Bookmakers

I'll introduce you a Japanese boardgame named "Bookmakers" that will be released at the next Tokyo Game Market.

"Bookmakers" represents a battle tournament of Japanese boys' comic like Tenkaichi Budokai(World martial Arts Tournament)  in "Dragon Ball".

Players become enthusiastic readers of fictitious comic book "Bookmakers", send fan letters to the characters of the tournament to support them, and aim to make the tournament exciting for themselves.

9 characters compete in the tournament.  Each player randomly determines a favorite character.  
When your favorite character wins the match, you get VPs.  If your favorite character wins the tournament, you get farther more VPs.

There are three kinds of attributes in the character.  Fire(red) is advantageous for Plant(green), Plant is advantageous for Water(blue), and Water is advantageous for Fire. 

Each character has a rival character(upper left on the card).  When a match between your favorite character and its rival is realized, you get VPs, regardless of its result.  If it is realized later in the tournament, you get higher VPs.
After the favorite character determination, place 9 characters on the tournament board.  

Then, players guess the tournament winner and put a bookmark on the page of the corresponding character of the booklet.(The booklet is full of flavor texts.)  I associate it with "Grimoire" by Hayato Kisaragi.  

Then tournament begins.  Before each match, players can support(or interfare) the fighting characters by sending fan letters.  After sending fan letters, players guess the winner of the match and put a cube on the character card.  A player who hits the forecast gains VPs.  If only one player hits the forecast, get additional VPs.  

When the tournament ends, each player reveals tournament winner forecast.  A player who hit the forecast gets VPs.  And fan letter remaining at hand also becomes VPs.  After all, a player earned most VPs becomes an winner.

"Bookmakers" seems to be a work produced by Japanese manga culture indeed.  I almost read no manga, at most I read a board game manga "Hokago Saikoro Club(放課後さいころ倶楽部)" (I will introduce it at a later date).  But I still imagine that this work has elements to pull at heartstrings of boys' manga's favorite readers.

As a strategy of the game, it is important to make an advantageous development for the character you want to win.  Not only it is important to place in the tournament table, but also it is important to eliminate difficult enemies for the character.  And it will be advantageous if the character that you secretly forecasted to become a champion isn't found out.

On the other hand, there is some concern in this game.
If both of your favorite character and the character who anticipated to be a champion lost early, I don't say that there is no chance of winning, but it will be difficult to keep motivation for the game.  

After all, whether to enjoy this game depends on how familiar to the battle tournament of the Japanese boys' manga.  Designer Kengo Otsuka who love boys' manga made "Bookmakers" for boys' manga lovers.  In this means, it can be said to be typical indie works.