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This is a series with an interesting premise and concept, numerous revelations, growing stakes up to shake two worlds collapsing into each other, ideas about the next step for humans or something, an anti-escapism message, and characters that do change throughout it. It shouldâve been a good and quite praised series, and yet itâs not, whyâs that?
Inconsistent aesthetics
The first and most superficial reason, yet true to these days, is that visually is not great. For a show about people playing a videogame, the game itself doesnât look very engaging, the avatars look plain and some are not very different from the real people using them, the setting in the game is both typical and unexplored, the artwork, backgrounds and special effects in it look outdated for a 2023 anime. The real world looks more polished than the VRMMORPG that the characters play, despite being limited to a house, a hospital, and buildings, the artwork in the real world and the backgrounds in it look more detailed and updated than the virtual world, even the real character designs are more interesting to look at than their in-game avatars, how is that possible? I swear, in this trapped in a videogame sub-genre, only .hack//Sign did the designs properly, and thatâs the oldest and one of the worse looking of them all!
Uneven atmosphere
For a series that tries hard to be a psychological thriller and at times even horror, it sure likes to mix the oldest, most simple, most generic, childish even, type of comedy, and a lighthearted adventure type of feeling during the game, and that clashes a lot with the pretense of a serious show about serious topics. Plus, just like the visuals, the in-game soundtrack and sound effects go completely unnoticed and arenât impactful enough. Again, the real world just sound better, especially when reality begins to collapse near the end of the series. Voice acting is not very impressive on either side, but works just fine for what the series needed and was going for.
Interesting concept and themes but bad writing and characterization
Now on to some real issues regarding the writing itself. Superficially, Good Night World shouldâve worked just fine, especially for our current times. Itâs about game addicts, a very relevant topic today, that play a videogame using virtual reality, so the technology is up to date, if not advanced and a tentative look into a possible future, and the main ones are all a family, so it also tackles into the internal issues of a dysfunctional family, it has an ever present and catchy element of an advanced AI developing itself to the point of becoming semi sentient, and threatening to take over the world, and a villain that thinks that thatâs whatâs needed in order for humans to take a needed next step in evolution for both the species and the world itself and that kind of stuff, eventually the two worlds and realities start to converge and collapse into each other and a lot of people die either mentally or both mentally and eventually physically, as it usually goes with this type of premises, so the scenario is both familiar and on theory exciting, as the stakes are seemingly incredibly high, one of the main characters is directly responsible for everything that happens, and having someone that tries to fix past mistakes itâs always catchy and relatable, and everyone is messed up in one way or another, which well-handled can potentially lead to powerful character development and arcs. The problem lies in the writing itself and its poor handling of everything.
Overreactions
First of all, if you thought that people on previous videogame anime took their games seriously to the point of making you cringe, think again after you watch this because this anime takes it to a whole new level. Over here there is the inceptive of money alright, and a big prize at that, but only a few characters are really interested in that, others just want to escape reality within the game, and get extremely offended when someone say that âitâs just a gameâ and take it on a personal level. Regardless of their motivations for playing the game, everyone acts like psychos, which is all well as far as showing how extreme some real people from our real world can take it, and as long as the payoff is good, but over here you never feel that thatâs the case, as most characters stay the same without changing in the least, while the only few that develop do it in a way that feels like character rewrite instead of organic development.
Weak characterization
The main characters themselves are very messed up, a shut-in nini that only cares about his unreal family and that only knows how to say shit and fuck, his brother, who is completely different in-game than he is in reality, a chronically online mother, away from the family, or so it seems, and a neglected father who is honestly a complete piece of shit and only makes matters worse. In short, they are all awful and you donât really want to follow them, at least not without knowing if they change and grow to be better by the end of it.
And as it turns out, none of them do, or at least not in a way that feels plausible. The older brother is the one with the most focus in the whole series, and the one you feel will be the hardest to develop, yet he takes most big revelations straight and changes completely by the end of the series, although in sudden ways. For such a character, he sure can adapt and grow as a person rather fast, and that is not very believable, especially for someone that never tried to fix his âshitty realityâ.
The younger brother is completely different in reality than he is in the game, and although thatâs fine and a good representation of what can happen in real life as well, once you get to know his real self you notice how he lies to others and himself, and that he seemingly is aware of everything thatâs happening. Just like his older brother, he doesnât even try to do something to fix the situation, making him a big hypocrite with an unbelievable change with no buildup throughout the series.
The father is plain awful, just how much can you mistreat your wife and kids, act completely different in-game, be responsible for numerous deaths, create something terrible without taking proper care of it, and that leads to a big catastrophe, and still be forgiven and redeemed because of âreasonsâ and âcharacter developmentâ? Well, this character sure canât, as he is consistently awful throughout the whole show, until he does the most unbelievable 180 at the end of the anime and gets the most undeserved happy catharsis Iâve seen in an anime in my whole life, man, and I thought Domain of Murder was bad at that.
