Bokura no Ame-iro Protocol

Protocol: Rain a.k.a Our Rainy Protocol - When it rains, what can we do? Shall we play a game? I'm sure you've heard of the term eSports; it has become a global phenomenon from games like Counter Strike:GO to Fortnite, with international championships that are a high-stakes fame and fortune roundabout way of saying that this is the job of professional gamers. Well, I'm sorry to tear your gamer card: Take one look at Bokura no Ameiro Protocol, and what you see is what you get. Props to the studio for trying to create their inept imitation of Counter Strike, but it looks janky...and also programmed like you ought to know what is happening in real time. The answer is: WE DON'T! I could've just directed you to watch the greatest eSports series ever made, which hails not from Japan but from China, and you might even have heard it before: Quanzhi Gaoshou a.k.a The King's Avatar. But hold your controllers first; let us understand what this show is all about. The show, in a nutshell: It's basically Quanzhi Gaoshou, but dialled WAY down to 1 (or even a BIG FAT ZERO), incorporating what the former series had ignored to make its star stand out: its characters engrossed in the games and getting better at it. Think of whatever tropes you can use to describe this "anime": annoying, overused anime tropes such as stupid love triangles, a high school setting, anything. Whatever you can think of this show has it all. Basically, you have this character who's at the centre of the game: Shun Tokinoya. He was more than just your typical high school sophomore: he's once a pro gamer of the show's lazy-ass Counter-Strike imitation of the Xaxxerion game working at the "highly acclaimed" Team Fox One eSports cafe, that is, until his world came crashing down with an accident that ripped the family of their father and crippled their sister Mio for life. As if that's not enough, the cafe that Shun is working in is experiencing a prudent level of debt that the old team could not muster. So, together with his friends Nozomi Inatsuki, Akito Sendo, Ryusei Nagamine, and Yu Saegusa, along with Nozomi's father of Souta Inatsuki being the cafe and team owner, they establish the new wing of the Fox One team to participate together in the Xaxxerion championships to win and pay off their debt, with Shun experiencing a turning point thanks to an gamer who goes by the IGN Bakuretsu-kun, who helps him move forward in life. First off, this show...it's a mess. Shun has to take care of a lot of things in his life: his family that's now left with their mother and the crippled sister, whom the "prodigal" son wants to work hard to bring to rehabilitation, leading up to the Xaxxerion game, where the newly minted Team Fox One has to find capable members to form a team to win matches and win hard-earned prize cash. And in the process, the not-so-hidden romantic fight develops an interest in the MC: Nozomi, Yu, and even Mio (who developed a severe bro-con status). Much so in particular that Yu is a full-time actress that Shun has been crushing on for quite a while, and this gets exacerbated in the face of the fight between siblings, where Shun and Mio feel like they're each responsible for the deadly outcome. If that isn't enough, one of Shun's competitors is a literate red flag for being an IT-ceptive stalker who forces him to forge his own path and forget about the outside world. Even worse, the other characters are really one-note at best. Par for the course for Team Fox One's members, but having its two loyal fans, Seshiru Sato and Emiko Takanashi, supervise them in their playing, then what's the point of playing when the fans have a better receptacle than the gamers themselves? This just looks and sounds so wrong on all levels. I never had faith in this rather "new" old studio Quad. Their only 2 shows, from Winter 2022's Kaijin Kaihatsu-bu no Kuroitsu-san a.k.a Miss Kuroitsu from the Monster Development Department, to this Winter's infamous Inu ni Nattara Suki na Hito ni Hirowareta a.k.a My Life as Inukai-san's Dog., they are adapted decently, but still have a part to play in the downfall of the anime overall. Add this show to the studio's mediocre showing, and what else is left to salvage, giving the 30-year-old studio a chance to redeem itself? It looks like there's no one willing to. Not even the OST that has the SawanoHiroyuki[nZk] treatment is able to save the show overall. If anything, this show didn't need to have the acclaimed music composer's work here; it just tarnishes all of the effort that he's put into the show, which is just uncalled for. SennaRin's OP and somei's ED, easy skip. Trust me when I say that Bokura no Ameiro Protocol is just plain bad. Everything about it just screams amateurish or even to the point of false advertising, not to mention the game elements, which, by intentionally hiding them in the PV trailers, should have been a red flag that the anime was D.O.A. even before it began. Let this be a warning: Just skip this show; you'll be wasting your precious time.

