I haven't followed anime for several years, but this summer's lineup unexpectedly delighted me. For epic feel, there's The Witch Under the Dome; for passion in artistic creation, There's No Way I Can Keep Drawing This Forever; and two tobacco-themed anime with high buzz that broke out of niche circles, Two People Smoking Behind the Supermarket and Neko Nyan...A total of nearlya luxurious lineup of nearly 80 titles, covering various styles and genres,It felt like I was in a buffet restaurant where global master chefs were competing.
But precisely in this environment, a title originally considered a minor Capcom ad unexpectedly saw its ratings and attention soar—"Thanks for the Match, Ojou-sama Doesn't Play Fighting Games~》.
As the name suggests, it's an anime about high school girls playing fighting games.
No need to elaborate on beautiful girls, there's a saying in the 2D community:"Everyone loves watching beautiful girls do anything." This anime, even before airing, receiveda recommendation from Fields Medalist Deng Yu. Those familiar with this mathematician's tastes know he loves watching girls being affectionate and requires works to tell good yuri relationships well.
What was truly unexpected was that it was about fighting games. Because,As a genre requiring extensive knowledge and considered to have a high barrier to entry, if an anime fails to clearly explain what characters are doing in a fighting game, it will greatly disrupt narrative flow.—If the audience doesn't understand, it will inevitably destroy the viewing experience.
But the result is that it's the work with the best control of narrative pacing this summer, possibly bar none. Every Tuesday sitting in front of the computer, watching until the end of the update, the most frequent danmaku comment is "Feels like 42 frames after finishing."In other words, every episode20 minutes in length, watching it feels like less than a second passed.
Episode8 illustrates the point well. In this episode, the protagonist group and their opponents started their matches simultaneously. Even within the broader discussion of film and television creation, this four-line parallel structure is extremely rare. However, through intertextual descriptions of match strategies and character psychology, the audience's emotions always connect smoothly. And please note, this is not just my subjective feeling, but the evaluation of a major anime content creator who doesn't even play competitive games: he felt that the experience of this episode wasn't like traditional hot-blooded battle manga, but more like placing the audience in a grand gaming venue, wandering around and watching whichever match table they wanted to see.
"How did it achieve this?"
Ultimately,"Fighting Games" is the exterior, but girls being affectionate remains the narrative core.
In fact, in recent years with the rise of esports trends, there have been novels, anime, and movies themed around electronic sports. But what they create is the satisfying journey of a novice honing skills to gradually become a world-class expert or even champion. This is fine; after all, even the World Champion of Warcraft 3 admitted in his autobiography"When Li Xiaofeng BecameSky" also admitted that skipping class to play games was because, as a fan of wuxia novels, the feeling of progressively competing in regional tournaments and achieving results made him feel like he was truly "dominating the martial arts world" as described in novels.
However, "Thanks for the Match, Ojou-sama Doesn't Play Fighting Games~》cannot do this, as it would lose the player's immersion in the esports theme. Because, although it's possible for a high school student to reach the top globally,—Not long ago15-year-old player CRAIME won the EWC world championship in Street Fighter 6; it's also not rare for female players to defeat pro masters—Nyanpi once consecutively defeated veteran powerhouses like Nemo and Nauman,at the fighting tournamentreaching ninth place at EVO. However, the narrative of a half-hearted high school girl who plays games after class challenging someone who plays for meals, and even winning the final championship,it's hard to maintain credibility.
In other words,The part about the competition field is amatch that is bound to be lost, so the narrative focus cannot be on competitionabove.
The classic high-rated anime Ping Pong the Animation,already provided the standard answer for this narrative direction. The anime glossed over the finals, which should have been the narrative climax, in less than three shots, focusing instead on how the sport reflected the joys and sorrows of each participant. Among them were those with talent but no desire to win, those who put in a hundred times the effort but couldn't match a tenth of the genius, those burdened by family expectations but who didn't love playing at all, and those who quit in despair, tried various paths in life, only to find they still loved table tennis.—You don't need to know any table tennis rules; even if you replace table tennis with something else, it doesn't matter, yet people can still find themselves in different characters.
"Thanks for the Match, Ojou-sama Doesn't Play Fighting Games~》gave me a similar experience. Even as gamers, some feelings might be deeper than in Ping Pong the Animation. Because, as long as everyone seriously thinks about why they love competitive games, they will arrive at the following answers.First, simply to escape life and academic pressure, numbing oneself with games;Second, wanting to play with friends, using it as a way to strengthen bonds;Third, for vanity, seeking self-identity from rank listings and receiving cheers from those around;Fourth, a very small number of pure enthusiasts who don't care about rank or socializing, but simply enjoy the process of getting stronger, finding endless joy in competing against others.
