[Senkusha]

Big Eyes Small Mouth is one of my favorite role playing systems that features characters as anime people!  It's flexible, adaptable, and fairly rules light mechanics that allow for all the chaos and craziness of physics that are needed to live within an anime setting.

There are four editions of the game available, well, five if you consider Anime 5e, which is a blending of BESM and Dungeons & Dragons 5e together.  Okay six.  We can't forget about TriStat, which the entire BESM system is based on... maybe rebranded is a better term.  Oh, and I forgot about the bastard step-child version of d20, a Dungeons & Dragons 3.5e variant.  So, that's seven versions.  Right?

As far as I know, nobody plays the first edition of BESM.  I could be wrong, but I've never known of anybody whipping out a copy of the first edition PDF saying, "Hey, let's play this!"  Even I've never played the first edition.  My BESM worship study began with the Second Revised Edition, and I fell in love with the simplicity of the game play.  Third edition was better, despite the fallout between failures of the original company and artists.  There's still some heat regarding that, and I personally don't think it will ever be resolved. But Third edition also introduced some interesting flaws that Fourth edition has since corrected, under a newly formed publishing company, and has greatly expanded the game base to include multiple accessory books.  Recently a rewrite of Second Edition has come out, titled Second Edition RETRO, and has fixed a number of issues with the original Revised edition and added more than one-hundred pages of content.

From a Game Master Perspective, I prefer using the Roll Under mechanics that Second edition uses verses the Roll Over mechanic that Third and Fourth editions use.  Especially running the game on a forum platform, it just makes game play easier and less time-lagging.  There's less back and forth communication that is needed between Players and the Game Master.  However, I really like the customization options that Third and Forth editions provide players of the game.

The character sheets are also simple.  One page, with very general and vague entry fields allows players to get into as much descriptive detail as their heart's desire.  Of course, for those of us who enjoy more specifics, there's the full character portfolio that can be purchased, which has several pages of questions to answer, so you can get into the nitty gritty of your character, relationships, and background.

Speaking of characters, one of the things I like most about this system is that it only uses three Stats: Body, Mind, and Soul.  And the system uses a Build Point mechanic to construct characters with.  So players have ultimate freedom in designing their characters.  And characters can be constructed in as little as fifteen minutes.  The bulk of what players need to know is all about the Attributes, that is what special abilities can your character do!

Finally, BESM is considered on of those games without a predefined setting.  It is meant to be used with any fictional character you would find in television, movies, books, etc.  You can play during any time period, real life, if you desired.  The openness of this game system is one reason why I keep coming back to it over and over again.