MyAnimeList.net

Ousama Game
King's Game
Edit

What would you like to edit?

Add to My List

Add to Favorites

Alternative Titles

Japanese: 王様ゲーム

Information

Type: Manga

Volumes: 5

Chapters: 25

Status: Finished

Published: 2010 to 2012

Genres: Drama, Horror, Mystery, Supernatural

Themes: Gore, School

Serialization: E★Everystar

Authors: Renda, Hitori (Art), Kanazawa, Nobuaki (Story)

Statistics

Score: 6.37¹ (scored by 20,311 users)

¹ indicates a weighted score.

Ranked: #17627²

² based on the top manga page. Please note that 'R18+' titles are excluded.

Popularity: #464

Members: 39,752

Favorites: 583

Resources

Write a Review
Reviews

Filtered Results: 20 / 21

Sort

Suggested
Most voted
Newest
Oldest

Filter Preliminary Spoiler

Dec 2, 2013

bunny1ov3r

Mixed Feelings

First of all, Ousama Game is a manga title that is not of yet completely translated in English. The translation group only did 10 chapters. I had the "privilege" of reading this manga in Chinese, which had complete translations.

Having completed this manga, I don't blame the English translators for abandoning this manga. Not one bit.

Granted. This manga starts with an amazing set up. A class of high-school students receive mysterious instructions to participate in the King's Game. If somebody does not do as told, he will die a gruesome death. Until chapter 10, everything looks great. The artwork is cutesy, the characters seem fine, ...

Nov 26, 2014

Vaniltea

Not Recommended

One day, the students of a high school class all recieve the same text message and suddenly get caught up in a dangerous game. Everyday, an order is issued, and if it is not obeyed within 24 hours, the student who was given said order will die.

Ousama Game could have been an average, but somewhat enjoyable, 'deadly game' manga among many others. It is, however, not the case, and shows perfectly how a story that starts in a mediocre way can end up being a catastrophe.

Story:

Ousama Game doesn't have a particularly impressive start. The first orders given by the Ousama mostly revolve around kissing or ... touching people of the opposite sex, which makes it hard to take the story seriously, even though people are actually dying because of it.

But as silly as the story may seem, it still manages to catch the interest. Almost as soon as the manga starts, we are confronted to the mysteries of the Ousama Game. Who is behind it? Why is it happening? How? Considering the fact that the story is not really interesting at that point, it is probably the desire to see those questions answered that keeps us reading.

However, as the story starts becoming more serious, it feels like we are only getting farther from the answers to the mystery. And this is where a scenario that was already unsteady completely falls apart. The revelations, as well as the final plot twist, make absolutely no sense, especially when taking into consideration all the things that happened previously in the story. In conclusion, after finishing reading Ousama Game, you are left with a feeling of incomprehension, as you wonder whether the author actually thought about his story before writing it.

Characters:

This manga does have a large cast of characters if we include all the students of the class. Of course, some of them are never really developped, but those who are are mostly uninteresting or annoying.

This seond category of characters seems to be divided into two sub-categories: the 'nice' characters and the 'bad' characters. There isn't really much room for normal people, in fact, the characters being either selfless people who are ready to die for their friends anytime, or selfish and cruel people who would probably let everyone die if it could allow them to survive.

In other words, no one is really likable, and most characters have motivations that are either not explained or simply not understandable.

Art:

The art is mostly average, with some inconsistency in its quality. While it is sometimes quite good, it often seems to become a bit messy in certain parts, especially when the characters have more intense facial expressions.

Enjoyment:

The story wasn't particularly enjoyable from the start, and if it tried to become more interesting towards the middle, it was to eventually end up falling into the abyss of stupidity and nonsense. As short as this manga may be, I would not recommend it, even if you enjoy this genre.

Jan 24, 2015

liddymae71

Recommended

Ousama Game!

Story: 7

A group of school students are given orders which they must complete within 24 hours. At first, the orders are childish like kissing each other and licking feet (foot fetish much!?), although it soon goes downhill for the students as the orders become increasingly harsh and violent. What I really like about the story is it's unpredictability; you never know what order is coming next and with the manga constantly giving slight hints about the true identity of Ousama, you'll want to know what happens next. Will the students kill one another to betray their friends? Or sacrifice themselves to save another friend? ...

