Draw Two.

May 23, 2016 8:52 AM

If UNO Was an Anime (slyt)
posted by fings (19 comments total)

He didn't say "Uno!" after playing the wild draw four. That's gonna cost him!
posted by Jonathan Livengood at 8:57 AM on May 23, 2016 [6 favorites]

Shouldn't each UNO card summon some sort of elemental monster with a powered-up special attack that takes a whole episode to execute?
posted by Strange Interlude at 9:04 AM on May 23, 2016 [6 favorites]

If UNO Were* an Anime.
posted by matkline at 9:25 AM on May 23, 2016 [3 favorites]

One of the later episodes of His and Her Circumstance features an Uno game where the mother and father have a falling out over a particularly cruel play as the kids watch on philosophically. So Uno already is an anime.
posted by GenjiandProust at 9:50 AM on May 23, 2016 [3 favorites]

Chihayafuru (OP2) is a sports anime about competitive karuta.
posted by sukeban at 10:02 AM on May 23, 2016 [2 favorites]

That was really well done and funny! I like how it played the actual game straight and focused the joke on how anime tends to be very explicit and have the characters use a lot of words to describe exactly what they're thinking and feeling. Whereas American media I think expects you to read between the lines more.
posted by bleep at 10:39 AM on May 23, 2016 [3 favorites]

Needs a back-and-forth Battle of the Reverse Cards, that's when it gets the most exciting.
posted by emjaybee at 10:53 AM on May 23, 2016 [1 favorite]

Ah Hikaru no Go, all about playing go with dramatic poses. Really enjoyable!
posted by AlexiaSky at 11:20 AM on May 23, 2016 [2 favorites]

all about playing go with dramatic poses.

Hey, if you're not going to place your stones with a decisive click, why play at all? Anyway, there's a martial arts novel where the masters play go by hurling pieces with supreme force into the wall of a cave, so we've already seen the Dragonball Z version of go, although I don't recall each move bring preceded by 45 minutes of grunting and shouting.
posted by GenjiandProust at 11:31 AM on May 23, 2016

Chihayafuru yt (OP2 yt ) is a sports anime about competitive karuta.

It is also one of the best fucking anime you could ever watch.

As is Hikaru no Go.

Though I personally prefer Saki, aka lesbians playing mahjong.
posted by MartinWisse at 11:33 AM on May 23, 2016 [3 favorites]

I'm usually not big with anime, but the Chihayafuru manga has ALL THE FEELS.
posted by sukeban at 12:42 PM on May 23, 2016

If UNO Were* an Anime.

"Uno" is not soup it is a game
posted by mightygodking at 3:08 PM on May 23, 2016 [1 favorite]

That was absolutely perfect, it even had that thing where the end of the episode comes after what feels like far too short a time and now you have to wait another damn week.

Chihayafuru is fantastic. It does what this is parodying but actually pulls it off, and gets you fist pumping syllables.
posted by lucidium at 4:25 PM on May 23, 2016 [1 favorite]

Relevant tweet to the Uno-as-YuGiOh comparison.
posted by Spiced Out Calvin Coolidge at 9:51 PM on May 23, 2016

There's an anime and manga called Akagi, about blisteringly intense yakuza mahjong games -- the last arc involves the players betting their own blood. And a series by the same creators called Kaiji, involving a variety of strange gambling games. The last six or so episodes are basically just a guy sitting staring at a pachinko machine. And it is the most intense thing I've ever seen.
posted by rifflesby at 10:14 PM on May 23, 2016 [1 favorite]

Needs more mecha. And possibly a colony drop.

Everything is improved with a colony drop.
posted by Mrs. Davros at 10:43 PM on May 23, 2016

FINALLY, someone mentions Kaiji. Fun fact: in the manga, Kaiji nearly plays a game of Uno (and then declines in the next chapter - maybe Mattel got frowny; Japanese companies are a lot more relaxed about intellectual property. Fortunately, fans stand still for no corporation.)
posted by BiggerJ at 1:09 AM on May 24, 2016 [2 favorites]

Needs more mecha. And possibly a colony drop.

Naah, that isn't the kind of anime it is parodying. It's the classic shounen battle manga beat that's mocked here, which can take many forms, but stripped down is always about a young boy discovering some hidden talent inside him, raising his level through training and series of competitions or battles, with the latter increasingly drawn out as they get more important. Could be a sports series, could be something like Dragonball Z, the narrative beat stays the same.
posted by MartinWisse at 2:14 AM on May 24, 2016

But UNO was an anime.
posted by Apocryphon at 11:34 PM on May 25, 2016 [1 favorite]