10 best anime to watch if you like Tomodachi Game
Tomodachi Game has become one of 2022's notable anime series. Its unpredictable mind games and psychological warfare between classmates have viewers hooked week after week.
It follows high schooler Katagiri Yuichi, who gets dragged into a twisted "friendship game" after his class's trip money is stolen and one of his close friends betrays him. To survive, Yuichi must participate in a series of cruel tricks and mind games set up by a mysterious organization.
If you've blitzed through Tomodachi Game’s story and crave more deadly game plots, this list will point you toward a similarly pulse-pounding series. The anime below all involve outwitting formidable enemies and overcoming ruthless challenges with lives on the line.
10 best anime to watch if you like Tomodachi Game
1. Danganronpa: The Animation
Danganronpa: The Animation brings together a group of students and forces them to play a lethal game of survival. However, the setup intensifies the tension by featuring a unique cast of teenage "ultimates" - students who are the very best at what they do. These talents range from writing to martial arts to gambling.
Trapped in Hope's Peak Academy, the students must murder a classmate and get away with it to escape. What ensues is a battle royale-style death match filled with investigation, alibis, and deadly class trials. Failure to identify the culprit means execution for all except the murderer.
This creates an environment where no one can fully trust each other. Fans of Tomodachi Game will appreciate Danganronpa's sinister mastermind Monokuma who watches over the games. The intense mind games and the threat of imminent death also parallel both series.
2. Kaiji: Ultimate Survivor
When Kaiji finds himself in severe debt to merciless loan sharks, he's given a shot at clearing his name through a series of deadly gambling tournaments in Kaiji: Ultimate Survivor. Like the high-risk games in Tomodachi Game, Kaiji's life hangs on split-second decisions.
The tense battles in Kaiji prove games don't have to be physical to be thrilling and merciless. Much of the series focuses on games of psychology and luck, whether bluffing in poker or betting on roulette wheels. Yet, at any moment, death awaits the characters if their cunning plans unravel.
Viewers who enjoy watching the strategic manipulation in Tomodachi Game will be hooked by Kaiji's high-stakes mental and emotional journey. While the games differ, both shows thrive on keeping audiences constantly uncertain if or how characters will survive seemingly impossible scenarios rigged against them.
3. Kakegurui
Kakegurui centers its high-stakes drama around a school setting. When compulsive gambler Yumeko Jabami transfers to the prestigious Hyakkaou Private Academy, she gets embroiled in the school's hierarchy determined by gambling prowess.
At Hyakkaou Private Academy, the student council serves as the casino running high roller games. Students wager money, status, and even their lives for the thrill of outmaneuvering their peers. Yumeko excels at spotting subtle psychological tells to gain an advantage.
But cold-reading opponents often backfire spectacularly. Fans of Tomodachi Game’s escalating mind games will relish Kakegurui’s gambling showdowns. Watching characters manipulate allies, deduce weaknesses, and embrace risks makes for riveting viewing.
4. Death Parade
For viewers who enjoy darker philosophical themes regarding human morality, Death Parade goes even deeper into existential territory. It is set in a mysterious bar where the recently deceased are judged for the lives they lived before getting either reincarnated or banished into the void.
Much like Tomodachi Game’s exploration of people's moral limits under pressure, Death Parade excels at getting characters to reveal their true selves through tense, psychological games like darts, bowling, and air hockey.
Backed by an ominous, foreboding atmosphere, the series excels at creating tense scenes that disturb yet keep audiences watching.
5. Future Diary
Future Diary follows 12 people forced to battle to the death in a survival game orchestrated by the mysterious deity Deus Ex Machina. Each player is armed with a unique “future diary” that reveals critical information related to their habits and actions, giving them an advantage for staying alive daily.
The majority of Future Diary focuses on the psychological chess match as diary owners predict, out-maneuver, and manipulate each other to avoid being the next victim. Future Diary's constant twists and turns as characters try to outwit each other mirror the pacing of Tomodachi Game’s unpredictable contests.
6. Classroom of the Elite
Classroom of the Elite follows Ayanokoji Kiyotaka, a student enrolled in an elite academy praised for its state-of-the-art education and excellent employment rates for its students after graduation.
However, the school has a hidden, sinister nature buried underneath. This series depicts competitions set up by shadowy higher powers, particularly between classes vying for supremacy.
With a similarly tense atmosphere filled with mysteries and scheming characters all trying to gain advantages over each other, Classroom of the Elite matches Tomodachi Game in showing how far people will go when given severe external pressures.
7. No Game No Life
While set in a more vibrant, whimsical fantasy world, No Game No Life matches Tomodachi Game’s strength for high-tension psychological battles during its many depicted games.
Exiled genius gamer siblings Sora and Shiro are whisked away to Disboard, a reality where all conflicts are settled by games. The games in No Game No Life are intricate battles of psychology, cunning, and strategy.
Fans of Tomodachi Game’s intense mind games between characters will enjoy No Game No Life’s flashy showdowns featuring elaborate plans, contingency schemes, poker-faced bluffing, and other psychological elements designed to manipulate opponents.
8. Terror in Resonance
At first glance, the gentle, playful banter between friends Nine and Twelve in Terror in Resonance seems mundane. However, the two are secretly the masterminds behind a series of terrorist attacks around Tokyo. It excels at portraying seemingly harmless characters who slowly reveal dangerous, manipulative sides.
As the series progresses, the mind games and battles of wits between the two protagonists and the police investigating their crimes take center stage. Terror in Resonance matches the gradually escalating tension of Tomodachi Game where no one knows who to trust.
9. Btooom!
Btooom! follows jobless player Ryōta Sakamoto suddenly stranded on a deserted island along with other players, gifted tools that resemble the explosive “Btooom!” video game he is a genius at.
However, Ryōta soon discovers he and the other players are forced to battle in real-life replicas of the game’s challenges. Btooom! also features normal people placed under extreme pressure to harm friends and other innocent people in cruel games of survival.
Viewers who enjoyed the psychological tension as Tomodachi Game’s characters debate moral lines they won’t cross will find similar compelling moral dilemmas as contestants in Btooom! weigh survival against human decency.
10. The Promised Neverland
Despite its fantastical setting with demons, The Promised Neverland earns its place for its clever deception and psychological cat-and-mouse games. It follows a group of gifted orphans who uncover a horrific truth about their isolated orphanage and need to secretly plan an escape before meeting a terrible fate.
Like Tomodachi Game, much of the series focuses on overt and subtle manipulation, mind games, bluffing, and outmaneuvering between the children and their sinister “Mom” who oversees the orphanage.
Audiences fond of smart, psychologically intense battles of wits will enjoy the similar cerebral battles depicted in The Promised Neverland.
Conclusion
Whether viewers crave battles of wits, exploration of dark human psychology, or tense atmospheres surrounding elaborate manipulations, the previous 10 anime all contain standout elements that should appeal to Tomodachi Game fans.
From psychological thrillers to series with heavier fantastic elements, each entry captures themes of manipulation, survival, and the complexities of human nature under pressure.
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