the ones within

The Ones Within is an anime adaptation of the manga series of the same name. 

It focuses on a group of lets play streamers who find themselves kidnapped in a mysterious setting and they must work with each other to get millions of millions of views by competing in various challenges based on various video games. 

Each character has a background in certain types of video games. 

There isn’t really that much high stakes in the series no form of elimination and punishment of failing is merely temporary. 

The anime has alot of left unexplained questions and elaboration on what just happened just now not helping either was the fast paced short 12 episode format too especially since this was pre-covid so they could have worked on a few more episodes to focus more on the pasts and other backstories. 

The way the episodes were structured too was as loose and random as the average article that gets published by Vice messy disjointed and fucking bizzare and not in a good way. (Thank god they went bankrupt and like the rest of the media and western entertainment better off dead and ashes turned to nothing anyways.) 

The anime especially suffered from alot of tropey moments that are predictable and the amount of comedy that was forced in every few seconds to the point it really wasn’t funny. 

Lot of the drama in the story too was just beyond pointless bickering and distractions that if you remove them and focus on the challenge itself it was more entertaining seeing the challenge be completed than suffer through the forced in drama for the sake of it. 

The characters themselves were just too tiresome and not really that engaging to really get to know and care about. 

The story themes and the backstories of the  fucked up backstories of the characters were the more interesting parts from a lore perspective its just too bad it was handled in a botched manner due to the rushed out paced and forced out comedy that was beyond pointless that we couldn’t see more focus on those themes. 

There isn’t really any form of much plot progression either or way for character development since its not a full adaptation especially with the ending going off at a really not so satisfactory gainax like type of shit that is something really prominent in anime/manga these days is total dogshit endings as a result of editorial departments wanting to milk out and rushed out schedules too that in long story short always ends in disaster with no real winners and just losers all around. 

The music of the anime was good. 

The art and the animation was really the best thing about the series. Some scenes you can really tell the stylization from the ex shaft team that worked on this like the mimic plant death for example that was really cool too look at.  

Overall this was a disaster of what could have been a good animanga series but it just had to fuck it up by trying to be as safe edgy as it could get. 

It gets 2 out of 5 stars. 

In some aspects yes i do have a certain degree of liking to the anime with its concept relating to video games and the death game twist but this was really just a disaster job that honestly would have been lot better off without the comedy and reliance of tropes.  

You really have to be a huge masochist for cringe to really enjoy this show or the latter copro shill from places like mypedolist or preddit who consooms any slop they come across no in between.