The first female lead, Mizuki Ayase, is the third type. In elementary school, she played Street Fighter4》, was her happiest time. Every time she lost a match, she would go back to study counter-strategies, implement them to win the next match, bringing her immense satisfaction, and anticipating how her playmates would counter her in turn. However, when her ownWhen her skill far exceeded her companions', their solution was to quit—didn't know how to go easy,ruined others' gaming experience, then the winner's throne becomes an empty shell with no applause. So, although later there was online matchmaking and she could easily find opponents of similar skill, she could never regain the feeling of being the center of attention from her childhood. Thus, she chose to seal away the game, cut off the past, focus on studying, and enter a prestigious school on scholarship, closing her heart like cement. But an accident still happened; she met the person who reignited herthe destined nature of "Esports Spirit."
The second female lead, Yae Mio, is the fourth type. Her appearance makes classmates mistake her for the perfect lady from a shoujo light novel, but in reality, she ignores school rules to secretly play arcade machines, has an aggressive playstyle, and doesn't hesitate to humiliate opponents. She's such a battle maniac that even having study exams take up her gaming time makes her burst into tears.burst into tears, resentfully complaining that the state building schools was an infringement on citizens' human rights. Hence, the widely circulated online meme aboutthe famous scene of the "strongest mother-daughter duel," where her mom, having no other choice, locked her gaming laptop in a safe. After a patient discussion, she gave her two options: either get into the school her mom specified, then she gets her laptop back; otherwise, she must use the fighting skills learned in extracurricular classes to defeat her mom right there.
"Yae Mio unhesitatingly chose to PvP against her own mother."
Japanese creators have a unique value orientation: they portray characters who can devote themselves wholeheartedly to something ascrafted with great charm, what people call"pure." Doing so has two benefits: First,is that viewers are easily infected by this passion, entering along with the characters into aa state of "nothing else matters," such as in the same season's There's No Way I Can Keep Drawing This Forever; secondly, this characterization method reasonably explains why certain useless protagonists are popular with friends and the opposite sex, such as in the gaming romance anime Hi Score Girl.
Therefore, although for necessary comedic effect, Yae Mio's determination to never study in order to game makes her seem quite eccentric, I don't agree with crudely categorizing her as"internet-addicted girl." Because the anime established that she is very smart; with just a little tutoring, she could even score first in her grade in math. True internet addicts are more like the first type mentioned earlier—even without video games, they would chooseother "bad habits" to escape academic pressure.
In other words, Mizuki Ayase is an achievement-seeker craving recognition from strong rivals, while Yae Mio is a battle maniac who purely enjoys the game. Their meeting,It's like Vegeta seeing Kakarot and being doomed for life; it's natural for the heroine's esports spirit to be reignited. Moreover, due to this underlying layer established beforehand,foundation of "meeting a worthy opponent is like meeting a soulmate," allowing the author to let loose more when describing their interactions, serving sweetness without getting tired of it.
For example, they sneak around to violate school rules by playing games late at night together, hiding under the covers to avoid the dorm supervisor. Later, they forget time while battling in a four-player match where they agreed to swap upon losing, making the senior who just wants to play with friends angry, seemingly excluding playmates and bullying classmates...Details like these, seemingly drawn from the author's personal experience, easily resonate with gamers—when there's a friend of similar skill level to play with, the atmosphereis always the sweetest.
However, the reason the anime can bring this gaming atmosphere is also due to the advantages of the fighting genre.
On one hand, fighting game matches are highly similar to the progression of battle anime. Therefore, even if the author uses existing narrative techniques or even copies classic anime tropes,it wouldn't feel out of place, yet it conveniently allows the audience to understand the process of mutual struggle. For example, in episodeIn episodes 7, 8, and 9, the match parts almost pixel-perfectly replicated the bystander commentary scenes and storyboards from the fighting manga Baki. A comment explains its effect: "Although you don't understand the essence of the mind games, it's no different from a fighting anime, just with more logical combat mechanics."
The image below from Baki
On the other hand, contrary to the stereotype that fighting games require quick reflexes, in complex match environments, no human has ever been able torely on attention to simultaneously monitor all possible offensive moves from the opponent. Therefore, more important than reaction speed is the strategy of attention allocation, such asIn "Rock-Paper-Scissors," if I focus 80% of my attention on the opponent possibly playing Rock, then when they play Rock, I have an 80% chance of countering with Paper, but if they play Scissors, I might not react in time.
