Highlights
- Dave The Diver combines deep-sea exploration and running a sushi shop, offering a relaxing and addicting gameplay experience.
- The game parodies beloved anime tropes, providing humor and entertainment for gamers familiar with common anime themes.
- Characters like Bancho, Sato, Duff, and Maki display various anime tropes, showcasing the developers' creativity and attention to detail.
Dave The Diver, released June 28, 2023 by developers MINTROCKET, is a casual RPG simulation that combines deep-sea exploration and running a sushi shop. During the day, the players dive as Dave as he explores the mysterious Blue Hole. Dave is tasked with searching the depths for high-quality ingredients that he then takes to the sushi restaurant at night to serve customers and critics the highest quality premium sushi.
Besides the relaxing and addicting gameplay loop that Dave The Diver uniquely delivers, one of the main pulls of the storyline is how the developers have taken beloved anime tropes and parodied them for gamers’ enjoyment through the many memorable characters. Not only is this game wholesome, but also incredibly funny for gamers who also happen to watch anime enough to recognize common tropes used throughout the shows.
6 Bancho, The Samurai Trope
The head chef for Bancho’s Sushi, Bancho is a serious and passionate sushi chef within the game. He seeks to provide customers with premium sushi beyond traditional ingredients – including jellyfish, shark head, and more. Bancho’s cooking cutscenes fit the Samurai Trope within anime, where the character may seem unassuming at first, but once they take their blade out, they are not to be messed with.
Bancho’s knife skills resemble anime protagonists like Tanjiro from Demon Slayer, who also fits this same sword-wielding trope. The samurai trope is hilariously and skillfully used within Dave The Diver to show off how skilled of a sushi chef Bancho is and how dedicated he is to his craft.
5 Sato, The Gotta-Catch-’Em-All Trope
MINTROCKET’s innovative way to include collectibles and side quests to appeal to completionists is seen explicitly through the character Sato, whose outfit hilariously resembles an iconic anime figure known for “collecting them all.” By utilizing such a popular character, the players can immediately pick up on what the game is tasking them with: collecting digital trading cards that correspond with the creatures found in the mysterious Blue Hole.
Sato’s appearance within the game also garners a few laughs due to his slightly haggard visage and hilarious voice lines that hint at boss cards for the player to achieve. MINTROCKET’s creative way of tapping into gamers’ prior anime knowledge of Pokemon is a skillful technique.
4 Duff, The Obsessive Otaku Trope
Duff, a weapon specialist for Dave within the game, is another sharp example of playing on common anime tropes. Duff is seen with several anime girl-esque figures atop his desk, alongside a dakimakura (body pillow, which can often depict anime characters on the pillowcases) showing very obviously Duff’s motivations and interests as an otaku.
Duff also sports a pair of thin rectangular glasses that make it easy for the developers to implement the iconic glasses sheen to show moments of high passion, wit, and intelligence. Duff is also often depicted as a Japanese idol fan, from which he also draws inspiration and motivation from trying to support his favorite member with all of his heart in order to complete his tasks.
3 Duff, The Magical Girl Trope
Alongside being someone who is into idol culture, Duff makes for himself a type of magical girl through the weapons he is able to make and upgrade. The magical girl trope is widely used both seriously and playfully in anime and games, from icons such as Sailor Moon to plays on the trope in Cute High Earth Defense ClubLove!
It is no surprise that Duff is the character being used to portray the Magical Girl trope and he does so in his own slightly-less cutesy way. It is a witty method MINTROCKET uses Duff’s love for anime to parody many anime tropes, to the delight of players.
2 Maki, The Dandere Trope
Maki is an apprentice chef within the game who depicts a Dandere personality: shy and reserved and not expressing many emotions. She uses a puppet to help express herself while her features stay mostly expressionless. This is similar to a character in Ouran High School Host Club, Nekozawa, who similarly expresses themselves using an off-putting puppet.
While not all shy, reserved-type characters use puppets, Maki does fit the trope of being shy until they find a catalyst wherein they reveal some type of emotion. In Maki’s case, she tries Bancho’s food and her expression turns to awe and her puppet starts dancing a disco.
1 Critics, The Heavenly Taste Trope
Part of the inciting action for Dave’s numerous deep-diving quests are critics who doubt Bancho’s ability to make quality dishes. Dave is then tasked with finding various ingredients in order to make a life-changing dish for critics. While many food-focused anime revolve around that first heavenly bite, Food Wars is one such anime that has become renowned for depicting critics going into a state of ecstasy as a result of delicious food.
While Dave The Diver is less explicit, everyone who tries Bancho’s food enters their own state of heaven as a result of that perfect bite. For a game that tackles creating a unique sushi experience at Bancho Sushi, the parody allows players to look forward to how every critic might react to Bancho’s efforts.
Dave The Diver from MINTROCKET is currently available on Steam for macOS and Windows.