I’ve got to admit – I’m not the biggest gambler around. I don’t really like to play casino games, mostly because I’m really, really bad at them. No matter what I do I can’t seem to win at card games. I’m a dud at poker even when I think I’ve got good cards, and I’ve never won more than I’ve lost at blackjack. I do, however, quite like slots. There’s something awfully relaxing about watching the reels spin, and in the Internet age you don’t even need to go to a casino in order to play some great slots! Since I’m a huge anime fan, I recently decided to try and track down some anime slots… And boy, oh boy, was I disappointed!

As you know, there’s plenty of things you should consider when playing online slots with real money, such as RTP (Return to Player) percentage, bonus games, free spins and so on and so forth. With licensed slots, meaning slots which are based on movies, games or TV shows, there’s also the question of just how accurate the slot is to the source material. For example, if, say, there was a “Saint Seiya” slot with a romantic theme (hearts everywhere, bonus games that involve kissing girls, etc), then that wouldn’t be very faithful at all. Certain slots, such as “South Park”, “The Avengers” or “Pink Panther”, are really great at being faithful to the source material while also delivering a stellar slot experience. The problem is that slots based on anime don’t do either.

First of all, I have to say that I only managed to find two slots that are actually based on anime (there’s plenty of slots INSPIRED by the anime artstyle, but that’s not really what I’m looking for). Luckily, they’re both based on some of my favourite series, namely “Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex” and “Neon Genesis Evangelion”. Oh, and also both of them suck bad. Neither has anything to do with the source material outside of a few pictures. They have wildly inappropriate music and are very bare-bones, meaning that they lack any sort of cool bonus features or bonus games. Sure, one of them has a Free Spins bonus, but that’s something that all slots have anyway.

I’m not going to go into too much detail about why the slots are terrible, as I’m not a slots reviewer, but suffice to say they’re not that great, and I have absolutely no idea why. Both of these licenses are absolutely amazing, and I’d think that it’s literally impossible to make a bad slot based on them, but alas! It’s not like that’s some small license that the developers just didn’t treat with enough respect because nobody knows about it – both “Ghost in the Shell” and “Evangelion” are huge, especially outside of Japan. So what the hell?