Deatte 5-byou de Battle (Battle Game in 5 Seconds)
Anime Info
Genres: Game, Super Powers.
Studio: SynergySP (may be known for Cross Game, Major, and Initial D) & Vega Entertainment (honestly they don't have any notable works).
Director: Arai Nobutoshi & Naitou Mea (both seem to be new at it).
Original Creator: It's adapted from a manga made by author "Harawata Saizou" & Artist "Kashiwa Miyako", neither seem to have any other notable works.
You may have noticed, the staff that created this show do not have much experience.
Anyway, the series aired in July 2021, it's 12 episodes long, did not conclude and season 2 has not been announced.
[This review contains minor spoilers, I do not recommend this show, but if you really want to watch it here's your warning]
Intro
Ousama Game, Satsuriku no Tenshi, Mahou Shoujo Site, Darwin's Game, and recently High-rise Invasion. What do these have in common?
They're cheaply made attempts at the survival game sub-genre, and they can be summed up as a bunch of random ideas slapped together with amateurish writing. They also tend to be badly directed and animated as if the staff didn't care, and rightfully so, because I would've wanted to get things over with and go home too if I was working on one of these.
There's one secret factor though, that if one of these shows managed to pull off it'd be actually decent, and that is genuinity, the ability to embrace its own flaws.
You see, the reason a movie like Tommy Wiseau's The Room is very popular despite being an abomination is because it knows it's bad but doesn't care, you get this genuine sense of entertainment as if the writer just wanted to make something entertaining even if they're bad at it, it doesn't reflect any ego and doesn't pretend to be smart.
Now I have enjoyed most of these shows I mentioned above but it's all for the wrong reasons, I am willing to give them bad ratings regardless of the enjoyment factor because they take themselves too seriously, they are not self aware about their lack of good writing and characterization.
The only exception from this list is High-rise Invasion, that show knew it was stupid and doubled down on its stupidity on purpose, which made it pure entertainment, it's sad that the others did not follow the same path.
I'd go on about that but I shouldn't stray far from what this review is supposed to be about, Deatte 5-byou de Battle (aka Battle Game in 5 Seconds).
The most thing "Battle Game in 5 Seconds" has in common with the aforementioned shows is how it attempts to setup some sort of a survival game, but the writer doesn't understand that games need rules, so we get these conditions where characters have to fight, collect points, form teams, etc. But we don't get to see any rules or mechanics in play aside from some vague smart app that never gets explained, apparently the writer prefers to keep it that way so they can do whatever they want without having to follow their own rules, but they still want to act smart by adding strategy to the fights.
Unfortunately these strategies are nothing more than over-explaining events on hindsight as if to make them look like some brilliant masterplan, but it really all boils down to the protagonist having a broken super power.
Synopsis
"Battle Game in 5 Seconds" starts off by telling us that our protagonist Akira is a school boy (because of course he is) and he plays videogames. That's all you need to know before the first fight scene abruptly begins (you can completely remove the intro and nothing would've been lost), suddenly Akira is attacked by some monster and dragged into the survival game, guess what was his reaction to it "All I need to do is treat this as a game and I won't lose" and BAM he takes down the monster! Who needs exercise when you can play mobile games, am I right?
So after that Akira gets killed anyway and then wakes up to find himself in another world, and we get into the typical survival game intro:
-Protagonist wakes up in a large hall. Check.
-The hall is filled with characters that have flashy designs. Check.
-Every character is quietly waiting for the plot, instead of trying to get to know each other and assess the situation. Check.
-A silly character with a silly voice appears and introduces herself as the main antagonist and the representative of the organization that killed and isekai-ed these people. Check.
-Said antagonist randomly kills one of the characters to show how serious she is. Check.
-One character asks "Who are you? Why are you doing this?" but gets no answer, because mystery. Check.
-The antagonist attempts to explain that these characters are supposed to play some sort of a game, except instead of explaining anything she just goes on about how much she enjoys being evil. Check.
You know, basically if you played Danganronpa or Zero Escape you have it all figured out already.
Game/Battle Elements
So here's what should've been the interesting part: The game!
What kind of game is it? Well, the characters have super powers and they use them to fight. No really, that's it. Compared to other shows of this genre this one feels like it's the most basic thing it could've been!
This show is so generic and devoid of originality it feels artificial, like someone threw the shows I mentioned earlier in some app and had an AI make this one out of them.
What's supposed to be the cool twist, however, is the protagonist's super power, which is described as "whatever your opponent thinks is your power, becomes your power", what this means is that if the protagonist can convince his opponent that he has the power to turn his arm into a cannon megaman-style, then he can turn his arm into a cannon. If he can convince them he can use telepathy, then he can use telepathy, etc. Basically think of it as a spell that only works against you if you believe in it.
On paper this idea has the potential to be a cool device for psychological warfare, maybe someone on the level of Yagami Light would find all kinds of creative ways to do wonders with this power. Unfortunately not even that could happen because the execution was pretty bad.
