Nazotokine Review

Story: 3
Art/Animation: 5
Sound: 2
Characters: 2
Enjoyment: 2

Nazotokine is a puzzle-solving TV anime created by the studio Tengu Kobou (it’s their first work). The entire plot of the show is that office worker Tokine Amino is suddenly transported to a bizarre world known as Quizun and the only way out is to solve puzzles.

But these aren’t just any puzzles. They’re overly complicated puzzles that only use the knowledge you possess. So while it is guaranteed you can solve it, it will also bring up things you barely remember learning. Remember how you once learned a word in a foreign language? Well it’ll probably come up in a Quizun puzzle but it’ll take half of your five minute time limit to figure it out only for you to realize that you solved the first half of the puzzle, not the entire thing.

And that’s really what watching Tokine solve these puzzles is like. You don’t solve them along with her. You watch her muddle through half of it and then magically know the answer. Not to mention that these are more what I’d call brainteasers, a much more difficult, often excessively intricate word puzzles.

I’m not a fan of brainteasers or this painfully pointless show. Seriously, it does nothing. We see Tokine living her life and then bam she’s in Quizun and wearing this strange outfit that “brings out her full potential.” Oh yes. That’s the real reason she’s dressed in that skimpy outfit to solve puzzles. Truly half of this show is crappy fanservice. I swear every time Tokine solves a puzzles she orgasms. And it’s a thing that’s built into the show. After Tokine solves the puzzle she creates this weird stone and is said to be “mentally stimulated” or something weird like that. It’s creepy.

Another puzzle solver, who exists for one episode

There isn’t a good part to this show. There’s almost no music to speak of, except a forgettable opening and a boring piece of music they play over the credits. The art is good but the animation is either nonexistent or choppy as hell. I mean it too. Most of the time it looks as though they drew a character model and then put it over a background and the only thing moving is the characters mouth. The only thing truly animated are a couple shots in Quizun. These look fine but unfortunately are stock footage repeated every other episode.

Ultimately I went into Nazotokine because I like puzzles and it was a short show. What was there to lose? A lot. There was a lot to lose, like the part of my soul that died each time I watched this pointless show. I guess what I’m saying is: don’t watch Nazotokine. Just don’t. Please. Save yourself.