The Definitive Guide to the 'Anime Game'

Anime Week continues with a complete definition of the 'anime game' an umbrella term with a myriad of sub-genres.

It’s pretty universally understood that genre definitions in the video game space are tenuous at best and downright nonsensical at worst. What makes a game an RPG in 2024 when most mainstream releases have some kind of leveling and stats system? How are young people today supposed to know what descriptors like “Metroidvania” or “Soulsborne” mean when the games that inspired those terms become increasingly obtuse and comparisons to those games are evoked as often in marketing pushes as they are in reviews?

Now, add a whole other, and equally varied, artistic medium into the mix and you get the “anime game” genre; which is colloquial nonsense! Genres are supposed to give casual consumers a general idea of what they can expect from a title, and allow critics to trace back the lineage and inspiration informing the mechanical and narrative direction of a work. An anime game could be anything from a super casual mobile game where you do gacha pulls for cute characters, or one of the crunchiest role playing games on the market.

Having such a spectrum of content bundled under a growingly common moniker isn’t helpful to anyone, so here’s a taxonomy of the different kinds of games that all fall under the “anime game” umbrella term.

Tie-In Anime Games

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Licensed, tie-in video games based on popular anime are the first kind of game that most will think of when anime games come up in conversation. Since most popular anime fall into the action-focused shonen genre, tie-in anime games tend to be fighting games. Arena fighters in particular are commonplace in this subcategory, with titles like the well-known Dragon Ball Z: Budokai Tenkaichi series and the recently released Jujutsu Kaisen: Cursed Clash being textbook examples.

Of course, there’s plenty of variance here too. Last year’s Infinity Strash: DRAGON QUEST The Adventure of Dai was a clear-cut action RPG, and the many Yu-Gi-Oh video games are, of course, digital versions of the card game. Like most licensed games, though, these titles tend to be middling and are best played by super fans of the adapted franchise, or younger fans looking for an entryway into action or fighting games.

While FighterZ is, of course an exception to this generalization, it’s not elevating the entire sub-genre and fits more cleanly into the following anime game niche.

Fighting Games

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Boy…there sure are a lot of anime games at EVO this year, huh? Between Guilty Gear -Strive-, Granblue, and Under Night In-Birth; there are a lot of games with anime visuals in the biggest fighting game tournament in the world. Of course, the EVO anime game counter ticks up further if you include titles that also have anime vibes and overt influence; like King of Fighters XV, Tekken 8, and two different Street Fighters! Even if you think those cuspier entries aren’t technically anime games, anime’s influence on the fighting game genre is palpable.

The overt presence of anime games in the fighting game genre makes sense considering how much bigger arcade gaming, the origins of fighting games, is in Japan than the US. Not to mention that martial arts tournaments, characters tying their identity to their fighting style, and settling all disagreements with martial arts are all longtime tropes in the shonen anime genre. The design of fighting games and the combat focus of most shonen anime complement each other perfectly, so these two kinds of media are sure to influence each other for years to come.

Games with Anime Aesthetics

Speaking of anime aesthetics, games that are visually similar to what’s broadly considered an anime art style are often labeled anime games, even when they have little else in common. For instance, titles like Catherine, Genshin Impact, Astral Chain, and Sakura Wars are all considered anime games because of their visuals, despite having little in common otherwise. So long as a game visually evokes an anime, it’s an anime game.

This is one of the more frustrating definitions of what people mean when they say something is an anime game, as the artistic medium of anime consists of a host of different art styles. For instance, One Piece, Monster, Panty and Stocking, and Pop Team Epic are all terrific anime; but could not be more different in both tone and presentation. It flattens and simplifies a wonderfully diverse art form to say that something is or is inspired by anime, based on if it's visually similar to a generalization of the visuals of that medium.

That being said, pretty much every game that is informed by conventions in anime does borrow visually from that medium as well; so calling something an anime game if it looks like an anime is a reasonable, broad strokes way to file a game under the umbrella term.

Visual Novel

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Despite having some of the most interesting and personal stories in the gaming medium, visual novels are often overlooked in broader gaming spaces and are generally called “anime games” derogatorily by people who don’t see the appeal of them. While they generally lack the production value and robust interactivity of more expensive AAA titles, good visual novels make up for this in the caliber of writing and direction. For instance, PARANORMASIGHT: The Seven Mysteries of Honjo is easily the best game that Square Enix put out last year and Class of 09: The Re-Up is a terrific send up of both American culture in the late 2000s and the anime fandom.

Visual novels are also an increasingly common way for new game developers to get their feet under them, with countless hobbyist level visual novels available on platforms like Itch.io. While these anime games admittedly aren’t for everyone, visual novels have long standing roots in the gaming medium and are quietly influential on more popular genres today. In fact, visual novels even have their own sub-genre which also fall underneath the anime game umbrella in dating sims.

Dating Sim

First popularized by 1994’s Tokimeki Memorial, dating sims are games that focus on building romantic relationships with characters. They’re also another kind of anime game that are often glossed over by broader gaming spaces. Which is strange, as the character affinity mechanics they spearheaded are becoming growingly common in mainstream RPGs. The social link system in Persona games is overtly lifted from dating sims, and the same is true for the romance mechanics in 2023’s GOTY, Baulder’s Gate 3. The genre is even successful enough to have games that deconstruct it, like Doki Doki Literature Club and Dream Daddy: A Dad Dating Simulator.

