I’m back again to talk about the next episode, Episode 2 is called: This is a Cockroach!

As a quick recap, this is the story about a socially awkward girl who feels like she’s different than everyone else and can’t have fun, but then she meets a new student at her school who pulls her into adventures which ends up with them finding their student council president working at a board game store and they start to learn about board games.

In episode #2, they are back in school and excited to try out a new game that their student council president has brought with her. But they notice that another student is staring at them. So Aya, the new student, invites him to join in playing the game of Cockroach Poker. She doesn’t realize that he’s interested in her and that’s why he was watching them, and she’s not that great at bluffing, which is needed for cockroach poker. Then, in the end, Aya reads it all wrong and thinks that he’s interested in Midori, the student council president, which confuses him even more.

Let’s talk a bit about the episode before I talk more about the game and some thoughts on that. I think that the anime still hasn’t hit it’s pace. It’s very much a slice of life anime, but it’s kind of a background slice of anime. It isn’t one that leans too heavily into the humor that you can get from a lot of slice of life anime, so you don’t have to fully follow to catch all of the jokes. This is definitely a weakness of the anime, because you can miss some of what is going on in the show, because it isn’t attention grabbing enough.

On the other hand, I think that it is doing a good job of showing off what I love about board games. It branches out and brings people who might not be together into a single group. To me, that’s one of the things that I love about board games. And I think it does a good job of showing how board games can help you process with real life things or, in the case of this episode, how real life things can influence how you play a board game, because the guy was trying really hard not to beat Aya or cause her to lose anyways, and how playing with someone you like can affect how you play a game.

Let’s talk some about Cockroach Poker. It’s a gross sounding game, and you have bugs that you are playing and lying about. Or you might be trying to tell the truth. But on a person’s turn, they are playing a bug card face down and then telling another player that it is either the bug that it is, or lying about it and saying it’s another bug. The person then either guesses that you are lying or not, or if they don’t know, they pass, look at the card and then present it to another player, either saying the same bug or a different one. But if you are caught lying or called out for telling the truth, you get the card in front of you, but if you are telling the truth and the person thought you were lying or vice-a-versa, they get the card. You are trying to not be the first person to get four of a single bug, or one of all eight bugs. This game actually seems pretty interesting to me in terms of a bluffing game. It’s a simple enough one and easy to teach. That said, I feel like bluffing games have a limited appeal, because while most people can understand the concept of bluffing, if you aren’t good at bluffing, it makes a game like this harder to play. I’m okay at bluffing, generally better after two drinks, but I don’t think this game would be everyone’s cup of tea.

Overall, I’m still thinking this anime has more that it can offer. I do really enjoy that it’s teaching about board games and bringing them into the public eye more. Now, it is anime, so it is fairly niche, but overall, I’m sure that it’ll introduce more people to the variety of games that are out there and they have done a good job of having simple but different games than people would know. I’m hoping that it can build into more of an anime with a bit of a story instead of being so separate, I know that’s not what all slice of life anime does, but I think this would benefit from it, because it isn’t quite funny enough just to have completely stand alone episodes.

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