And the mother is completely wasted in the anime, she is never looked into, she reappears in the real world of the series out of nowhere in her presentation scene, she reconnects with her sons just fine making it seem that the problem wasnât that big nor very difficult to solve in the first place, the anime hints at her being possibly cheated on, adding to making her a miserable character, she knows the way younger girl thatâs interested in her husband, with the connection between them never being cleared, and does absolutely nothing of importance throughout the series, nether in-game or outside of it, she is just there, not even playing the role of emotional or moral support of the family that ties it together in the end, thatâs something that the men, forced by the writing, do by themselves, so she is relegated to a character that does not do even that.
And thatâs only for the main ones, if you want to talk about the secondary characters, one is a psycho obsessed with money, others like to distress by being assholes in-game but remain completely unexplored otherwise, the main antagonist wants to erase and rebuild the whole world while being a literal kid that is not fleshed out nearly as much as needed so where the hell does he come from with that, others take their in-game role very seriously and are perfectly fine with dying for his cause without being fleshed out in the least, and there is even one that gets a lot of focus for a few episodes, that acts like a spoiled and bratty child, doing what she wants only out of a superficial and childish âloveâ for a person that she doesnât really know about and that only used to be edgy along with her, and for what? To have all of her backdrop story to be revealed out of nowhere as a completely fabricated lie before literally being erased from the story, talk about a complete waste of time and pacing and also, bro, what the hell am I watching?
Ridiculous revelations
That one particular character that turned out to be an AI is just the prime example of the numerous instances where the series wants to catch the viewer by surprise with a big revelation, or a newly introduced element and topic, a big plot twist that changes the series completely, or a cliffhanger that makes the audience impatient to watch the next episode. It was done so much to the point of having no downside to take everything in or connect with the characters, or let them be explored and developed in a way that feels organic, and above all, it was done in a way that nothing seemed anticipated in any way and everything felt like an asspull. The best way I could come up with to describe the show, is if .hack/Sign was written by JJ Abrams, a guy known for stuffing his products with numerous plot twists and plot points just to surprise the viewer without ever caring about consistency nor logic. And apparently Iâm the only one who thought that a series with broken people trying to connect with others through a videogame, something that they couldnât do in the real world with their real families, an advanced AI going crazy and affecting the real world and people, and a dead girl resurrected in a way, in the form of an AI, and being hidden in a game as one of its main objectives and reasons for its existence, with a girl falling in love with the protagonist and trying to reconnect him with reality, and anti-escapism messages, is similar to that anime, guess that shows how much it was forgotten.
Inconsistent stakes
As itâs usually the case with badly written fiction, side characters receive the worst outcomes for the sake of making it seem like there are stakes, while the main ones go practically unharmed. Secondary assholes? They get trapped in an eternal limbo of mental torture until they fucking die, but the main ones? They can find a solution that has practically no way of working, and yet it works only for them. Other unlucky side characters die when the two worlds start to collapse into each other and onto themselves? The main ones go completely unharmed with no problem, even the ones that are considered unimportant for the making of a new, better world or whatever.
Asspulls and cheesy writing
And why is that? Well, aside from being the main characters, itâs because they get to keep the super powers they have in-game in the real world, or develop even better and more broken new ones in a hurry without much explanation other than the very short and not very clear sequences that are supposed to excuse whatâs happening on screen, even though the show does spend a good chunk of time in exposition about less relevant stuff that goes nowhere, during previous episodes. In case they donât, theyâll find an improbable solution just fine, based on the power of love or some corny shit like that, donât worry about that.
Immature presentation
And of course, all of that comes accompanied with an edgy presentation. Messed up characters, everyone swearing, yelling at the top of their lungs, gory imagery, no subtlety whatsoever. For a series that wanted to explore serious themes and topics, it comes off as a pretentious edgy shocking show for teenagers instead.
Conflicting ending and messages
The finale is the typical happy one that seemed to have fixed everything with a reset of sorts, which is lazy in itself, but even then the anti-escapism messages are not well delivered, as the characters change completely in ways that donât feel organic, and if the very last scene means what it suggests, then they didnât really actually manage to escape, so what was even the point of the whole thing? It affects the main message because of that, you canât have a proper message if the character arcs which are the base for it arenât well handled, and the ending goes against and contradicts said message.
Rushed pacing
Perhaps, the result of every issue besides the presentation is the rushed pacing itself, which tried to cram a 52 chapter manga in a single season tv anime series. Pluto managed to do that but only by adapting everything into hour long episodes, at the expense of accessibility and enjoyability, while Good Night World clearly tried to do the exact opposite thing. Based on one review I read, it seems that even the source material has this issue of having a short yet very overcomplicated and overstuffed plot with poor handling, but itâs still clear that the anime tried to do a speedrun of the whole thing and threw as many revelations and plot twists per episode as it could in order to come off as exciting, engaging and addictive, and just like it happened to The God of Highschool some years ago, it backfired horribly because you can only do it so much before even most of the casual viewers are unhappy with your product.
Conclusion
As a whole, I found it to be an ambitious and semi memorable show with many interesting ideas and good intentions within a rather complex and layered plot, but poor decisions in its handling, pacing and progression, ending, tone and presentation, that ended up ruining the whole thing. Interesting to give it a try for its themes and topics, but a not worth watching complete mess as a whole. Iâd suggest watching .hack//Sign instead, if you are a veteran viewer that can stomach very talky and slow moving plots.
4/10
