Nakanohito Genome (Jikkyouchuu)

The fact is, if you give me an anime where a bunch of very specifically talented teenagers with ridiculous wardrobes are kidnapped by a deceptively cute anthropomorphic mascot character and forced to compete in a convoluted-yet-high-stakes battle of wits for their lives, I’m only going to be thinking one thing: “Man, I wish I was playing Danganronpa right now.” It’s one thing to take place within the same genre as shout-outs as a super-famous multi-media franchise, and it’s even perfectly fine to sake some pointed notes of inspiration from it, too. The Ones Within, however, suffers from the fatal flaw so many other low-rent copycat properties do: It gets the vague idea of what other, better series have done right, but it lacks all of their charm, inventiveness, and fun.

All that The Ones Within really has, as it turns out, is its gimmick: The hyper-talented teens at the focus of the lackadaisical Mr. Paca the Alpaca’s competition are all video-game streamers. Atsuki Iride plays escape games, Karin plays horror games, Kaikoku plays games about the Sengoku-era, etc. Each of them have personalities that can be boiled down into single clause descriptions, too – Atsuki is super friendly (and allergic to everything, for some reason), Karin is the brash one who is always insulting Atsuki, and so on and so forth. It all feels so rote, and so dutiful, and the funniest thing is that their all being streamers hardly seems to matter to the overall feel of the show. Sure, each of the kids’ goal is to be the first to 100 million viewers, but so what? You could have called this show “The Hunger Games, But Anime” and had it star regular joes who just happen to love games, and it wouldn’t be all the different. The show doesn’t work as a thriller, and it doesn’t a comedy either – Mr. Paca just feels like a dull rip-off of Danganronpa’s Monokuma, or Koro-sensei from Assassination Classroom, but we still spend way too much of the premiere’s second act with his “wacky” jokes serving as the crux of the material.

I’m not so far removed from the current generation that I don’t get the appeal of streaming culture, but it surely cannot have gotten to the point that the whole concept of The Ones Within was considered a slam-dunk simply because it uses the words “Let’s Play” a lot, right? Maybe I sound cynical, but there’s so little substance to this premiere that I can’t help but feel like I’m the only one who isn’t in on the joke. The art is purely functional, as is the animation, and the writing is as by-the-numbers as it gets. A part of me is worried that next we’re going to get an “ASMR Heroes” show where all of the characters have to kill the bad guy by whispering real soft in his ears and tapping a bunch of empty water bottles and soda cans (I don’t really know what ASMR is). Then again, that at least sounds more interesting than The Ones Within, which is one of the easiest skips of the season for me so far. You can also free Nakanohito Genome anime watch online and free anime download.