: the way to win the game. Second: his absolute trust in Shiro. Most important: Shiro's very existence.

It usually like this with anime that has a lot of info dumping that needs processing. It's just that many need a flashing neon sign to explain things to them else it goes completely over their heads...

Originally Posted by Bakaizer

so she managed to determine the position to which she will win the game by looking at those three pieces?? and she can't even see the board

She's also been shown to have the ability to memorize every possible move an AI can take in a game of chess, So whats your point?

Why can't she figure out the lay out of the board without looking at it? Seeing how her and Sora have been playing games together for so long it's obvious that she knows how he plays very well.

[Netto Azure]

Wow this episode brought a tear to my eye. I like how we get a lot of backstory and Shiro focus on this episode. She definitely grows a lot more character wise.

This was even more powerful to see than read. But yeah definitely reinforces why I like this adaptation a lot.

[Lou0wnZ]

Caught up with ngnl as well, definitely the most entertaining anime of this season, at least in terms of fun, but nothing else, because the characters aren`t really deep or incredibly interesting...the mc`s abide to the Rule of Cool, which is fine when the dialogue and presentation are great, which is the case here, thankfully.

This episode offered a glimpse to the siblings`past which I loved, hopefully they will show a bit of more of that in the final episodes. Also loved how the game proved their complete trust into each other, in a no-incest way. Heck, they even joked about going there at the end but proved to us their relationship is not like that. Thank God.

[Shadow5YA]

Originally Posted by Mentar

@GreyZone,Xacual: And this is exactly what I call technobabble. How would any of this explain to Shiro how to play these stones to win the game? See my point? The "explanations" what the stones meant in themselves were already painfully non-obvious and interpretation-prone, but even if you buy this weak line of reasoning, they would NOT explain how to play them to win the game position which Shiro didn't even see in the first place. Or - like Stilts would say - this was an 'asspull' (see tropes). Not impressed, sorry.

In the earlier games, the thoughts behind the tricks used to winning the game were clear and understandable. The Shiritori game was already WAY borderline, but as a non-physicist I'll give the explanation the benefit of doubt. However this game - at least in the anime version - was pure technobabble BS.

I sure hope that we'll get back on track of the early eps where the viewer could fully enjoy following the games. Today at least I could not.

If I wanted an interesting Reversi/Othello game, I'd watch a professional tournament.

High stakes aside, the game had the exact same rules as normal Othello, so it's pointless watching it play by play. At least the chess game and Materialization Shiritori had interesting twists on how they worked. This was nothing more than a Yu-Gi-Oh-esque "Shadow Game" without the benefit of having an originally new card game to its name.

[LoweGear]

Personally, I wanted to see more of Kurami's reactions to Sora's memories like in the LN. Hoping they cover some of that in the next episode.

... alright, I just wanted to see more of Kurami period >_>

[teja208]

Originally Posted by Random Wanderer

The three pieces that remained were of no significance in telling her how to win (beyond telling her what the game was and how many moves were left). What they did was explain why Sora didn't lose even when his existence was erased: because there were three pieces of him that his subconscious considered even more significant than his own existence. Third most important: the way to win the game. Second: his absolute trust in Shiro. Most important: Shiro's very existence.

Yes, I think this is the main gist of this game although I expect better.

I felt this is the part where the source material is at its weakest. The author doesn't seem to care much about the game content this time around, but I believe he's planning to made it up with the next big game. Some questionable game content like why play chess when you can simply use rock paper scissors? I'm not familiar with Othello so I can't really follow how Shiro win, but it was as ridiculous as how it was adapted in accordance with the LN.

Otherwise, for most part, the adaptation is fine where the purpose of the events in this episode is for character development and to gain alliance. 8/10

[Random Wanderer]

Someone elsewhere brought up something about the chess game that bothers me.

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