These games generally fall into the anime game genre because of their use of anime visual sensibilities. Some of the most popular dating sims come from developers outside of Japan, though, like Mystic Messenger by the South Korean studio Cheritz. Of course, the voyeurism and more intimate nature of the material in dating sims means that they often bleed into the next genre of anime games.

Hentai Games

Hentai, an overtly pornographic genre of anime, also has a presence in the gaming space; though most titles in this genre on platforms like Steam are best avoided shovelware. Also called adult games or eroge, hentai games fall under the anime umbrella thanks to their general use of anime aesthetics and because they delve into adult material that anime is more open to exploring than most of western televised media. There isn’t much of a mechanical throughline in this kind of game, with the gamification of adult content being enough to make a title a hentai game.
For instance, Hunie Pop famously connected match-three puzzle mechanics with raunchy dating sim elements, and Subverse blends adult vfx scenes with turn based tactics and space shoot ‘em up gameplay. Perhaps because of the more niche nature of these titles, many of them are also built using RPG Maker; like many of the titles from hentai games publisher Kagura Games. Even mostly texted based adult adventure games, like the Corruption of Champions titles, fall into this category.

While games as a medium can, and have, told moving stories that focus on human sexuality and sexual relationships; this discipline within the anime game umbrella is generally meant to titillate more than inspire.

Monster Collectors

There’s nothing inherently anime about games that focus on battling and collecting monsters, but so many of them have had related anime that monster collectors are honorary anime games. While Pokémon is the biggest mon’ game by a mile, Digimon and Monster Rancher are also sizable series in this sub-genre. Notably, Digimon has been willing to shake up its identity and explore other genres, with the recent Digimon Survive dipping its toe into visual novel conventions. Monster Rancher also had novel iterations on the monster collecting genre from its inception, with these games allowing players to spawn new monsters from real world CDs.

While other titles like TemTem and Palworld lack direct anime adaptations, there is simply too much overlap between this kind of game and the anime space to segregate the two. Even flash in the pan games like Medabots and Yokai Watch got anime back in the day! For whatever reason, monsters collectors and anime go hand in hand, making the former forever live under the anime game umbrella.

Gacha Games

Taking its name and defining mechanic from Gachapon capsule toy machines, gacha games involve players spending in-game or real currency for the chance at unlocking new equipment or character skins. Popular gacha games include titles like Fire Emblem: Heroes, Dragon Ball Z Dokkan Battle, and, once again in this piece, Genshin Impact. Often, gacha games will have their namesake mechanic built into some form of RPG loop, as a means to meter progression.

While Gachapon capsule machines have been in operation since the 1970s, gacha games have drawn a myriad of criticism in the gaming space. Most of the critique of gacha games center on how they potentially promote gambling, how pull odds can be subject to manipulation, and how there’s no way to sell or trade virtual assets like physical assets gained from gacha machines or trading card packs. Regardless of the controversy around them, gacha games are widely popular among anime fans and definitely fall under the anime game umbrella.

JRPGs

Until anime was big enough globally that tie-in anime games started releasing regularly outside of Japan, JRPGs were the de facto anime game…and now JRPGs don’t really exist anymore. While the distinction between Japanese Role Playing Games and Non-Japanese Role Playing Games was always nebulous, the classification is generally used to denote storytelling conventions and what games a title is informed by. Broadly, JRPGs see players taking over a character with an established identity and playing through their story, like in the Final Fantasy games, and in a Western RPG players create a character and make a story for themselves, like in Elder Scrolls games.

However, the proliferation of gaming is much greater now than when those distinctions were made in the 90s, and these genres are influencing each other more than ever. For instance, Elden Ring is an RPG developed by Japanese company FromSoftware and takes inspiration from western tabletop games like Magic: the Gathering and the Fighting Fantasy books. Similarly, Toby Fox’s Undertale is a western developed game that draws heavily upon JRPGs like Earthbound. So, well the term JRPG is becoming more antiquated as gaming becomes an increasingly global hobby, it’s still what many think of when they hear the term “anime game.”

Mecha

Games that make a particular type of anime playable are also considered anime games, and this is more true with Mecha games than any other genre. Mecha anime are a kind of science fiction series that are defined by the presence of giant robots and how they’re used to make observations about real world political or social issues. Note worthy mecha anime include the Gundam franchise that defined mecha fiction as we know it today, the genre subversive Neon Genesis Evangelion, and the kinetic Gurren Lagann.

Despite giant robots generally being the source of the problem in the shows they appear in, these anime also make piloting them look super cool and thus the experience is often translated into gaming. Popular mech games include the Armored Core franchise, the Virtual On series, and even the much beloved Titanfall 2. Not only would these games not exist without the anime that inform them, but they manage to capitalize on the core appeal of a specific kind of anime and that makes them some of the best examples of anime games.

Lucas DeRuyter is a freelance writer for IGN.

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