A winter suprise - Shiboyugi: Playing Death Games to put food on the table

Any one can tell you - as an anime fan - we have been eating good for a while now.

This past season alone we had JJK, Frieren, Hell's Paradise, Oshi no ko, I mean the list goes on and on. I've talked about it before, it's getting harder and harder to keep up. Every season my watch list grows longer and I grow more overwhelmed.  

This week is the finally week for many of the winter anime. I am gearing up to binge Frieren (and hopefully have a blog post about it) but I had a craving. I wanted to watch some anime this week that was for lack of a better word, "fresh". Something that I hadn't been spoiled on, something that I didn't know anything about, something to make me feel. 

I opened up livechart.me and looked at the season. I keep mine organized by popularity so that I can stay on top of whatever is hot for the season. I scrolled down a bit, five rows down to be exact. Here I find, Shiboyugi: Playing Death Games to put food on the table. Only 11 episodes, the synopsis is short and sweet: 

"At just seventeen, Yuki is a professional death game player. She’s survived enough rounds to know that survival is calculation, not luck—and that failure is final. For most players, the games are a nightmare with no escape. For Yuki, they’re simply business. Yet in a world where rooms turn into graves and every choice could be her last, even experience offers no protection." 

Perfect. 

I binge the first 6 episodes. I am captivated. I am soooooo locked in - I would have finished it if I hadn't been so exhausted. The series pulls you in from the first episode. Actually, I can't remember the last time I was so pulled in by a first episode. From the character design to the visual direction - I'm entranced.  It reminds me to some extent of monogatri. The cuts. The sudden text on the screen. The change in animation as the episode progresses. The real life shots mixed into the animation. It was the "fresh" that I was looking for in the season. 

I don't want to spoil it for you - but after finishing it up I leave you with a couple of things:

1) 7/10 for me, would watch again. 

2) You need to be awake for this one, the timeline can get a little wacky and they are setting up all these different things - hopefully we will get a season 2. 

3) Read the light novel. I put this here at the end because I left wanting more. So many questions, so few answers. 

Spring Season starts this week..... hopeful I come across another wonderful surprise like this....

Shiboyugi is on Netflix and Crunchyroll.