The Ones Within – (Naka no Hito Genome) – Review – Episode 1
I mentioned this in my anime what to watch overview of the Summer 2019 season. This is the (brief) review.
This is a show about a group of characters that are taken from their accomplished gaming/streaming lives to another world where together, they are expected to solve puzzles and problems and level up. It seems, so far, that many of the eight that were abducted, are accomplished at playing a particular game or type of game called ‘Lets Play’.
They’re told by a guy who has a furry-sheep-head- helmet and who speaks with a low tone in a creepy voice (sounds really cool actually), that they are engaged to do (whether they like it or not) a live-stream of “The Ones Within – Genome”.
Unfortunately for them this is not a video game but real life game. Failure could have disastrous consequences. In order to earn their freedom, they must achieve 100 million total views although it isn’t clear if the viewers actually know what is going on or if they just think it’s a game with a group of live-streamers.
There are eight players and they all have different types of skills playing different types of game. Some or really good at puzzles, some at dating sims, some at horror and action – all sorts. Of course they all have different types of personality too and this is where the whole things begins to fall over. Most of the players are dickheads. They have no redeeming qualities other than their ability to game and that’s just too realistic for most of us to stomach. If we want to watch or see a group of decent gamers act like dicks to each other, we just need to watch YouTube, or any other streaming service where we can see them promoting themselves like crazy. Why force us to watch them on anime too?
We weren’t allowed to see anything other than their two dimensional personas which seemed flat and shallow. I found myself not caring if any of players managed to accomplish the levelling exercise or not. I guess the over-the-top nice dude with the allergies was just about tolerable, but …. naa not really, he was a limp-dick whereas as all the others were dick-heads.
I’m not sure it’s worth running through what happened during the episode because frankly, nothing much actually happened. I’ll probably watch another episode or two of this just to confirm that it’s not worth watching the rest of the series, I guess I’ll report back if anything exceptional happens.
Overall the production and direction was relatively good, the show moved along and didn’t outpace itself at all, the writing and voice acting were a little sloppy and overdone and the ever important fun/cool/sexy factor was very low because the characterisation was so poor.
The giant panda was good! But, then again, aren’t they all?
I’d rate this (so far at least) a lowly 4.7 out of 10. What did you think?
Discuss this anime in The Ones Within thread of the Anime Forum.
The pictures, video and everything to do with the story is the copyright of Silver Link productions and Crunchyroll. All rights reserved.
This short and obnoxious review is copyright Tony Fawl and not for reproduction without the authors express permission.
