“Anime Jeopardy!” is a fairly popular panel to hold at anime conventions, but many times they run into the same problems outside of the general problem of anime knowledge being an incredibly broad subject. First is that they tend to focus too much on specific shows, the second is that the questions tend to be about in-universe topics.

Just think about it: on actual “Jeopardy!” would you ever see a question about fiction like, “These are the number of windows in Dracula’s castle,” or “This man shook hands with a beggar in chapter 10 of such-and-such?” No, the questions do not reward simply having seen some shows more than others, but are more about accruing knowledge about the topics at hand and giving a few context clues.

So what would be the way to improve an “Anime Jeopardy!” panel? First, don’t assume too much about what are considered “easy” questions or “hard” ones. Second, make sure to give a fair amount of context clues as they would on actual “Jeopardy!” Third, there shouldn’t be too great a reward for people who have watched a particular show to death; that skews the results and makes it more difficult for more people to enjoy.

I’ve never run an Anime Jeopardy! panel myself so it may sound like I’m backseat panel-moderatin’, but I really think that if you follow these tips, your anime trivia panel will benefit from it, whether it’s in an existing game show format or not.