I really liked the anime. I am a gamer myself and always wanted to become a competitive player. Hope there will be a continuation of the series. The story is unique if you like gaming and E-sport you will love it. Unfortunately, not enough is said about the characters. I would like them to give a longer backstory on all the characters in the anime. The progress in the plot is at a good pace. The art is very good and it's fitting the story. The game design was also good it looked like a game I would like to play. I really recommend anyone who likes shooting games to watch this series. The only thing that bothered me, as I wrote above, was that not enough was told about all the figures, even though there were figures that looked like they could have a very interesting life story.

So... if you are reading this review at this moment, there is a big chance that you have not watched this anime yet and are probably thinking of giving it a try after reading the synopsis or maybe after seeing the cast of voice actors or maybe you are just curious to see Ruka-chan's isekai gaming journey. For whatever reason you had thought of watching this 'Video Game' anime, just drop it. Ok, so I am going to talk about the eSports aspect of the show first. I am guessing that most of the gamers from the last decade (casuals included) have at least heard of Valorant and Counter Strike. The characters of this show play some sort of rip-off version of those two games which somehow looks way worse than the games of the PS3 era. I don't get why some of these anime are having serious issues with the CGs. Yeah, they are horrible in this one too. But bad CGs weren't the only issues. This anime has these pro eSports squads taking on each other who do not behave like actual pro gamers at all. At least I have not seen a functional gaming group acting like that. More on the characters later. You just have to know that they weren't even close to creating a realistic rip-off and a set of realistic characters who would give the intense vibe these games give in real life. They were off by a lot. Plot (3/10): Shun, a guy who has a ton of family issues, starts gaming for the second time. He has a gaming cafe where they flirt, eat, sleep, etc. He, along with his group which consists of a pedophile, a childhood friend, an isekai-d Ruka-chan and a random fat gamer. (Yeah, I am not using their names because I forgot most of them). Anyways, the way this show progresses is really messy. The whole 'Sister being mentally weak' thing makes little sense. The events of this show were hard to follow, sometimes random and sometimes unnecessary. They tried to give the main two characters some common complex scenarios to deal with which is fine but they failed miserably while doing that. And this show apparently has some romance in it. This statement is maybe partially a lie. This seems like two timid girls chasing after one oblivious guy who probably has no intention of dating either of them as this dude's only concern is his sister's illness. And they didn't even resolve that whole love triangle problem. Everyone seemed fine at the end. I forgot to mention earlier about the cringy antagonist who drinks curry every time he is on screen. Thank God he does that. Otherwise I would have forgotten his existence entirely. Other side characters were also bland and had no involvement in the story whatsoever. Overall, if you put every half-baked idea in an anime together it would be something like Protocol:Rain probably. Or it might be even better. Animation (2/10): I have spoken about the horrendous CGs earlier. Now I am going to talk about another matter which bothered me for at least a couple of episodes. The fact that they used a character (Yuu) who is almost identical to a character (Ruka Sarashina) from a totally different show just surprised me. You take off the ribbon from Ruka's hair and that's pretty much it. We have been talking about those Kirito rip-offs all these years but none of them were as close to the original as this character is. So, it lacks originality in character designs as well which adds to the failures this anime already suffers from. Audio (6/10): This anime had great voice actors working in it. All of them did their job just fine. The OP and EDs were average. Still not as bad as the other departments though. Overall (4/10): I generally do not give any anime below 5 ratings unless I am extremely annoyed. This show as a whole had nothing to offer the fans of any genre at all. It had terrible visuals, a non-existent plot, useless family drama, pointless love triangle and on top of that, it made a mockery of the 'eSports' concept while not even aiming for it which summarizes how bad this anime is. It will be some sort of miracle if it gets a second season to solve those drama issues they left undecided. As of now , this is a strong contender for the worst anime of fall 23 along with 'A Girl and her Guard Dog'. "Don’t watch this."

