First Impression: Battle Game in 5 Seconds

A smug kid plays video games. Then on his way to school, a monster attacks him. He flees into a half-demolished building (?) and barely fends off of the zombie-thing. But wait! Now he gets wrecked by a creepy purple catgirl with an annoying voice. Awaking to find himself among a group of fellow prisoners, he listens as the purple catgirl explains in an annoying voice that their existence has been erased and they have each been granted one superpower. As part of this mad science experiment, the captives must fight against each other in duels. The boy uses trickery to win his first duel, since his special ability requires some finesse to be effective.

As you might guess from the summary in the previous paragraph, this show left me in a snarky mood. I didn’t feel like I got to know any of the characters, let alone have any reason to care about them or follow the story. The setup is contrived. The main character seemed like kind of a jerk. The villainess had (at least in the subbed version) an outright annoying voice that I hope not to hear again. Like, I normally prefer subs to dubs, but based on this episode, if you ignore my warnings and still watch this show, I strongly advise you to at least do yourself the favor of watching the dub. Add in some totally random moments of blood and gore, and I give Battle Game in 5 Seconds all the thumbs down.

Battle Game in 5 Seconds is airing on Crunchyroll.