Volumes: 2/2 (2-in-1 Omnibuses) (Complete), In Print
Shounen
Genre: Murder Mystery, Life or Death Game, Axe Murderer Horror, Horror
Summary: Yuu is meeting up with a bunch of other players of the popular cell phone game, Rabbit Doubt, in a real life meet and greet. He accidentally bumps into his childhood friend, Mitsuki while waiting for the others. His best friend Eiji is there, plus a couple of strangers. But they all get along great and decide to go out for karaoke. While they’re having a blast, someone sneaks up on them one by one and knocks them all unconscious. They wake up in a locked room with barcodes on their bodies. What’s going on, and can they get out of it alive?
Review: This is going to be an awkward review. This manga is rather popular because it sits at the intersection of two very popular genres, which are Murder Mysteries and Life or Death Games. Both of these genres despite their popularity, don’t have many offerings, and on top of that, the mangaka is the former assistant from a very popular series known as Soul Eater, so it really stands out. But unfortunately this series has a lot of flaws. Now, of course I can’t give away too many spoilers about this in my review, but I’m gonna try to review it.
First is examining it as a Murder Mystery. Normally the pattern with murder mysteries that goes with serial killers is that each murder leaves a fresh batch of clues. Of these clues a certain number of them are real clues, and then there are fake clues that are supposed to throw you off the scent of the real killer. But the annoying thing about this manga is that (mild spoilers, highlight to read) all the clues are fake clues. There is no way to figure out the killer from the clues.
Secondly, examining this as a Life or Death game; Usually the players use the rules and the enforcement of those rules in a clever way to try and survive the game through their wits, plus sometimes manipulation of other players, teaming up, etc. It’s a fun horror genre because things can turn on a dime from winning to losing, and usually the protagonist is clever. But this… The only game element is that they all have barcodes on their bodies, and that each barcode can only be used to unlock a room once. After a room is unlocked, the barcode that unlocked it becomes the permanent key to lock or unlock that room. And then, it turns out the real killer can lock or unlock all the doors… so there’s no point to this game at all.
Also for all the fuss about the cellphone game Rabbit Doubt at the beginning, it turns out to be more or less unrelated to the actual game, and the rules of that game have no relation to the one they play. And as far as how the story feels to read, it is also very frustrating. From the very beginning none of them are intelligent enough to question whether they are being manipulated and they all end up doing more or less what the actual killer wanted. They get killed off one by one and none of them manage to figure out the identity of the killer before they are killed.
All in all, this manga was very unsatisfying to read, and while opinions differ on this, I was also not satisfied with the killer’s motives or methods at all. If I had to pick a word, I would say it felt contrived. I also did not like the ending either.
Recommended: TLDR; Personally I don’t recommend this title at all, I thought it suffered from too much contrived plot, and I didn’t find the ending reveal satisfying at all. But feel free to read it and draw your own conclusions.
Age Rating: Older Teen: some moderate amount of gore, murders
Related Series: This series has two sequels, Judge and Secret.
No comments:
Post a Comment