Aug 3, 2015

soarz

Mixed Feelings

I stumbled upon this manga through the Youtuber "The Anime Man", and I kind of regret reading it.

Story 5/10

The story starts off being kind of childish, with silly orders, although the orders quickly become difficult to follow. While the story does become interesting at some points, sometimes there are lulls, in which the same information is repeated over and over again, which can get really annoying. The pacing is just awful, since the manga starts off at an extremely slow pace, but in the latter chapters, a lot is happening at once, almost too much for a reader to really follow. I also found ...

Feb 2, 2017

Paraturtle

Not Recommended

I want to preface by saying I received Ousama Game from a Secret Santa during 2016's Christmas event. I am so thankful and it feels so great to know that someone looked at the things I enjoy (horror manga!) and picked something out for me. I know my score shows that I found it rather foul and tasteless but I am still grateful that someone offered this to me. It means a lot to me, even if I think this manga was, well, real bad.

So, without further ado~

Story:
Really quite horrid. It's exploitative, abusive, and offers nothing in return to the reader. It's constant abuse on ...

Jul 24, 2014

ssoui

Recommended

When I got the first two volumes of this manga, I was honestly so addicted to it.
It was so great that I didn't want to stop reading, but that time, only these two volumes were released so I had to wait.

Waiting for a new Volume was really hard. So of couse, I was the happiest person ever when finally, the last volume came out.
The last chapters started out very good, just like the ones before.

The end, however, was a total disappointment. I had expected everything, but this was a bit too..crazy.

Still, the manga is pretty awesome. A very good manga for all splatter ...

Apr 29, 2018

Masshiroi

Recommended

Okay I might be in the oposite club for overall hated Ousama Game, but I´m kinda used to that already. Personally I really enjoyed Ousama Game manga. I binged it during waiting for anime.
The story is way better than in the anime, not to mention tension and action. Nobuaki is better portrayed, even enjoyable and when his part in the story ended, I felt he was missing in it. I do understand that lot of people don´t like Ousama Game because of anime, but manga seems like a different and better story in my eyes. Art was nice. And ending, ...

Dec 3, 2016

amerphose

Mixed Feelings

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 ...

Jul 7, 2014

HatefulEnjay

Mixed Feelings

If I had to sum the whole thing up, I'd say it's "a pretty good journey to get to a really, really, really bad destination." The ride to the ending is pretty entertaining and makes you wonder exactly what's going on. Then you actually get to the ending, and not only does it make absolutely no sense, and not only does it feel like it was made up on the spot, but several things in the story make much less sense in hindsight than they did before.

The ending largely renders everything that happens in the story pointless, pointless enough that if I'd known what the ...

Mar 23, 2016

tanshiyu

Recommended

First of all, I want to say that English is not my native language so I may have a lot of grammatical error throughout the review, please bear with me.

This book started off great, really great. The story was interesting, the characters are okay, the realism in this manga is pretty good. It depicts quite well what people do when they are in fear and how desperate they are when encounter death.

Now, the manga do give you goosebumps at many times, it really questions people whether what the characters in the manga are doing is correct or wrong, say if the order was to let ...

Dec 13, 2016

Jacob_Chimera

Not Recommended

I actually read this story's prequel (Ousama Game: Kigen) before I read this. The prequel was fairly average, so I had hoped that its predecessor would have been about the same or perhaps a bit better. Sadly, I was disappointed.

The story follows a high school class as they participate in "The Ousama's (King's) Game". The Ousama gives an order, the class obeys or else suffers the consequences. While this setup seems promising, the execution is rather lack luster. The early orders are very immature, involving sexual activities between the boys and girls of the class. While I have nothing against sex in my manga and ...

Sep 26, 2017

MaiIsMe1

Not Recommended

This is honestly one of the worst things I've ever read. A youtuber I like recommended it, so I read it in a few hours.

Story
It starts out interesting, but quickly just turn into nonsense. There is no real objective besides surviving, then suddenly at the very end there is an info dump with a very unsatisfying ending.

Art
The art was really good, and one of the only things that I actually liked. It was slightly cutesy, which I thought was a good contrast to the situation. I also liked that they didn't add pointless fanservice, even though they could have at times.

Characters
The worst part. ...

Apr 3, 2016

711nono

Mixed Feelings

The concept of survival has been heavily explored in nearly every form of media imaginable. A product of this concept are games that pit people against each other such as the hunger games and Battle Royale. However Ousama Game is a bit different. Despite Ousama Game having great promise, it clearly spiraled into a disappointing mess to be perfectly honest with you.

