Even if the anime landscape has been dominated by isekai stories for years now, there has been a growing number of adaptations based on popular mobile games that implement the good ol' gacha system as a way to acquire characters, equipment, and all sorts of other things

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These systems that often exploit gamblers and sunk cost fallacies also tend to come with a story that lends itself well to anime. Obviously anime can't have these aspects per se, but anime based on gacha games often still tap into that acquisition addiction in their own various ways.

10 Idolm@ster: Cinderella Girls

Gacha games and idol stories tend to lend themselves well to each other. Just stick in some sort of rhythm-based gameplay, cute idols to collect, and a large assortment of songs and they might just strike gold. One of these golden geese being Idolm@ster: Cinderella Girls.

Idolm@ster: Cinderella Girls has a rather interesting history compared to most gacha anime. Unlike others that started as gacha, Idolm@ster: Cinderella Girls was a popular rhythm and idol-raising game on PlayStation that was later adapted into anime. The gacha would then be a spin-off that would earn its own anime in the process. So while the franchise itself doesn't come from a gacha game, this particular adaptation, specifically, does.

9 A3! Season Spring And Summer

From singing idols to the idols of the stage, A3! puts a gender-flipped spin on typical idol gacha while also taking them to a new venue— a venue that puts a lot less emphasis on their singing and more on their acting chops.

Much like Idolm@ster: Cinderella Girls, A3! proves to be a collect-a-thon of pretty faces that brings together talent to create a performance. Though in this case, the gacha and anime center more around acting troupes and stage performances than most other idol anime and gacha.

8 King's Raid: Successors Of Will

It would be easier to tell that King's Raid: Successors of Will is based on the game if it used any of its plot at all. Unfortunately, it did not. Instead, the series goes with its own story that relies heavily on background building and a rather bland storyline.

While not a completely terrible anime by any degree, not many cared for it. Often critisized for being exposition-heavy to a fault, utterly generic, and, most damning of all, forgettable, it seems like King's Raid had better luck as an SRPG mobile game than an anime.

7 Tenka Hyakken: Meiji-kan e Youkoso!

Tenka Hyakken takes the tried and true anime method of taking inanimate objects and turning them into cute girls and runs with it. This one adding in a layer of beat'em up action— at a time when beat-em-up are relatively rare— and gacha dependency to make it a potent force for mobile game addiction.

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That addiction eventually made its way to anime form with the release of a series of anime shorts in October 2019. Totaling no more than 40 minutes in total, the 12 episode anime focuses on comedic slice-of-life scenes between the girls from the game.

6 Stand My Heroes: Piece Of Truth

Despite the awkward-sounding title, Stand My Heroes is an interesting mishmash of genres. Centered around a narcotics unit in a drug-filled Japan, the game combines match-three puzzle gameplay and otome game aesthetics in a hard-hitting tale of one unit's fight against drugs and crime.

The anime follows a similar story that has the main character, Rei Izumi, gather a group of specialists to join the war on drugs and handle any other drug-related crime. Presumably with much less match-three puzzle gameplay but just as many handsome men.

5 Shadowverse

It should be easy to tell that the Shadowverse is based on the mobile game. It has the same name, and it focuses on the gameplay mechanics that made the mobile card game popular, except— it looks nothing like it.

In stark contrast to the wonderfully vibrant and colorful blending of dark fantasy and anime styles that litter the original card game, this looks much more like a Saturday morning cartoon aimed at kids. Furthermore, the promotional material for the anime doesn't seem to have hide nor hair of any of the original main protagonists from the gacha game's story. So it's easy to miss that connection.

4 Mysteria Friends

Like Shadowverse (which is from the same company), Mysteria Friends is another anime where the gacha influence is easy to miss. Centered around the friendship of one human and one half-human-half-dragon princess at a magic school, the setting is far and away from the usual shenanigans that take place in the Shingeki no Bahamut universe.

Instead of focusing on a race-driven war between gods, demons, and humans that runs rampant in the game and other anime adaptations, Mysteria Friends lands itself firmly into the realm of slice-of-life fiction (it's even in the title of an episode) with only a few droplets of supernatural, fantasy, and magic action throughout.

3 Last Period: The Journey To The End Of Despair

This hysterically self-aware anime has no problem poking fun at the core tenets of gacha games, things like gacha addiction, grinding, and just how out of place some collaboration characters can look in the game and the anime— the cast of Higurashi cameos in one episode.

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Last Period is something of a hidden gem, it coming and going in spring of 2018 with little fanfare, but it's definitely worth a watch for the saccharine-inducing opening and ending alone.

2 Revue Starlight

The protagonists of Revue Starlight

Revue Starlight sounds like an idol anime, it looks like an idol anime, and it would probably smell like one too if that were at all possible. And though, while Revue Starlight may wear its skin, there is so much more beneath the surface. The game itself also mirrors this with the key gameplay. Instead of focusing on any sort of rhythm-based mechanics like most idol gacha do, the game centers around a typical turn-based RPG system.

Saying anything more from here would be a disservice to the show and a major spoiler. Just try not to be blindsided by the giraffe in episode one.

1 Princess Connect! Re: Dive

The cast of Princess Connect! Re: Dive.

It's easy to forgive not knowing that this anime is based on a popular gacha game. The game has been confined to mostly Japan since its release two years ago— and that's not counting the original Princess Connect game that started years earlier— and only recently got an anime adaptation.

Though, that won't be the case for long. The global version of the game was just released in January 2021, meaning ignorance can only be a valid excuse for so long. Especially since the game is just as charming as the anime.

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