PREMISECARD

TITLECARD

Getting StartedFirst, separately shuffle the decks of red Title Cards and blue Premise Cards.

The game plays in a series of rounds. In each round, one player is the Producer, who needs an anime series for the TV station to buy. The role of Producer rotates clockwise each round. Whoever’s been watching anime the

longest is the Producer first.

1. The PremiseThe Producer draws five Premise Cards, picks any two they like, and discards the rest. They then show the two selected cards to the other players. Most Premise Cards only have text, but there are 12 Character Cards, which each have an illustration of a character that players have to work into their pitches.

2. Draw CardsEach player (including the Producer) starts with a hand of 10 Title Cards. In later rounds, draw back up to 10 cards. Once per game, you can discard your entire hand and draw a new one during this phase.

3. Make TitlesEach player, including the Producer, assembles a set of up to four Title Cards to form the title of an original anime that fits the Producer’s Premise Cards. You can add simple articles (a, the, of, etc.) and change singular words into plural or vice versa, but otherwise you have to use what’s on the cards.

4. Make PitchesThe players take turns revealing their titles and giving brief pitches about their series. The pitch needs to fit the premise as defined by the cards. For shorter games, set a time limit of 30 seconds or so for each pitch. For longer games, take as long as you want to make a more elaborate pitch.

5. VoteEveryone counts to three together and points to the player whose pitch they liked best. Whoever has the most votes wins the round and gets two points. The winner keeps the two Premise Cards from that round to represent these points. If there’s a tie, each player gets one Premise Card (one point). If more than two players tie, draw extra Premise Cards first from the discard pile and then the draw deck to use as points. Put all the used Title Cards into a discard pile.

6. New RoundAt the start of each round, everybody draws back up to a hand of 10 cards. The role of Producer rotates to the right, who starts the new round at Step One. Play until everyone’s been the Producer the number of times listed below:

Number of Players

Times Each Player is the

Producer

3 4

4 3

5–6 2

7+ 1

7. End GameCount up all the cards you received as points. Whoever has the most points is the winner!

WHAT ANIME SERIES WOULD YOU CREATE?

In this creatively random party game, you’re part of Channel A’s struggle to come up with an anime series that will be the next big hit. You know what general premise the network wants, and it’s up to you to stitch together a title from random words and pitch a series that will win over the fans. Will Love Ninja Z be the hit of the season, or will the network pin its hopes on Fighting Fight Fighter EX? Play to find out!

Components: 272 Title Cards, 112  Premise Cards, 16 Blank Cards, Rules

AGES 13 & UP

3 OR MORE PLAYERS

30 MINUTES

HOW TO PLAY

TIPS• You don’t have to be a hardcore anime fan

to play this game! Sometimes it’s funnier if you don’t know what something on your card means and just make something up and run with it.

• There are a lot of different ways to approach a pitch. You could roleplay a cynical marketing exec laying out demographic data, narrate a trailer, give an elevator pitch, present a wide-eyed fan’s barely coherent summary, offer a clinical look at how it will play with the fandom, or anything else. Go with whatever style works for you.

• There are several Title Cards with things like A, Z, R, Plus, etc., which are usually used as a suffix for a subsequent season of an existing anime series. If you use one of these, you can pretend there’s already been an earlier season or two. Also, series creators usually think of the letter as standing for something.

• Character Cards are wildly open to inter-pretation. The only thing you should stick to is the character’s general appearance.

• You don’t have to use all four Title Cards in your pitch. Short titles can be really effective, especially if you want to go for something serious and poignant.

• The Title Cards make it possible to recreate actual anime titles, sometimes even by acci-dent. What effect this has depends entirely on what the other players think of it.

• A lot of anime is about high school girls fighting something. If you’re stumped on your pitch, it makes a good fallback plot.

• If the draw deck runs out, reshuffle the discard pile to make a new deck.

CREDITSCREATOR Ewen CluneyEDITOR Karen TwelvesARTIST Dawn DavisLAYOUT & GRAPHIC DESIGN

Fred Hicks & Clay GardnerART DIRECTION Fred Hicks & Ewen CluneySPECIAL THANKS Mary Rose ValentinePLAYTESTERS

Andrew Bodenhammer, Michael Bom, Chris Camareno, Grant Chen, Dave Empey, Ben Lehman, Elton Sanchez, Aaron Smith, Dave Taue, Jono Xia, Sushu Xia

BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT Chris HanrahanMARKETING MANAGER Carrie HarrisPROJECT MANAGER Sean Nittner© 2018 Ewen Cluney & Evil Hat Productions, LLC. 10125 Colesville Rd #318, Silver Spring, MD 20901. The Evil Hat Productions Logo is a trademark owned by Evil Hat Productions, LLC. All rights reserved. Manufactured in China.

VARIANTSTeam AIf you have more than six players, split into teams of two or more. Each team functions as a single player.

Card Voting Vote with a deck of playing cards rather than pointing. Deal each player a total number of cards equal to the number of other players, with one red card and the rest black. (e.g., if there are five players total, each player should have one red card and three black cards). Once everyone’s made their pitch, place one playing card facedown on top of each players’ titles. Give the red card to whoever you think did the best pitch, and give the black cards to everyone else. Whoever has the most red cards wins the round. The player keeps the Premise Cards to count as points, and everyone collects back their playing cards. Proceed to the next round as usual.

Anime by Committee Play without a Producer. Any player draws two Premise Cards each round. If most of the group thinks the Premise Cards are a dud, discard those and draw two more.

Anime Bingo Instead of drawing hands of Title Cards, lay them out in a 3x4 grid. Each player can claim a set of three cards in a straight line to use as their title, in the order the cards appear on the table. Other players can use one or more of the same cards along a different line. For larger groups, you can expand the grid to 4x4 or 4x5, but still claim sets of three cards.

Token Voting Vote with tokens such as poker chips, glass beads, pennies, etc. At the end of a round, everyone counts to three, and awards one token to the player whose pitch they liked best. Players discard their Premise cards and keep their tokens, and whoever has the most tokens at the end is the winner.

Freestyle PitchesPlay without Premise cards. Players can make up whatever they want with their Title Cards.

Freestyle ProducerInstead of drawing cards, the Producer makes up two elements for the premise.

Reverse ChannelThe Producer makes up a title, and the other players try to give a pitch that fits it.

More of the SameYour fans get hooked on your successful series and want more! If you have Premise Cards representing points, you must work at least one of them into the premise of each pitch in later rounds.

Title BlitzEach player draws two Premise Cards. They then each get a turn adding a Title Card to one title that everyone will share. Players can add a card at the beginning, at the end, or in between existing Title Cards. During the pitch phase, each player uses their two Premise Cards to pitch a series using the same title, but that’s different from the other players’ pitches.

Solitaire/Writing ExerciseDraw two Premise Cards, a hand of 10 Title Cards, and make a title. Rather than saying your pitch out loud, write it down! Share your idea online or use it as inspiration for a short story.

Social Media ChallengePost a photo online of two Premise Cards and 10 Title Cards, and challenge your followers/fellow posters to come up with a title and pitch. Choose the one you like best! Award that person a point and play as many additional rounds as you like with new Premise and Title Cards.

Fill In The Blank Anime CardsInclude the blank cards in the decks, and have some markers on hand. If you draw a blank card, you can either discard and replace it, or write in your own idea on the spot!