Ousama Game
King's Game

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Overall a fast and interesting "gambling" manga.

I don't really get the hate of Ousama's Game/King's Game, or I do but we'll talk about that at the end. (Btw, I'll refer to it as Ousama game, but I'll also call the character "King", when I talk about "King" It's the character in the story.)

This is a five book manga, it's not serialized, it's not broken up into chapters, it's just there to read, and in that way Ousama Game is different then most manga out there. The premise is simple, someone sends a message to an entire class demanding one student kiss ... another. From there a new message is sent every day, with a new task for one or two of the students in the class. Eventually a task is not completed and a punishment is handed out... a punishment that ends in a couple character's deaths. Thus is the core of "Ousama's Game".

As mentioned this is a relatively fast read, there's some body horror but the art is a bit weak, so rather than lingering, you'll go through the books relatively fast, however the concept is good and "What will happen next" is always in the back of your mind. Before long the game turns darker than it does and it slowly gets grimmer.

By the end there's a somewhat satisfying ending, though I will say I heavily appreciate that this didn't have a "Friendship beats all" type ending, which is refereshing, for a dark gritty manga, it's good that the manga doesn't cheapen it's story by relying on that overused trope. It's one of my least favorites, and in that Ousama's Game excels in doing something different. It's not perfect, some people might want a whodunnit type approach, but that's not really needed here.

However... I did mention that I understood some of the hate that Ousama's Game gets. I feel like there's three camps.

The first is people who simply don't like the art or manga, and find it cheap, and admittedly it is. This is not a major high class series, it's body horror I could look at even though I hate body horror, most of the characters are a bit generic (we'll dive deeper into that in a moment). However, this is a B-tier effort, it's written almost like a "trashy romance novel". It's popcorn and in that it promises "interesting dares and a fast pace where people will die. The thing is, that's what it delivers, it never said intended to rival the deepest and longest running manga, it's just fun, which is why it's based off a cheap cellphone novel.

The second issue is a lot of people seem to complain about Ousama's Game, but talk about the anime, admitedly from what I hear the anime is particularly terrible, trying to combine two stories into a single season, and knowing that, I doubt it could work. This is a fast paced story, but it's self contained and trying to repeat it or double the situations never would work. This came first, but also this is a standalone medium. This isn't Harry Potter and The Cursed Child, where you're intended to have read the previous books and them changing characters can be a problem to fans, this is Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, the movie version. You don't need to complain or necessarily compare it to the the book, the anime, the other movie, or anything else. As a standalone property this is fine.

The third and probably the only criticism I can agree with is that. A LOT happens in this story, and the pace of the manga really wants to get to the next major moment as fast as possible. I appreciate this a lot, because brevity is wit. In fact, I heavily agree with that in this case, You don't need 20 pages of whincing to know a character is sad that someone died that he was trying to protect. You know he doesn't like it. The main character is the core of this manga, and a lot of the focus of the story is on him as he deals with the orders King gives, and King's Game.

However (I'm saying that a lot in this review), That's not to say the speed is always good. There's a rather major moment involving something that has to be done but it's devistating. There's a couple other awful, awful things that happen. The problem is, the characters move on too quickly, a little bit of a reflection on this, wouldn't have hurt. It might have made the story go for an extra chapter, but there's moment to really "breath" in this book, the characters have to do awful things, and rather than see them react they almost immediately turn around and are put into another horrible situation.

I am being contradictory, I've praised the speed, but said the book isn't taking any time to reflect on matters, and I think there's a middle ground. This didn't have to be bloated, but certain actions are treated like they can be brushed off, when they shouldn't be. The book's speed is appreciated in most things, but while sleeping on the story here, I do have to admit there's a couple pieces that needed to be fleshed out more, and I'm intentionally trying to avoid talking about it. In fact I moved my score from an 8 to a 7 due to how one relationship is never explored.