Therefore, when both players are at a similar skill level, the more important skill in fighting games is actually analyzing the opponent's habits and predicting their strategy. This is why many pro players intentionally show weaknesses in the first round to test their opponent's habits—thus,led toin the 2017 EVO Grand Finals, Punk fell into a mind game trap tailored specifically for him."Thanks for the Match, Ojou-sama Doesn't Play Fighting Games~》when the pro player faced Mizuki Ayase, the entire match's "rock-paper-scissors mind game" didn't use invincible moves that leave huge openings if missed. Instead, he deliberately provoked Ayase by defending, then won by using an invincible move.
In other words, high-level fighting game play is a psychological game aimed at bare honesty. One side, to strip away the opponent's disguise, follows the rhythm of their breathing, probing sensitive spots with punches and kicks, tempting them to make impulsive mistakes with ambiguous openings. Until pressing step by step, cornering them, forcing them to expose their most primal physical instincts, and finally, in the moment of shameful spasms from failed resistance, inevitably swallowing the bitter fruit of defeat.
This means that compared to battle anime that spend lots of time describing characters' psychological activities or frequently adding lengthy flashbacks, fighting game themes can even have smoother narratives. For instance, in the anime, there's a senior who is the second type we mentioned, playing games just to bond with friends, while another character close to a villainous role, a bratty girl, is completely opposite; her psyche is twisted because she lost her best friend due to gaming, and she despises any comrade relationships.
So, when they faced off in the arena, we saw an aggressively offensive character going up against an extremely defensive counter-attack character, repeatedly approaching but being kept at bay.Designing battle scenes to reflect the clash of character beliefs, as seen here, is better than traditional battle manga's verbal debatesTalk segments make for smoother narration than past yuri manga depicting relationships between girls,delving deeper into the characters' hearts.
And everyone should have noticed that the experience of a bratty girl losing friends because she was too strong echoes the protagonist Mizuki Ayase's past of driving friends away by beating them. In fact, this mirroring of characters in the anime occurs in more than one place. For example, the pro players encountered by the two female leads in the tournament section correspond to the other female lead in both playstyle and personality.
In other words, when advancing the plot, the author can frequently use"polyphonic" narrative techniques,Usingthe psychological struggles and bond clashes of characters from the previous match to hint at the trend of the next match. This is why "Thanks for the Match, Ojou-sama Doesn't Play Fighting Games~》dared in episode 8 toFour parallel lines, but the audience's emotions didn't break while watching. For example, after Mizuki Ayase was defeated by a pro player whose style resembled Yae Mio, Ayase's first thought was of Mio, and she rushed to Mio's match station. The next shot cut to Mio's match, echoing the similar opponent pressure from the previous match, showing how Mio would solve the problem with a different strategy.
There's a view that otaku love watching interactions between beautiful girls because, in an environment that demands men be tough and silent, it compensates for the desire forcompensating for the need for delicate emotional exchange. Then, if we extend this, we might consider that "Thanks for the Match, Ojou-sama Doesn't Play Fighting Games~》also recreates for players the feeling of playing games with friends.
Because, although I previously categorized esports mindsets into four types, individual players often exhibit a mix of all four. A person might play simply to kill time, but then make friends along the way, gain a huge sense of achievement from ranking up, and at some point just purely enjoy the game. But for those who follow competitive matches orplay a lot of esports, you should know that in the end,"The split of a famous team's duo stars," or the moment we uninstall a game, is often not because the game has become less fun, but because the mindsets between friends have become misaligned.: either you think they're too noob when you want to get stronger, or when you want to chill and mess around, they suddenly get competitive. In the end, playing together becomes incredibly awkward, making it hard to continue gaming together.
The bratty girl wins the game but loses at life.
This is reflected in audience discussions about the anime: some players agree with the bratty girl's mindset, believing that if friends don't want to improve, it's no fun for anyone, so it's better to solo queue; other viewers believe thatthe senpai's mindset is the normal one, able to keep the team together and soothe the stress monsters,"sisterly esports" dynamic, which earned her popularity far exceeding her screen time.
the audience's view onThe debate between the "bratty girl" and "senpai" mindsets is essentially the clash between the "grind-to-rank-up" and "play-for-fun" paths. "Thanks for the match, this ojousama doesn't play fighting games~" actually provides an open-ended answer, much like Ping Pong The Animation, through its depiction of several key matches. Just like theWorld Fighting GamesEVO, where the Street Fighter 6 event is consistently packed with up to 7,000 attendees, includes pro players chasing glory, but also many low-ranked novices who probably didn't pay the $200+ entry fee to win the championship.
In the end, the rigorous training required by competition and the joy emphasized by gaming have an inherent, difficult-to-reconcile contradiction. However, interactions between players can resolve this contradiction, becoming the most captivating part. It turns deadly battles in top-tier arenas into mutual respect after both sides have burned their souls out,and makes encounters between ordinary players culminate in the most satisfying phrase:"Thanks for the match, I really enjoyed beating you up today."