Um... So this show was kinda whatever. I liked the premise from what I heard of it; a guy who had a gaming addiction in the past gives up gaming entirely to take care of his family after a tragic accident takes place. But surprise surprise, he gets back into gaming in an attempt to become an MLG pro gamer that can support his family with tier 3 subs and Raid Shadow Legends sponsorships! The game in question is a generic MMO FPS, aka a game that I have NO nostalgia for. I'm sure if this is a type of game that you enjoy, you might find it fun to see it being represented in an anime like this. But constantly having to look at the mediocre graphics of the gameplay wasn't really interesting for me. I feel like they could've used this setting as an opportunity to show the characters literally within the game world, AS their characters, or something cool like that. Instead of just... people sitting in chairs and reacting to the 3D models on the tiny screen awkwardly shuffling around. The show also just doesn't care about any of its cast. It's really just the "Shun and Yu Show" from beginning to end. And even then, parts of their storyline don't even get resolved in the end. The "villain" if you can call him that is really dumb and makes NO sense whatsoever. I kiiiiinda get what they were going for, but it was just done in a very awkward and nonsensical manner, in my opinion. I get the message they were going for with the main story and I think it had potential to be very dramatic and heartrending. But it just kinda feels very awkward and uncomfortable with a lot of forced drama and conflicts. It also just feels very "Big Bang Theory-esque" in its portrayal of gamers, streamers and their fans. So don't expect much positive representation in that department, other than the obligatory "and then everything worked out with the power of friendship and gaming and they all lived happily ever after!" 5/10

About this anime... on paper it sounds interesting and fun, but the other is true. At the beginning show tries to make us care and everything other than the esport. The fact that esport and the weirdly named game aren't properly fine tuned in the anime really brings it down. Teams behave like normal players in ranked and not pros. Instead of communicating with their team they sqeak with each death and use tactics from ebay. The game itself is just bad, idk in what universe such game would be popular. Its trying to be spin on counter strike and valorant, but that's all it is. 5 playable characters which can't be picked more than once. Graphics from ps1 (maybe 2). Game has serious issues with visibility where everything is just dark or black so some colourful characters are perfectly visible but others are almost invisible. Next them trying to run away from exploding objective. Why? There is nothing even remotely close to showing us there is any sort of disadvantage to dying. Guns... oh boy weapons in the game are capable of 1 shot but sometimes they just need to hit 20 rounds I to each other. No recoil. No reload. No variety. Each character gets its own weapon and you go. Also there exists some very bad system of switching sides where 1 team with 5 won rounds and then they go attack or defend depending on what they were doing before, but!!! After that sides dont switch until one of the teams reaches 7 round wins??? (In csgo you play first to 16rounds out of 30 and you switch sides at 15th round) I just wanna know what they were thinking when they came up with that. Anyway the fact its all cgi (the game, everything else is animated properly) wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't so plain. Anime about esports and game, where both take about half of the runtime, but esport is full of 8yo kids and game was made 20 years ago. Not fun to watch as a gamer. Yes, I'm biased against the esport and game characters play. I was quite excited to watch some esports anime, but not enough effort was put in it. This show would probably work better with some battle royal if they wanted to keep expenses low. Lastly if you like games or esport, just don't watch this anime. For casual ani.e lovers it might not be bad.

Protocol Rain is an interesting show, the things it does right, it does decently well. What it does wrong though it does very, very, poorly. I will say this opinion is exacerbated by me being a counter strike player, which this anime was seemingly based on as one of the maps is a layout copy of the bomb defusal map dust 2; the tactics, gameplay, and general gamesense felt atrocious to me, while they were able to capture team dynamic, storyline, individual player thought process, associated with E-sports. It utterly fails to display player skill. TL:DR Protocol Rain feels like the delusions of grandeur of a silver who thinks they know how the game is played. I was very excited to see where this show would go when I saw that they were actually playing a game I spent thousands of hours on and I was sorely disappointed.