In one episode we learn that Akira has to activate his power with the presence of someone who believes in it, but once he activates it he can use it on other people as well, for example even if only one person in the room believes Akira can turn his hand into a cannon, then he can use it freely to shoot everyone there, that was established early on.
And then in another episode, the writer changes their mind and makes it so Akira couldn't use his cannon because one character didn't believe he could do so, even though there were at least two other people who did!
A more accurate description of this power would be "whatever suits the writer becomes your power", I hope you're not confused yet because it gets worse...
In another episode Akira flat out tells one character about how his power actually works, now using common sense you'd think that a power that depends entirely on lying would be rendered completely useless if its true nature was revealed, right?
If Akira showed you proof that his power is "whatever your opponent thinks your power is" then it automatically becomes unusable, because now he can't convince you that he can turn his hand into a cannon or use telepathy, etc. Makes sense, right?
Instead the show does the exact opposite, that character knows how Akira's power works, so now anything he tells her becomes his power, he only needs to say "trust me"! If he wants to use teleportation he only needs to tell her that he intends to use teleportation and he'll magically be able to use it. How does that even work? Don't ask me, ask the genius who wrote this!
Characters
Starting with Akira, he is the kind of character that's always acting cool, keep in mind there's a difference between a character that's naturally cool and one that's acting, this is a result from a writer who has no knowledge on how charisma works and only tends to imitate what they consider to be cool from anime/manga they've seen. When a character gets brutally murdered and instead of showing any genuine shock, all he cares about is that he gets to play a fun killing game, that doesn't make him badass in my eyes, he only comes off as a pretentious edgy teenager who's messed up in the head.
Akira's only motive is to play a game, he even says the same iconic line from Death Note "this world is boring", and yet he's a nice guy in general, he's the type of character who says things such as "I only saved you because it's beneficial to me" but still goes out of his way to risk his life for others. It's like he was written to be an anti-hero because that's what's cool nowadays, but the writer doesn't have the guts to risk making him unlikable, so he completely contradicts himself.
Anyway, are you curious to know about characters other than Akira? Rejoice! You will get your dose of modern flashbacks that every clueless manga writer from this era thinks are the way to go.
The characters are as shallow as cheap toys that have a recorded catch phrase that they keep repeating obnoxiously until you take out their batteries.
There's one girl whose catch phrase is "I hate the word coincidence!" because apparently she was a coincidence according to her mother (sadly I'm not even joking!). One guy goes on about how they shouldn't use the super powers given to them by the evil admins of this game, and then he uses his power anyway. Another guy goes on about wanting to fight Akira, but then he fights on his side under the usual stereotypical excuse "no one gets to kill him before I do!" and ends up just kinda forgetting about it and continues being a good guy for no reason.
If you're looking for character development it's impossible to have it in any functional way, because everything is too rushed that it feels like no more than one day has passed throughout the series, the characters should barely know each other by the end, they practically just met.
However, as long as the series manages to check-mark one arc it acts as if these characters now bonded and have history together, it's funny because some of the side characters talk about having fought together as a team, but it was just a series of one-on-one fights with no teamwork whatsoever.
Production
The art/animation quality is not bad but nothing to write home about either, later on they even fully animated one character in CG. You might be thinking "So what? CG is not uncommon in modern anime anyway", but that's not the issue, it's the fact they animated one character that way. Not one scene, not one fight, one character! He wasn't even a monster or something like that, he's human like the rest of them. Why him? Why did he, out of everyone and everything, turn into a CG model?!
!
In modern days it's not often you find an anime that has actually bad editing, in this show there are times when the transition to the next scene happens so suddenly it feels like something was cut out! Like as soon as a character from one scene finishes talking, a character from the next scene starts talking immediately as if we're still at the same scene.
It's not one of these problems a critic would point out from experience while a casual viewer would think is just a nitpick, it's something you can't miss and will be confused by, and it happened more than once!
This show almost feels like a series of short clips randomly put together, there is so much cutting corners and awkward presentation that it feels amateurish.
Action
The fight scenes look okay on average, it's what you'd expect from a modern anime, the movements are not fluid enough to look impressive, but not bad enough to complain about.
In terms of choreography and writing, most of the fights are too rushed and yet still interrupted by flashbacks. There is a specific fight that was built up in a way where you expect some sort of psychological weight behind it, since it involves one of the main characters facing off against the guy who caused her to get involved in this game, but the fight ends in a matter of seconds with one punch in a comedic tone.
Overall, it may seem like I'm being too harsh on this show, I did kinda enjoy watching it, if only it didn't take itself too seriously and pretend to be smart I would have had a completely different tone in this review.
That being said, I don't recommend you watch it, the world is vast and full of things you're better off spending your time on.
I give Battle Game in 5 Seconds a rating of 3/10.
Thanks for reading, have a good day.
The first two images are covers taken from Myanimelist.net with some editing.
The rest are screenshots from the anime.