This week’s recommendations are all anime-inspired games! From Parasite to JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure, to Mew Mew Power, these games give you awesome powers, emotional turmoil, and the bonds of friendship!
Over Arms, by Rookie Jet Studio.
Over Arms is a rules-light tabletop pen-and-paper role-playing game designed to replicate media like JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure, Persona, FATE, Shaman King and more. Over Arms is set in a world where select people are able to develop an "Anima", a powerful psychic manifestation of their own psyche and will. These "Anima" are able to assist their "User" in a myriad of ways in and out of combat based on the strengths of their individually unique abilities. In Over Arms players can expect to weave stories of mystery and intrigue as they discover this new world around them and within.
Over Arms provides players with loosely structured play in order to help the table navigate different parts of the narrative, including investigation, combat and a Conclusion phase. Players will also control their Anima alongside their player character, with separate abilities and actions only available for the Anima. Character creation includes dice allocation to stats and character classes called Anima Type. An additional piece that you can include is called “The Mirage”, designed for a dungeon-crawling style of game, where you can fight strange and powerful foes. The fact that the Mirage is optional means that this ttrpg has a modular feel that allows you to determine exactly how you want to play.
If you want to check out this game before putting your money down, you can take a look at the Quickstart rules!
My Friends Are My Strength, by Peizur.
My Friends Are My Strength is a PbtA RPG where players use powers to overcome threats thrown at them, form meaningful bonds that serve as the foundation of their strength, and try to achieve a goal that means more to them than life itself.
If you like the idea of solving your problem with the power of friendship, this is the game for you. Rather than giving you pre-arranged playbooks, My Friends Are My Strength gives you the pieces and asks you to create a custom playbook for the character that you want to play. One of my favourite elements is a character element called Plot Armour. Your Protagonist gets 3 uses of Plot Armour, which allows you to turn any roll into a 12+ after the fact. Use up all of your Plot Armour? The Director is now able to end your storyline. It’s a powerful ability, so use it wisely!
There looks to be a Kickstarter in the works for this game, but for now, the Itch.io page for this game is Pay-What-You-Want.
Never Knows Best, by Fraser Simons (Samjoko Publishing).
Never Knows Best is inspired by an anime called FLCL (Fooly Cooly) and wears this influence on its sleeve. This game and its rules focus on my own interpretation of the source material, rather than attempting to emulate the anime as closely as possible.
Never Knows Best (NKB) is a roleplaying game about middle school kids facing impending adulthood, growing up, and society’s—sometimes nonsensical—expectations and obligations. It’s designed for three-five players plus a game master (GM) who facilitates the game.
While this game is still technically in ashcan edition, it certainly doesn’t look like it. The playbooks immediately communicate the emotions sitting inside each archetype, and the rulebook is just over 50 pages long. The core concept of this game is that your children have the ability to transform into robots that reflect their unique personalities and skills, which enable them in fighting monsters that represent society’s obligations. There is also still room for the table to define exactly what they’re fighting against, and how their counter-culture manifests. The rules are Powered by the Apocalypse, which I think makes so much sense considering the heavily emotional themes of this book. If you’re interested in stories about pre-teens grappling with an adult world that expects them to simply fit in, paired with giant metaphorical action scenes, this game is definitely worth checking out.
This World Summons Too Many Heroes!, by Nick Duff.
This World Summons Too Many Heroes!! is a tabletop rpg about regular people being pulled into a fantasy world to become heroes, demon lords, goblins, talking swords, or any kind of adventurer you could think of! Go on an isekai adventure in the Kingdoms of Ceria, where summoning scrolls have been scattered across the countryside and people are recklessly using them to steal people from other worlds and bring them into this one with new powers gifted to them by a goddess of reincarnation.
Built on LUMEN, this game’s main focus in power-fantasy combat, with unique abilities for each class and a modular weapon-building system that allows you to create the anime protagonist of your dreams. Your party also has a clearly defined quest - collecting summoning scrolls - that fills in the awkward part of trying to sort out what it is you actually want to do in this game, while also giving you the ability to play each session like the episode of an anime, with each summoning scroll potentially being related to a unique villain or NPC. If you love fantastical anime, you should take a look at this game.
Empty Cycle, by Rookie Jet Studio.
EMPTY CYCLE focuses on the mental and existential issues of being a teenager and growing to maturity in a boring town where there is nothing to do. EMPTY CYCLE draws heavily upon the melancholy and existential crises we face as teenagers in such a place and uses these focal points of loneliness, uncertainty, and sadness in order to craft a meaningful and action-packed journey.
Suddenly, everything changes when otherworldly beings known as "Parasites" arrive on earth and begin to affix themselves to our protagonists in order to survive. Parasites are humanoid, planet-hopping alien beings that are able to take on a new human form based on their hosts Complex, Emotions and Desires, often using an attractive appearance to persuade and influence their hosts for a mutual gain between the two life forms.
Another game by Rookie Jet Studio, Empty Cycle also gives your characters unique and fantastic powers, but places the game in a much more terrifying setting. The stakes are big, and the monsters bigger. I can see a character being forced to grapple with changes in their bodies that they might appreciate and despise at the same time.
Mew Mew Magic, by Alice V.
Mew Mew Magic is a collaborative storytelling game for 2-6 people using the No Dice, No Masters system. It is a game about young magical heroes who have to worry about school, saving the day, and their magical destinies. Inspired by shows like Sailor Moon, Tokyo Mew Mew, Winx, and Pretty Cure.
Speak directly to the young child watching Saturday morning cartoons with this game. If I remember correctly, No Dice No Masters is another term for the Belonging Outside Belonging system, by Avery Alder. This means that this game is designed to be played without dice, but also as the option to play without a GM. This means that the setting elements of the world are co-designed and co-directed by the group, rather than sitting solely on the shoulders of one person. I love the colour-themed playbooks in this game, it vividly reminds me of Tokyo Mew Mew and other similar Magical-girl themed shows I watched in my youth.
If you're interested in more Magical Girl-themed games, you can also take a look at my Magical Girl ttrpg recommendation post!
andulkaphoto
prguitarman
snowghoul
baratheonpilled