The Story of Osama game is easily the best part. It exentuates intrigue in the reader and you definitely want to know more. The author also does a great job of actually telling the story and building up great suspense. This is ... expected due to this being based off a series of Light novels. The central mystery to Ousama game was quite well executed and I wanted to know more about who the King was and why this game is being played. The transition between the light hearted beginning of the story and how it spirals into something much more sinister was well handled.

However unfortunately this great story is hardly supported by the cast of characters that are present in this manga. The characters were outright bad in this story. For a class of 32 people being present I only genuinely liked one of these people. However in one way the characters triumphed was there realistic relations to each other. However this was literally their only redeeming qualities and it seems just like in Doubt( though probably worse than doubt) they just seemed like devices used to carry out the events of the plot. There's no depth no development they're all just one dimensional.

Our main protagonist was probably the most boring one out of all of them. He's the standard cliche: I want to save everyone without everyone getting hurt. He's also a bit of a Mary Sue and none of the characters including him take the initiative to try to solve the Osama game. The only interesting character was probably Ria. Maybe it was because of her mysterious and aura and the fact that we got some background detail on her. And do you know what the worst part is? So many of these characters died and I couldn't even care less.

The art in Ousama game improves as the series goes on due to its 5 volume length. Many frames were reasonably detailed. However I'm not really a fan of the character designs and this was especially apparent during the first half of the series. The death of the characters
were also well drawn. The ending to Osama game was decent but there is a sequel which has not been translated to English yet unfortunately.

In the end Ousama game is a manga that went from something good to only an ok manga. It kind of fell under the weight of its concept and the characters were very bland. However I can't deny the great story and the fair artwork and also the fact that I read this in two sittings due to the heavy suspense. So read this if your interested it's a fine read but certainly not the best out there.

Jan 19, 2020

64912

Not Recommended

Preliminary (13/25 chp)

I would like to preface this review by saying that I haven't finished this manga, nor do I ever intend to, but after looking at other people's reviews I doubt that the ending would change my opinion of the story at all.

Story: 2

The story for Ousama Game is simplistic, which isn't necessarily bad but doesn't help it much. A whole class of students begins to get texts from someone named "Ousama" that tells them to do things, but the tasks quickly escalate from juvenile things such as kissing and licking another's foot (for some reason...) to telling other students to die. This could be an ... interesting study of group psychology, but it's handled poorly. One point that I noticed immediately was the lack of any intervention from authorities. Other series with similar plots explain this by either having it set in an isolated area where no one could possibly help or have it so getting authorities involved would be in direct detriment to the contestants to the game. These situations don't apply to Ousama Game, and as the series progresses it only becomes more silly that police nor the school administration haven't taken action. I know that Japanese school systems don't like to touch the matters of suicide, but when multiple students in a class have all died in a short period of time, with almost all of them being "suicide", you'd think that someone would say "Hey, wait a minute, something's not right here.". Later on, some students say that they've tried telling the police and have gotten no response, but at this point it just seems unrealistic and contrieved, which totally broke my immersion in the story. Also, as the story continues past the initial mystery, more and more plot holes open up and make everything confusing to the point of it being unenjoyable.

Art: 6

I enjoyed the art style, and there weren't many glaring flaws in the art. However, it isn't really special. Not much to say.

Character: 1

I have never experienced such an unlikeable cast of characters that do not seem to serve any other purpose than to push the plot forwards, even if it seems wholely irrational. Part of this is intentional, because a murder game like this would understandedly stress people out and cause them to act weirdly, but there comes a point where it passes realistic stress and falls into the pit of absurdity. The only character that I came remotely close to liking was Daisuke, and that's probably only because he died before he could become annoying.

Enjoyment: 10

Don't get me wrong, I wholly dislike this manga. However, reading it is such a wild ride of things that make no sense that it's almost a comedy. I may not have enjoyed it for the reasons the author intended, but goddamn some of this was unintentionally funny. If you want something to read with friends on a call, this is absolutely it.

Overall: 3

I'm sure others could find this enjoyable unironically, but I didn't. I wouldn't recommend it unless you either are willing to look past major plotholes or are looking for something that's so bad it's looped right around to being a fucking comedic masterpiece to read with friends.

