In Nomine Anime is the first In Nomine supplement published in over a year. More than 6 months back, the entire game line was declared to be on temporary hiatus, while the Powers That Be rethought its direction and future.
Is IN Anime the beginning of a whole new direction for the game line, moving into 32-page mini-supplements? Maybe. That probably depends on sales.
Is IN Anime an attempt to branch out into new styles and genres? Maybe, but most likely not. In Nomine is not GURPS, and the folks at SJGames seem fairly determined to keep things that way.
Is IN Anime an effort to get all those BESM players and other Anime fans to buy In Nomine products? Most definitely. But that's not necessarily a bad thing, given IN's relatively small following. Growth can only be good.
Is IN Anime worth its $10 price tag? Well, that depends on what you want to get out of it.
Right from the start, the book is unapologetically trying to do two things at once. First, it wants to introduce current In Nomine players to the possibility of playing in an Anime style. Secondly, it wants to introduce current Anime fans to the possibility of playing In Nomine. The reason I say it's unapologetic is that the book's 30 pages of real content (minus the index and the splash) are divided into two main sections of 15 pages each. The first, called "Anime Concepts & Stereotypes," contains stuff that must be old hat to anime fans, but is probably new to many IN players (like me). Likewise, the second major division, "In Nomine in Anime Terms," (though greatly improved during playtesting) contains adaptations of In Nomine concepts that could have been independently created by any GM with some knowledge of IN and Anime. However, for those Anime or BESM fans with no previous experience of In Nomine, it provides a framework for viewing the IN cosmology and setting.
No matter which background you come from, ultimately, you're probably going to find yourself only using half of the book, at least the majority of the time. This was somewhat apparent during the playtest (in which I participated), but is much more so now that I have the volume in my hot little hands. Unfortunately for Genevieve and SJGames, given their purposes for creating the book, I don't really see any other way it could have been written. Unfortunately for the average gamer, it means you're going to have to spend $10 for 15 pages of content.
However, that said, the content itself is full of unique flavor and has plenty of ideas that could easily be adapted to games of In Nomine, GURPS In Nomine, GURPS Mecha, the upcoming-but-not-yet-announced GURPS Anime, or BESM and other Japanimation-based games. The first section, on Anime archetypes, covered many concepts that were familiar to me ("The Mysterious Stranger," "The Brash Young Hero") just from the little Anime that I've seen, but I would never have thought to organize it in so clear a way. Honestly, with the guidelines provided here, I do feel more confident about being able to run a IN game in an Anime style, so I think the book's purpose was achieved in that way. The latter section, which basically gives thoughts on how to adapt every choir, band, Archangel, and Demon Prince for an Anime-style game, was a blast to read, just for laughs, but I would probably mangle those descriptions and redo them for my own game. If you are wondering about the purchase yourself, think about the sort of content that would be useful to you. If you are already familiar with both IN and Anime, none of the information is likely to do your campaign much good, though there are some other enjoyable aspects.
Throughout, Genevieve's prose is fun to read, even when it's going over familiar topics, and it's great to see some humor being put back into a game that has (in my opinion) taken itself far too seriously for far too long. The quotes that begin every individual section (for example, the section on Steampunk campaigns opens with "My God, doctor! If Vapula's Hypermodulated Giant Transluminal Robot isn't stopped, it will crush Notre-Dame at noon tomorrow!") tend to be very colorful, and do a great deal to set the tone. Most of the time, the writing leans towards the light and humorous, though a few words are devoted to darker campaigns. Still, mostly of the description is slanted towards bubbly-happy Anime and not the dark, violent, or post-modern stuff. Those wanting to play "Serial Experiments Lilim" or "Neon Genesis Elohitelion" will have to do some major adapting.
Also, one thing that is obviously absent from the book (and also came up in the playtest) is rules for giant robots in In Nomine. As pointed out then, it would be almost impossible to have put sufficiently complicated mecha-creation rules in this book and still have space for everything else. Besides, the In Nomine system is not very tech-friendly anyway, and any mecha rules were likely to be based on Relics with an abstraction of the combat system tacked on. Still, those excuses won't do anything for mecha enthusiasts, but look on the good side: now you can use whatever system you want to run mecha, and don't have to be limited by a hodge-podge IN system that's not designed for it.
Moving to the art, the cover is knock-down gorgeous, but the interior art is okay at best. Christopher Shy, one of the lords of Photoshop, is not really an Anime artist, after all, and his black-and-white work suffers for it. On top of that, most of the space is taken up with words, leaving only ovals and tiny squares for art to be stuck in. You get the impression that some of the work would have been more impressive if it didn't have to be shrunk down and cropped so much.
Overall, I'm not disappointed with the book, but then (because of the playtest) I knew what it was going to be like before I bought it. Hopefully, I've given you something of an idea as well, so you'll be able to make an informed buying decision.
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