A good anime ruined by pointless melodrama I liked the characters and design. They all seem unique and likable. Animation, sound, voice acting and music are on or above par. No the problem is the story outside the cafe and esports. No spoilers but isn't the drama of using esports to save the cafe enough? Couldn't that be built upon? Yuu's drama could've been solved with one adult conversation and/or a few social media posts. Who wrote this? The esports portion is fine, but the rest of it feels added on for the sake of building drama, that still takes a backseat to the esport.

I like this show, and I'm writing this because I think there's a perspective a lot of the negative reviews are missing. To start with the obvious: the esports game they play. I'm not a big gamer so maybe that's why this didn't bother me. There's no denying the 3D game graphics looked bad, I personally had no problem with that. But if you're looking for a show because you want the esports version of sports anime like Blue Lock or Haikyuu then this show isn't for you. They don't go in depth on any game details or strategy and the game scenes aren't visually appealing. That said, I still think the game scenes are interesting enough to do their job in the plot if you go in with the right expectations. With that out of the way, I think this is a decent show if you watch for the characters. I won't spoil, but the main character is easy to root for and I think the decisions he is forced to make are what make the show worth watching. The plot isn't earthshattering but there are a couple different character dynamics at play that are interesting. The villain feels a little odd for this genre, but he was still a positive addition to story. The show has a solid ending imo, but I do understand the complaint that a couple of the storylines never get addressed. They are definitely secondary stories, but it was odd that the show bothered to open a couple threads if they wasn't going to close them. I don't know anything about the development of this show, but it feels like it might have left them open for a possible season 2, though the main plots are resolved so I wouldn't call it incomplete. Overall, I think this is a solid show if you want a character drama that uses esports as a backdrop to tell its story.

The story is mediocre, the drama is forced, but this is still worth watching because of: 1) Sawano Hiroyuki's opening – trust me, that OP is so good that you won't skip it even once. 2) It has reasonable girls – they're not mentally unstable, they're not trying to jump onto the MC's dick, they don't behave like assholes. Ok, now, what might cringe you out is: 1) The main antagonist – the typical "I want to play around with the MC" type, who evil (not so evil, though) just because he's evil. He doesn't have any real motivation. 2) MC's little sister – she's just so passive that it's annoying. 3) Gameplay – those 90's Doom style walking and running animations are really cringe for a "very popular and highly acclaimed" shooter game that is worth of holding a tournament. So, my rating, including the personal bias, – 7/10.

Terrible anime, with power-point slide show animation, dull, generic characters and bad "e-sports". The game that the characters are "playing" looks like a terribly 3d-rendered version of Valorant, although the maps we see are quite obviously ripped off of CS:GO. The animations from within the game are just absolutely terrible looking and the gameplay doesnt even make sense, seeing as the Vox character always happens to magically find himself behind everyone, which would be logically impossible, even if he could "see the future" The anime does try to be quite emotional with the relationship between the MC and his sister, but it just sucks. The main redeeming quality of this anime is the fact that it has a quite decent opening and ending songs.

Protocol: Rain is a good anime about competitive e-sports. It's pretty realistic, no overpowered stuff. It has a good storyline and interesting beautifully drawn characters. The characters are unique with their own personalities. However, the sister drama is a bit overstretched and almost unnecessary especially towards the end. The sister's logic is weird and I would've loved to shorten that by half. The protagonist is too timid and quiet.. or for a IGL (In Game Leader) sometimes I don't feel that he's "leading" the team. That's not necessarily bad, (more team effort?), it's just an observation. I don't like that explosion's identity was never revealed. I was hoping for it towards the end. All in all, recommended e-sports anime.

I never do reviews because it's not really my thing, but this anime made me want to give it one, it has a lot of bad things, more than anything in the matter of coherence of an fps concepts and bases, they name normal things as something difficult to achieve when the majority mediocre players can do it, even so, watching this awakened feelings of my old self, I was a professional FPS player, that's why I recommend this anime, if you are a competitive gamer or you simply love to compete in whatever this anime awakens that fervor that you carry inside at least a little