No Game No Life
Episode 6: Interesting
After the shenanigans of last episode, Sora and Shiro are ready to get down to business and fight for the most powerful weapon in all of Disboard: knowledge. Having discovered the long closed Elkia Library, the siblings must challenge its owner in order to gain access to the vast knowledge stored within. There’s only one problem with that. The new librarian is a Flugel, a high ranking Exceed race, and they never lose…
Let’s start with introductions first shall we? Meet Jibril, a Flugel with an insatiable appetite for knowledge. Seriously, this girl is crazy for information. It’s to the point that she openly drools over anything she considers interesting. Combined with her self imposed accent, it’s pretty easy to see that her angelic facade is only skin deep. She’s definitely an interesting character though. Throughout the episode she switches back and forth between sweet, innocent knowledge seeker and arrogant, unrelenting competitor. However whilst Sora and Shiro are prodigious at everything they attempt, Jibril still considered herself above them in terms of skill, in terms of race even. But as they say, “Pride comes before a fall.” And boy did she fall. To Jibril’s credit though, she did manages to push Sora and Shiro to the edge, further than any challenger before her. That takes skill. Glad she’s a good guy now.
Though not breaking the Ten Pledges per say, Jibril’s game of choice definitely put the odds in her favour…at least that’s what she thought. Having already revealed that she knows all 700 Exceed languages, it’s no wonder why she chose Shiritori. The rules of the game are simple (if you speak Japanese), one player states a word, the next uses the final kana of said word to begin another, thus forming a word chain. You can see where the language advantage comes in. Oh, but there’s one teeny tiny difference between this game and regular Shiritori. Should whatever you say exist within the dimension created for the game, it will disappear, however should it not, it shall be created. Naturally everything that occurs in the game has no effect on real life, so it’s basically a free pass to go nuts. So of course Sora’s first move is to summon a Hydrogen Bomb. A bold move to say the least. The rules being as they are, this episode basically amounts to one giant gambit pileup. With both sides attempting to cinch victory through wit, each player is inevitably startled and impressed when their opponent fires back…or so we think. With Sora being who he is, we of course learn that the game has been over since the first move. Knowing that he can use Japanese words to play, Sora concocts a plan to best the arrogant Flugel, in what is by far the most epic game to ever be played in any anime in history.
Beginning with an atomic explosion, the game only gets cooler and more over the top. Which is amazing in itself. The episode itself jumps forward in time a fair amount, showing that the game is far longer than what we see. It’s also partly done for comedic reasons, as a sudden scene transition has the group sitting in front of a Mayan Temple, wearing funny hats and eating dinner. God knows how that all happened. Anyway the most epic moments come when the game barrels towards its conclusion. Ever the chessmaster, Sora begins to utilise Japanese to remove a few key elements from the environment, namely Disboard’s crust and mantle. Thus when he speaks the word Lithosphere…things get chaotic. Realising that Jibril will always have a response, Sora and Shiro opt instead to silence her so that she simply can’t answer back. It’s pretty ingenious and the visuals are tremendous. I mean, the final moments of a word play game take place during the plummet to the exposed core of a planet. Let me run that past you again, they’re falling into a 6000 degree hot ball of molten metal and they keep playing! Talk about commitment. Despite her superior Flugel anatomy and knowledge, Jibril is bested at every turn, never able to steal the victory she desires. She is fighting Blank after all. What began as a relatively harmless game (I can’t believe Hydrogen Bomb was so drastically outclassed), ends with the manipulation and destruction of physics. Sora even banked on Jibril’s lack of atomic theory at one point. Though the grandest of finales was definitely the removal of Coloumb’s Force. Simply put, this caused all atoms to be attracted to each other, converging on one point and resulting in a Hypernova. Not a Supernova, a goddamn Hypernova. There’s certainly no kill like overkill.
There’s no way around it Jibril got played. Despite her self proclaimed intelligence, it would appear that she did not know the most important fact in the world of Disboard: Blank never loses. It kind of serves her right to be honest, after all she did try to employ dramatic irony in her final move. Of course Sora predicted this and kablooey went the universe. You know despite all of his social fears, Sora is insanely good at reading people, even if they’re angels. Though that may have has something to do with how *ahem* familiar he became with Jibril before their match. Sure it wasn’t exactly what Sora was expecting, but Jibiril certainly seemed to enjoy their “study” of each other…like, a lot. Fanservice also comprised a major portion of the Shiritori match but, being as they had removed “private parts” from existence at the time, the results were appropriate for all ages…that’s the excuse the series gave anyway. Though this was of course overshadowed by the freakin’ Hypernova! I cannot stress how awesome that was.
So with another opponent down, Sora and Shiro once again claim their prize: the library…and Jibril. Pledging her allegiance to Sora, she states that she has found one worthy of leading the Flugel, the only one to arise after her original Master’s death. Look’s like Blank is just continuing to move up in the world. Though doubts were raised over their place in said world. Rather than simply being brought to Disboard, Jibril states that they are being held here by a tremendous amount of power. Tet’s power. Who knows what this’ll mean when they inevitably beat him in God Chess. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see. Also, on a final note, i feel pretty bad for Steph. She didn’t exactly have a pleasant experience this episode. Chased by monsters, stripped of all of her clother and what was that last one? Oh yeah, blown up in the vacuum of space! Don’t worry though, she got better.
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