Ultimately this becomes a breakneck paced manga, focused on a class of kids put in horrible situations, and done so fast almost none of them develop characters, but I mostly accept that because I enjoyed this as a trashy manga. Not going to say it's the same as any other manga that gets the same score, but I also can say it's more likely I'll re-read this than another 200-300 chapter manga recieveing the same score, and I'm even considering reading others in the series.

Again, that's probably where I might "turn" on the franchise, but this is a single manga, and the first of the entire series, and because of that, I'm probably a lot more lenient.

Ousama Game is ambitious. It strives to be character-driven. And this clearly becomes challenging as we delve further into the story. With the mysterious entity "Ousama" being the prime antagonist that is responsible for the story to continue on as it is, the manga often tries desperately to keep the story intense by having melodramatic conflicts between characters, sporadic killings and the question "who is the Ousama?" hang perpetually over the heads of the readers. The story handles the first two issues surprisingly well and unfortunately, disappoints with the latter (which is the main complaint of most readers as well).

Ousama Game involves a variation ... of the King's Game, except this time, the "King" reigns for the rest of the story and the people who're chosen for the challenges are revealed right off the bat. As usual, characters lose their shit and the inevitable philosophical soliloquies of "who can I trust?" and "who are the real monsters" begins to stir as the bodies start dropping. As far as a survival horror goes, its story runs pretty much the way you'd expect. As I mentioned before, there is a mystery as to who the "Ousama" is but it's disappointingly resolved with some pseudoscience. I'll go as far as to say that the resolution is its weakest link.

What Ousama Game surprised me with was its set of characters. They're students who behave like students, which is what mainly makes the manga so exciting to read. Their actions are reasonable given the context and even so, the manga still manages to be completely unpredictable at times because that's really what humans are like in the face of their impending deaths. They're irrational, fearful and desperate. Unpredictable. Even the MC himself is not an exception, which is something I'm quite happy with. As a result, their emotions feel real. They feel real. This is something that I think is integral in making a survival horror work and Ousama Game succeeds beautifully in that regard.

The art is crisp and clean. Being someone who's been drawing for over 7 years now, I'd say it's as good as your average shounen manga, which is - pretty good. The artist is able to depict grotesque scenes well without making it look too awkward, which is more than what I can say for most survival horrors.

Ousama Game is a refreshing read that falls short of what it wants to be. It's not clever and not all that enlightening. However, the people and the story itself is gritty and unforgiving.

I've read a lot of survival horror mangas and this one is pretty shitty. Mostly because the characters are weak, the art is messy, the premise is cliche, and the plot itself is poorly developed not to mention the stupid ending that didn't even seem like an ending.

To start with, I can barely distinguish the side characters from one another because they're drawn basically the same. None of the characters were compelling and we didn't really get any background or context for any of them either including the protagonist. Relationships were unclear too, at the start it seemed like Nobuaki and Chiemi were just childhood ... friends who secretly liked each other but at some point, people started referring to them as girlfriend and boyfriend. None of the other characters stood out either, I can barely remember their names except for Ria, who was probably the only character to have actual depth and personality aside from the protagonist, Nobuaki. In the end, I couldn't really empathize with any of the characters so none of the deaths were compelling or emotional at all.

The premise is a typical death game but the rules and structure of the game are so inconsistent and towards the end, it was annoying how random it became. The challenges also became repetitive and just plain boring, there was hardly any tension or fear factor. It started off with sexual challenges before moving on to violence and then the rules all of a sudden just become vague and senseless. The author doesn't really fully explore the premise, It definitely had more potential that wasn't tapped into. We never even get a believable explanation and the resolution is both unsatisfying and unclear. So the end is shitty because it was incredibly rushed and barely made any sense.

I would've rated this much lower but I can admit that some scenes took me by surprise, mainly the one with Nobuaki, Chiemi, and Naoya (you'll know what I mean if you've read it). But aside from that nothing else really stood out, none of the characters, none of the deaths, and I can't even explain what the game is really about because the manga doesn't do a good job of explaining it.