Though You May Burn to Ash (rank 4)

Publisher: Yen Press
Volumes: 6/6 (Complete, Unfinished by Author’s Death), In Print
Seinen
Genre: Sadistic Horror, Life or Death Games, Strategy, Ecchi

Summary: Ryouma lost his parents when his father murdered his mother. All he has left is his little sister, Yukina, as they live ostracized from society for being the children of a murderer. But he may lose his sister too, she’s very ill and needs an expensive operation to save her life. An operation that costs 1 Billion Yen! (about $9 Million USD) A strange woman approaches him and asks him if he is willing to risk his life for money. In exchange for playing a game, he can win any amount of money he desires. He accepts and promptly dies in a car accident, and then wakes up in Limbo in the body of a girl.

An “Angel” appears and explains the rules of the game. They must hide their identities and use fake names as anyone who’s real name is spoken aloud in Limbo dies. Each game must have players eliminated, and those who lose die for real. The final winner of the game can come back to life and keep all the money they won in the game. Can Ryouma win? Is there something more going on here?

Review: This manga is really hard for a vast majority of readers to stomach, having not one, but 3 very long graphic torture scenes. And while normal people can watch someone like James Bond getting tortured, this manga’s story appears pointlessly sadistic as the losers of this Life or Death game are killed slowly and cruelly and while appearing to be schoolgirls at that. And then, for those readers with stronger stomachs out there, there’s the fact that this manga was discontinued by the unexpected death of the author, leaving the story permanently incomplete.

This manga is actually not as pointlessly sadistic as it seems, but most readers dropped this title and never found that out. My initial impression of this manga was a hard to stomach manga about the potential for cruelty that humans can have when their life is on the line. It didn’t seem particularly deep or interesting to say that humans super desperate for money can kill for it or that people can desire to kill to save their own lives. 

But then at the end of the first game round (about halfway through volume 3) there is a big twist: the reason for the fake schoolgirl bodies and fake names is because nearly all the participants all know each other! And what’s more, Ryouma’s sister, Yukina is playing the game too! But only Yukina suspects her brother is also in the game, Ryouma doesn’t know his sister is also a player. The game then turns into hoping that both of them win the game (which conveniently allows two final winners) without killing each other, and hope for Ryouma to avoid becoming a monster as well.

The winners of the first round then play a twisted game of tag that disallows direct violence but involves a lot of trickery as only those who are “It” know that they are “It.” As well, two “Safe” players can join hands and become invincible to being tagged, but they have no direct way of knowing who is Safe and who is “It.” The game is actually really interesting as players lie about their own status in an attempt to trick others. Also, the game allows use of special skills, with each player being limited to skill uses based on the money they won in the first round. Skills include things like “Nightmare” that forces the target to relive their greatest trauma, as well as “Change” that can swap two person’s “It/Safe” status in the user’s line of sight. And etc. The game itself is pretty interesting but perhaps the most interesting was the twist at the end- as the story switches from killing others to save yourself, to asking what/who would you sacrifice your life for?

In the end it’s hard to say what was going to happen because the series was prematurely ended by the death of the mangaka, but there was revealed to be a special player, a “Messiah” who can stop the game and possibly even bring dead players back to life. I suspect this game was going to be either a contest between heaven and hell over the true nature of humans. Or possibly an elaborate punishment for a certain number of sinners using their relatives and others they care about. In the end we will never know, which is such a shame, because it ended when it was getting interesting.

Recommended: If you can stomach some extremely sadistic torture sequences, and manipulative cruel plotting of the characters, then there is some very interesting strategy in the second game, as they play a deadly game of tag. As well as some very interesting reveals of the true purpose of the game. Unfortunately this manga was prematurely ended by the death of the mangaka, so the series was only about halfway done, and it is permanently incomplete.

Age Rating: R+ This is some extremely disturbing stuff, I don’t I’ve ever seen a manga with 3 torture scenes in it before. Also has quite a LOT of graphic gore, killings, manipulation, sexual perversion and overall this isn’t something most people would enjoy. Oh and it's got a lot of female nudity and cleavage etc.

Doubt (rank 2)

Publisher: Yen Press
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.

I’m Standing on a Million Lives (rank 2.5)

Publisher: Kodansha
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

Not Lives (rank 2.5)

Publisher: Seven Seas
Volumes 10/10 (Complete), In Print
Shounen
Genre: Fighting, Videogames, Life or Death Game, Romance, Ecchi

Summary: Mikami Shigeru is crazy about video games- playing them, studying them, creating them. One day while buying research for his newest game he accidentally drops his newly bought games and when he picks them up, finds an extra disk he didn’t buy. He touches it and is warped onto the game “Not Alive”.

At first he thinks it’s just a game, but he soon finds out that his Avatar partner, a short, athletic girl named Kyouka Amamiya, actually used to be human. If a player is defeated, their Avatar partner dies and the player becomes an Avatar. They must win the game, working together, to be freed from it. Can Mikami and Kyouka survive to discover the mysteries behind the game?

Review: This series was actually way better than I expected. From the cover art it looks like a dating simulation game or an ecchi harem manga, but actually it’s a fighting strategy game. And very late into the story, it becomes a romance too.

The Major Arcs:

First Arc 1-4: Regular Game Arc
Second Arc 5-7: Cheating Arc
Third Arc: 8-10: The Final Battle

First Arc 1-4: This is the beginning Arc that introduces the rules of the game and the first few battles. The fights are interesting thanks to the fact Mikami is an expert strategist, but otherwise feels like a fairly average Shounen manga.

Second Arc 5-7: I had mixed feelings about the Cheating Arc. On one hand I really felt like the whole game concept was already interesting on its own and didn’t need to be changed up. On the other hand, it is actually all foreshadowing for the ending. In hindsight I think it was fine.

Third Arc 8-10: The Final Battle Arc was really good. The fighting strategy ended up being an impressive battle of wits, and I always like to see winning from strategy over sheer power or gimmicks.

This series really started out as kind of generic, but it started to gradually improve as it went along. The creativity in the different strategies in the fights kept me reading in the beginning, but the main characters got more compelling, and the villains weren’t bad either. And later introducing other characters working together to clear the game added an unexpected layer of depth as well.

There’s some nice character arcs for both of the main characters. Even though the game is everything Mikami has ever dreamed of, he starts to realize that games aren’t everything, and he actually starts to care about other people. And Amamiya, too- she starts off so passive and depressed that Mikami mistakes her for an AI, but she eventually recovers her will to fight and her reason for living.

Lastly, the ending was fairly good. It was not exactly what I expected, but I was happy with it. I think most will enjoy it.

Recommended: All in all, a very solid Shounen fighting manga with a lot of videogame strategy and love for videogames. There’s also a short funny extra chapter at the end of each volume with a bonus stage where they play a different genre of video games, all based on classic games.

Not Recommended: Despite the Dating Simulation game cover artwork this has almost nothing to do with Dating Sims. Also I expected Ecchi Harem, but there is only really one main couple in this series. If you’re hoping for love triangles then this will be disappointing.

Age Rating: PG13: There’s a decent amount of Ecchi artwork in this series mostly thanks to a lot of random pin up like art extras in the manga, but it's mostly pretty mild. Also a good amount of violence but not particularly graphic.