Aug 8, 2021

nat385

Not Recommended

This manga was recommended to me by a YouTuber. You can probably guess who it is: TheAnimeMan.

Summary: Interesting premise, poor execution, terrible characters, good art.

The story premise was simple but compelling. It's almost like the equivalent of "Truth or Dare" with astronomically elevated stakes. Although the premise is good, the execution was poor. It took off but didn't know how to land right and belly flopped into the pool. But actually, it started going down after the midpoint.

The characters were extremely bland, and while it wouldn't be easy to build characters to get attached to in this kind of series, I felt as ...

Dec 9, 2017

aleenya

Not Recommended

Well then. That's three hours of my life I'll never get back.

I've always had a soft spot for the survival game trope. Battle Royale, Hunger Games, hell, even Mirai Nikki - for all its ridiculousness and flaws - managed to keep me entertained right until the very end. There's something wholeheartedly fun about the idea of a group of people pit against each other in psychological/physical warfare to the death, nor is it a very hard thing to write and write well; so why is it that Ousama Game failed?

It all boils down to one single fact: Ousama Game takes itself way too seriously. ...

There's this desperation interwoven within the writing and art - a plea of "this manga is saying something deep about society and life...I don't know what, but something at least!" From the bloated cast of characters that go from one extreme emotion to the other to the exaggerated screaming expressions you'll become desensitized to due to overuse; all of this, and more form the foundations for a manga that will have you rolling your eyes more often than not.

It's stupid. I understand that's a pretty blunt thing to say, but that really is the only word to describe it. And I'm not above enjoying ridiculous entertainment for the sake of ridiculous entertainment; I love turning my brain off, chilling back, and watching something dumb to end the day on. But this kind of thing only works when there's a self-awareness contained within the work that keeps your logic from jumping in to ruin the fun. Here, Ousama Game is so convinced it's telling an epic survival tale that its shock value runs dry past the first two chapters, and it ends up tangled in too many threads and convoluted twists that result in an ending that just...stops.

Yeah. It just finishes. As if even the author can't wait to be done with this work.

In the end, I give Ousama Game a

3.3/10

POOR

With a recommendation to Skip It

Look, there's better survival game material out there than this. Better stuff that at least treats its audience with respect, or has even the slightest hint of subtlety to complement its art and writing. Reading Ousama Game was the equivalent to being beaten over the head repeatedly with a spiked hammer: I get it, people can be assholes when they find out they're going to die, but you're going to have to try harder than over the top constipation faces and one-note characters to get your point across.

GOOD; Only the most hardcore of survival game fans will find anything good here. It has its brief moments of entertainment and unintentional hilarity, but it's not worth the painful ride to get there.

MIXED;; The art is serviceable, but its dragged down by just how over the top it becomes. Be prepared for a dozen panels of people screaming with spittle hanging off their lips. After the first two times, it becomes funny, as opposed to shocking. Could have been a cool idea, if executed right.

BAD;; Bloated cast that fluctuates between 'angelic' and 'asshole.' Ending is not only rushed, but confusing and downright "whaaaat?" Poor writing that garners no sympathy for its characters.

Dec 22, 2017

Meatbag42

Not Recommended

Preliminary (20/25 chp)

I loved GANTZ, Berserk and Battle Royale. Horror/torture porn/emotional roller coasters and gore fests can be interesting and worth watching. This isn't. It's not going to become hentai or titillating. There's no payoff. The gimmick is pointless and there's no explanation.

Story: 1

The synopsis says it all. Kid's dying. There were a lot of creative things they could have done with punishments, the backstory could have gone somewhere, the way it plays out could pay off....but it doesn't. And the last few seconds confirm that the entire story is a gimmick: there's no story, just a lot ...

Jan 9, 2018

anime_chibi1290

Recommended

I found Ousama Game to be quite entertaining. It's not a brand new idea, like it's truly your run of the mill "Follow my instructions or else", "We have to find the bad guy" kind of stories, but it was executed well enough to keep me wondering "Who is Ousama?" The art was well done and wasn't overtly gory like I know these kinds of ideas can be; All in all it was quite tastefully done. Each character was fleshed out enough that I actually cared about some of them and the others I wished would die. Overall I enjoyed this series to the point ...

Nov 28, 2023

mjemrqz

Not Recommended

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 ...

Oct 11, 2024

Kinglink

Recommended

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.