Volumes: 8/9+ (Ongoing), In Print (read:1-8)
Shounen
Genre: Videogames Are Real, Life or Death Game, Isekai, Fighting, Scifi, Fantasy
Summary: Yotsuya is a loner. He’s athletic but not in any clubs, and fairly intelligent but has no ambitions other than playing video games. He doesn’t have any friends, and never talks to anyone except his old friends from the countryside where he grew up. That all changes one day when he finds himself transported to another world, where he and two of his classmates are forced to fight for their lives.
As the game continues, he’s forced to interact with other people and confronts his own misanthropy, his strange concepts of morality and the value of his and others lives as they face difficult missions they must win- or die trying! Is this game really what it appears to be? Is there some secret purpose behind their assigned missions? And heck, how did Yotsuya get to be this warped anyway?
Review: This is a really fun and entertaining series that has a lot of interesting depth to it. The rules of the game are- it’s being run by humans from the future, and all of the game aspects are really just advanced technology. (Not a spoiler, this is from chapter 1.) The team must beat 8 rounds total to be freed from the game. Each round has its own mission objectives and they get a new team player in each round. They can all die and be revived an infinite amount of times as long as they all do not die at the same time. If they all die, then they also die in real life.
There’s a lot going on in these very dense volumes that are packed with story and action and there is zero filler. In the beginning it seems more or less like a generic fantasy world, but it’s soon revealed that the actual setting is a medieval fantasy world in crisis, and they keep getting sent to key points in this world’s history. The missions so far started with beating a Troll, then a cargo delivery and map exploration quest (with a twist). Then they had a mission to help an island conduct their ceremonial offering, and now currently the manga is in the 6th round (of 8) which is the Drug War arc.
One thing I really enjoyed about the story is that it can be read multiple ways. You can read it as a straight up fighting and quest solving story and just go along for the ride, and that’s fun. But there’s also tons of tantalizing clues to future twists that drop throughout the story, clues both about the purpose of the game they are in, oddly similar parallel societal issues between the other world and ours, plus hints of the reasons they were each picked as players. And also clues about Yotsuya’s backstory, which seems also to hint about some sort of traumatic past.
The characters are all very unusual in their own ways- but mostly Yotsuya, since he’s the main character. To his teammates he comes off as cold and calculating but in reality he does have a heart, just hides it. As a deliberate change from the normal heroic characters in Shounen manga, he seems to be the most controversial thing about this story- which is to say a lot of readers found him unlikable. Personally I found him refreshing and interesting but YMMV.
Recommended: TLDR; If you don’t mind following an overly logical “cold” protagonist, then the central story of the missions they beat are super interesting. The missions often have twists that make them challenging in multiple ways, and they all need to work together to clear each one and use all of their skills, abilities and knowledge to solve them. I wouldn’t be surprised if this gets turned into an anime later.
Age Rating: PG13: some mild nudity (when they die their naked souls float around their dead body), as well as some moderate violence (but mostly not graphic, except a couple gruesome monster deaths).
Other Works in English from the same Artist (but paired with different writers): Trinity Seven, Psycho Busters
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